5 ms·

The research on mothering style may be highly predictive, but unless I'm missing something, it isn't actionable or "useful."

nostromo 13y ago
It's useful to parents.
- JDDunn9 13y ago
  Because bad parents will become more nurturing after reading an article?
  - Falling3 13y ago
    Or parents who want to be good parents will have one more data point.
  - Amadou 13y ago
    Sorry, I don't have a link for you, but I've recently read that one of the problems that many parents who live in poverty have is that they simply do not know what is necessary to be a good parent. The specific example was with respect to talking to infants - that talking to children who do not yet have the power of speech makes an enormous difference in the development of verbal and cognitive ability. Rich infants heard an order or two more words per day than poor infants due only to the fact that poor parents didn't know that it was important. There was no intent to neglect, just ignorance. The overwhelming majority of parents want to be good parents, some just need better information on how to do it.
    - insickness 13y ago
      I'd like to see your data on this and whether the studies they did corrected for genetics. A lot of these studies like where parents talked to their kids more and the kids ended up being smarter ended up being proven false because there was no 'control' in these groups, children who were adopted, etc. Check out Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate. This talk sums it up pretty well: http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_chalks_it_up_to_the_blank_slate.html http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_chalks_it_up_to_the_b...
      - Amadou 13y ago
        http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of-talking-to-your-baby/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of... Sorry, I don't have time to watch an entire video. Is there a transcript?
      - MarkMc 13y ago
        I just watched the TED talk you linked to. Professor Pinker seems to completely dismiss the idea that parenting has a significant effect on the child. I wonder whether this study with rats has changed his mind - here's the relevant quote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5722596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5722596
      - btilly 13y ago
        Overly enriched environments might or might not matter. But deprived environments in early childhood demonstrably hurts. A lot. The cause is that in the first few years of life we lose unused connections between neurons. If a child does not have a primary care giver, then a lot of the connections lost are necessary for proper social and cognitive development, and the child is impaired for life in ways which are clear in the physical structure of the brain. This has been known for decades, yet still periodically someone somewhere that still has orphanages rediscovers this basic fact. (The most recent example that I heard about involved children in Romania.)
  - btilly 13y ago
    A lot of people who had bad parents want to be better parents than what they experienced. Articles can definitely affect their behavior. How do I know this? Because I'm one of them!
    - auctiontheory 13y ago
      You're right - I had my blinders on. And ... good for you!
      - mtowle 13y ago
        Either that or you're a narcissist and insist on everything being about you. "What's with the baby clothes section on Amazon? Babies can't buy clothes."
    - narag 13y ago
      I can't remember where I read it, but I like the quote: family goal is not creating good children, but good parents.
  - drumdance 13y ago
    More like so-so parents might try to become better parents. It's a continuum. There's a whole cottage industry around how to be a better parent. Presumably a lot of parents are buying those products.
  - calinet6 13y ago
    I think parents believe certain things based on what they're taught and their gut instincts; many parents have an opposite view than this one, thinking that "tough love" and high pressure childhoods make the children grow up to be better adults. This research basically disproves that, saying that nurturing and loving upbringings have that effect, while cold tough upbrinings are detrimental. Having that kind of evidence is extremely helpful—either parents who read it might change their mind, or it could be discussed in parenting groups. Either way, the point is that it's scientific evidence. People may eventually come around to it, leading to a better world with more nurturing parents and better childhoods and therefore better adult lives for a great many people. Will it happen soon? No. These beliefs are often so dogmatic and almost religious in nature that it's unlikely to affect the people who hold them. But maybe it will reach their children.
    - zenith2037 13y ago
