I read a disturbing thread on a message board today. It was about, well, bad parents, and what it’s like to have them–the abusive kind, the neglectful kind, the manipulative kind, the resentful kind.
I read the thread and took a deep breath and charged ahead with my day. But all day I kept trying to remember this quotation from one of Urie Bronfenbrenner’s books, so tonight I had to look it up. It goes like this:
“In order to develop normally, a child needs the enduring, irrational involvement of one or more adults in the care of and in joint activity with that child. In short, somebody has to be crazy about that kid. ”
You don’t often see scientists discussing parenting in terms like this. You’re much more likely to come across terms like “sensitivity” and “responsiveness” and “scaffolding”–terms that imply some kind of measurable behavior that parents can score high or low on. But “irrational involvement”? That may not be quantifiable, but it’s definitely something parents can relate to. I feel irrational about my child. I suspect most parents do. I don’t know what to do about the parents who don’t. Is there anything we can do? How do we teach that kind of connection, that emotional tie?
Given the evidence that supports the long-term importance of strong early attachments, it’s surprising and perhaps disturbing that so little has come of it. It’s a rare policy or practice that has been directly inspired or informed by attachment theory or the research in its tradition, despite the decades of published research. You’d think that such a powerful body of work would make waves in all kinds of areas, from parenting to professional child care, but…..not so much.
So much of the disconnect between research and policy stems from a lack of communication between the laboratory and the real world. Parents, teachers, and legislators aren’t exactly devouring the latest issue of Child Development (jeez, I can barely keep up with reading it these days, and it’s my own field’s flagship journal), and scientists are rarely skilled at seeking publicity for their research findings. So when I came across a reference to the National Scentific Council on the Developing Child, I got very excited.
The NSCDC is a panel of experts who are charged with condensing relevant child development research into manageable, understandable bullet points for use by policymakers and the lay public. They have published working papers on a variety of issues, including one entitled Young Children Develop in an Environment of Relationships that is based partly on research in attachment. Among the points they make are the following:
When I read this brief, all I could think was–YES! Finally! Now maybe issues like family leave, working mothers, and subsidized child care can become informed discussions of what’s best for children, rather than oversimplified political talking points. (Of course, this brief was written in 2004, and I haven’t exactly seen my colleagues all over CNN. Yet. Small steps….)
(And trust me, I’m not as naive as I sound–I understand the financial implications of the programs that brief is alluding to. But I’d like to get scientists in on that part of the discussion, too–a discussion of the financial costs versus the costs in children’s mental health, and the long-term implications of policies that ignore the child in favor of the budget.)
So, the gap is narrowing. Science is doing its job–we’re making the breakthroughs, we’re looking for the answers (and publishing them, at least when they answer big enough questions). Groups like this Council are delivering the results to the doors of the people who make the big decisions, who write the legislation, and who decide what issues to take on in their election campaigns. Will they listen?
As any parent can tell you, there are (far too) many people, books, websites, and magazine articles offering child-rearing advice to the new parent. Much of the advice is related to topics that, frankly, really don’t matter-trust me, the difference between swaddling my daughter “properly” versus swaddling her in my own highly incapable and messy way was undetectable at 4 a.m.; she cried either way.
The big issues, though-that’s where things can get scary. Take, for example, the following advice to late-19th-century parents, which was published as part of a pamphlet called The Care and Feeding of Children by Luther Emmett Holt:
It is tempting to dismiss this kind of bad advice as simply uninformed by more recent advances in research with infants (and in this case, it’s a reasonable assumption-infancy research was virtually nonexistent in 1894). Surprisingly, though, parents are still taught child care techniques that are inconsistent with psychological research with infants and children. Take, for example, the following blog post about cry-it-out techniques from a parenting blog called Partners in Parenting:
“What does this (sleep training) method entail? It’s pretty simple: put the baby down asleep at bedtime and don’t return to the room until the end of the sleep period. So, at nap-time, you put the baby down cooing and gurgling, walk out of the room, close the door, and don’t return for two hours — even if your baby is crying the entire time. Same thing at nighttime.”
This is advice given to parents by many pediatricians, nurses, sleep experts, and parenting gurus. There are lots of variations on the theme, but the gist is the same: Babies will learn to put themselves to sleep, and will go to sleep without a fuss, if parents will stop rewarding the infant’s cry with a response (comforting, rocking, feeding, etc). I can’t emphasize enough how common this advice is-there are numerous books on the topic, child care websites recommend it, and at every single well-baby visit I took my infant daughter to, we were encouraged to “train” Lily to sleep by letting her cry in her crib if need be. (In case you’re curious, we managed to teach Lily to fall asleep without leaving her to cry alone.)
Thoughts? We’re talking about attachment this week in class. Is this advice consistent with fostering secure attachments?