      I disagree with your definition of tough love. Most people view tough love as not willing to spoil your child. Allowing them to know what consequences are for unacceptable behavior. But that doesn't automatically add "negation of all parental care" into the term.
      - calinet6 13y ago
        Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but what I tried to indicate was a philosophy of punishment and negative reinforcement. They can coexist with love, but they're detrimental to it. My mom studies animal behavior in dogs (read: she's a really good dog trainer) and the science behind positive reinforcement methods is overwhelming. Yet, people still use negative methods and get burned for it... more agressive behavior, less predictable behavior, conditioning that doesn't stick, and long-term trust issues with their dog. Positive methods are self-reinforcing, while negative methods require constant reinforcement to remain effective; at the same time, positive methods build your relationship with the dog and create a happier, healthier animal, while negative reinforcement causes extreme unintentional side-effects in both the long and short-term. It's the same with kids; we're just animals in the end and the behavioral science applies nearly exactly the same. It's a no-brainer and proven by science, but for some reason people still think you need to whip a kid with a belt to teach them to behave. Merely "not spoiling your child" is just a minor parenting choice; and surely you can't always be positive when there have to be negative consequences. But I'm talking about far worse negativity and lack of nurturing that's far worse and really is a core belief of a good portion of society.
  - Spooky23 13y ago
    No, because well intentioned parents can make better choices for their children. Think of questions like: - Should a parent take a promotion that will result in longer work hours? - Is it worth taking a compensation hit for a parent to stay home or reduce working hours? - Should a parent place a child in a daycare or hire a sitter/nanny? - To what level should grandparents be involved in the raising of a child? All of these questions have multiple answers that have different impacts on your ability to support yourself and nurture your child. It's a balance.
- BadCRC 13y ago
  did they isolate correlation from causation yet though..?
  - MarkMc 13y ago
    Funny you should mention that. Here's an extra bit from the book: "Meaney wondered if a dam’s licking-and-groorning frequency was just a proxy for some genetic trait that was passed on from mother to child. Maybe nervous dams produced temperamentally nervous pups, and those dams also coincidentally happened to be less inclined to lick and groom. To test that hypothesis, Meaney and his researchers did a number of cross-fostering experiments, in which they removed pups at birth from a high-LG dam and put them in the litter of a low-LG dam, and vice versa, in all kinds of combinations. Whatever permutation they chose, though, however they performed the experiment, they found the same thing: what mattered was not the licking-andgrooming habits of the biological mother; it was the licking-and-grooming habits of the rearing mother. When a pup received the comforting experience of licking and grooming as an infant, it grew up to be braver and bolder and better adjusted than a pup who hadn't, whether or not its biological mother was the one who had done the licking and grooming."
- ma2rten 13y ago
  What would interest me is what effect this has on parents. I would suspect that caring for a child has an equally good effect on the parents as it has on the child.
  - cafard 13y ago
    I don't think that the parents could tell you, and I am not sure how researchers could. To raise a child even from birth to first grade takes about six years, a period that will change anyone, parent or not. One does learn many things in caring for a child, though I can't say that is the only way to learn them.
    - alanh 13y ago
      Because you cannot immediately think of a study does not mean one is not possible. Consider: Measure changes in parents during child-rearing and correlate with measures of amount and style of "care" given to children. Are those that are more caring parents happier, on average, than those who are not? Control for anything you can think of controlling.
jimboyoungblood 13y ago
It's totally actionable- moms should lick their kids more often.
- glanch 13y ago
  My mother never once licked me. This must be why I'm not rich and successful.
mtdewcmu 13y ago
I think that pretty much sums up most social sciences research in general. It turns up lots of data with lots of correlations, but, since the issue of causation probably fundamentally can't be resolved through observational studies (or, very often, any conceivable kind of study), the analysis is sometimes interesting, but rarely, if ever, actionable or useful.

nostromo 13y ago

It's useful to parents.

JDDunn9 13y ago
Because bad parents will become more nurturing after reading an article?
- Falling3 13y ago
  Or parents who want to be good parents will have one more data point.
- Amadou 13y ago
  Sorry, I don't have a link for you, but I've recently read that one of the problems that many parents who live in poverty have is that they simply do not know what is necessary to be a good parent. The specific example was with respect to talking to infants - that talking to children who do not yet have the power of speech makes an enormous difference in the development of verbal and cognitive ability. Rich infants heard an order or two more words per day than poor infants due only to the fact that poor parents didn't know that it was important. There was no intent to neglect, just ignorance. The overwhelming majority of parents want to be good parents, some just need better information on how to do it.
  - insickness 13y ago
    I'd like to see your data on this and whether the studies they did corrected for genetics. A lot of these studies like where parents talked to their kids more and the kids ended up being smarter ended up being proven false because there was no 'control' in these groups, children who were adopted, etc. Check out Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate. This talk sums it up pretty well: http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_chalks_it_up_to_the_blank_slate.html http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_chalks_it_up_to_the_b...
    - Amadou 13y ago
      http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of-talking-to-your-baby/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of... Sorry, I don't have time to watch an entire video. Is there a transcript?
    - MarkMc 13y ago
      I just watched the TED talk you linked to. Professor Pinker seems to completely dismiss the idea that parenting has a significant effect on the child. I wonder whether this study with rats has changed his mind - here's the relevant quote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5722596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5722596
    - btilly 13y ago
      Overly enriched environments might or might not matter. But deprived environments in early childhood demonstrably hurts. A lot. The cause is that in the first few years of life we lose unused connections between neurons. If a child does not have a primary care giver, then a lot of the connections lost are necessary for proper social and cognitive development, and the child is impaired for life in ways which are clear in the physical structure of the brain. This has been known for decades, yet still periodically someone somewhere that still has orphanages rediscovers this basic fact. (The most recent example that I heard about involved children in Romania.)
- btilly 13y ago
  A lot of people who had bad parents want to be better parents than what they experienced. Articles can definitely affect their behavior. How do I know this? Because I'm one of them!
  - auctiontheory 13y ago
    You're right - I had my blinders on. And ... good for you!
    - mtowle 13y ago
      Either that or you're a narcissist and insist on everything being about you. "What's with the baby clothes section on Amazon? Babies can't buy clothes."
  - narag 13y ago
    I can't remember where I read it, but I like the quote: family goal is not creating good children, but good parents.
- drumdance 13y ago
  More like so-so parents might try to become better parents. It's a continuum. There's a whole cottage industry around how to be a better parent. Presumably a lot of parents are buying those products.
- calinet6 13y ago
  I think parents believe certain things based on what they're taught and their gut instincts; many parents have an opposite view than this one, thinking that "tough love" and high pressure childhoods make the children grow up to be better adults. This research basically disproves that, saying that nurturing and loving upbringings have that effect, while cold tough upbrinings are detrimental. Having that kind of evidence is extremely helpful—either parents who read it might change their mind, or it could be discussed in parenting groups. Either way, the point is that it's scientific evidence. People may eventually come around to it, leading to a better world with more nurturing parents and better childhoods and therefore better adult lives for a great many people. Will it happen soon? No. These beliefs are often so dogmatic and almost religious in nature that it's unlikely to affect the people who hold them. But maybe it will reach their children.
  - zenith2037 13y ago
    I disagree with your definition of tough love. Most people view tough love as not willing to spoil your child. Allowing them to know what consequences are for unacceptable behavior. But that doesn't automatically add "negation of all parental care" into the term.
    - calinet6 13y ago
      Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but what I tried to indicate was a philosophy of punishment and negative reinforcement. They can coexist with love, but they're detrimental to it. My mom studies animal behavior in dogs (read: she's a really good dog trainer) and the science behind positive reinforcement methods is overwhelming. Yet, people still use negative methods and get burned for it... more agressive behavior, less predictable behavior, conditioning that doesn't stick, and long-term trust issues with their dog. Positive methods are self-reinforcing, while negative methods require constant reinforcement to remain effective; at the same time, positive methods build your relationship with the dog and create a happier, healthier animal, while negative reinforcement causes extreme unintentional side-effects in both the long and short-term. It's the same with kids; we're just animals in the end and the behavioral science applies nearly exactly the same. It's a no-brainer and proven by science, but for some reason people still think you need to whip a kid with a belt to teach them to behave. Merely "not spoiling your child" is just a minor parenting choice; and surely you can't always be positive when there have to be negative consequences. But I'm talking about far worse negativity and lack of nurturing that's far worse and really is a core belief of a good portion of society.
- Spooky23 13y ago
  No, because well intentioned parents can make better choices for their children. Think of questions like: - Should a parent take a promotion that will result in longer work hours? - Is it worth taking a compensation hit for a parent to stay home or reduce working hours? - Should a parent place a child in a daycare or hire a sitter/nanny? - To what level should grandparents be involved in the raising of a child? All of these questions have multiple answers that have different impacts on your ability to support yourself and nurture your child. It's a balance.
BadCRC 13y ago
did they isolate correlation from causation yet though..?
- MarkMc 13y ago
  Funny you should mention that. Here's an extra bit from the book: "Meaney wondered if a dam’s licking-and-groorning frequency was just a proxy for some genetic trait that was passed on from mother to child. Maybe nervous dams produced temperamentally nervous pups, and those dams also coincidentally happened to be less inclined to lick and groom. To test that hypothesis, Meaney and his researchers did a number of cross-fostering experiments, in which they removed pups at birth from a high-LG dam and put them in the litter of a low-LG dam, and vice versa, in all kinds of combinations. Whatever permutation they chose, though, however they performed the experiment, they found the same thing: what mattered was not the licking-andgrooming habits of the biological mother; it was the licking-and-grooming habits of the rearing mother. When a pup received the comforting experience of licking and grooming as an infant, it grew up to be braver and bolder and better adjusted than a pup who hadn't, whether or not its biological mother was the one who had done the licking and grooming."
ma2rten 13y ago
What would interest me is what effect this has on parents. I would suspect that caring for a child has an equally good effect on the parents as it has on the child.
- cafard 13y ago
  I don't think that the parents could tell you, and I am not sure how researchers could. To raise a child even from birth to first grade takes about six years, a period that will change anyone, parent or not. One does learn many things in caring for a child, though I can't say that is the only way to learn them.
  - alanh 13y ago
    Because you cannot immediately think of a study does not mean one is not possible. Consider: Measure changes in parents during child-rearing and correlate with measures of amount and style of "care" given to children. Are those that are more caring parents happier, on average, than those who are not? Control for anything you can think of controlling.

jimboyoungblood 13y ago

It's totally actionable- moms should lick their kids more often.

glanch 13y ago
My mother never once licked me. This must be why I'm not rich and successful.

mtdewcmu 13y ago

I think that pretty much sums up most social sciences research in general. It turns up lots of data with lots of correlations, but, since the issue of causation probably fundamentally can't be resolved through observational studies (or, very often, any conceivable kind of study), the analysis is sometimes interesting, but rarely, if ever, actionable or useful.