No Lights In the Village
THE STORIES WE TELL OURSELVES
Society has convenient narratives to salve our conscience and relieve us from guilt. These stories become the coping mechanisms we use to try to resolve, numb, or ignore the pain of the disconnect between our thoughts and our behaviors. Cognitive scientists call the resulting strain we feel “cognitive dissonance.” Wikipedia describes cognitive dissonance this way: “The psychological tension that occurs when one holds mutually exclusive beliefs or attitudes and that often motivates people to modify their thoughts or behaviors in order to reduce the tension.”
The biggest story we tell ourselves is this: It’s okay if we spend quantity time at work, as long as we spend quality time at home. Instead of giving parents — both mother and father — adequate maternity and paternity leave so that they can be with their children unencumbered during these crucial formative months, we normalize the outsourcing of care. We applaud calls for cheaper daycare, rather than question the implicit message we are sending: It’s okay if we spend a large quantity of time at work, if the limited time we have at home is quality.
The Myth That Quality Trumps Quantity
How do we know this is a myth?
A cursory review of the fundamental tenets of child development clarifies the amount of time children need from their parents for healthy emotional development. The more the better, especially early on. Part of this need is explained by the fact that a child’s sense of time is different from how adults view time. In early childhood, children cannot distinguish between mommy or daddy leaving for two hours and mommy or daddy leaving forever. We know this from the elevated cortisol levels of children separated early from their parents. Baron-Cohen sums it up by saying that time with our children early on gives them an “internal pot of gold” of healthy empathy.
Recent neuroscientific studies measuring the impact of parenting on parental empathy mirror the impact on children. What kind of parenting actually increases empathy in the parent? Turns out, it is the same kind of parenting that children require for their own empathy development. These studies show a positive correlation between time spent in contact with the baby and an increase in parental empathy, confirming that children need our time — in quantity, not just quality.
But if we do a gut check, we don’t need these studies. Our guilt tells us the truth — the guilt we are forced to swallow when we walk away from our kids before they and we are ready. Here are some ways society tries to help us deal with our cognitive dissonance vis-à-vis children:
Explicit: “XYZ is the best daycare.”
Implicit: “My child is being taken care of so I don’t need to worry. I can go to work.” We know that this is a common mix-up. While 88% of parents are convinced their daycare is very good to excellent, those who study child development rate the vast majority of daycares as fair.
Explicit: “My kid isn’t in daycare. My kid is at school.”
Implicit: “School is providing my child with education, which is more important than what I can provide. So it’s okay if I go to work.” The problem is that the learning that kids need to be doing at this age is not cognitive (e.g., ABCs, 123s, colors), it’s affective (i.e., I feel safe and warm and loved).
Explicit: “Daycare is the right decision because I want my kid to grow up independent. I want my child to grow up being comfortable with all sorts of people.”
Implicit: “Daycare is better for my child than I am. So it’s okay if he is there without me.” The problem is that studies show that attachment to a primary caretaker is what will give a child the ability to become resilient in different kinds of situations. Too many caretakers too early on makes children dependent, not independent.
Explicit: “Leaving your baby will feel like cutting off your arm. Just move through it, and it will get better.”
Implicit: “If I don’t think about it, eventually the pain will go away. Work will once again become manageable.” For many parents, it doesn’t actually get better. Most parents just become more numb.
Explicit: “This daycare is fantastic because it gives children ‘motherly love.’’’ Or “The nanny loves the kids like another grandma.”
Implicit: “The daycare∕nanny is a better mother than I am. So it’s okay if they are with her.” Grandma would beg to differ. The kids know the difference, too, even in the best cases. Children want their parents and parents want their children. Maybe there is no such thing as “pay to love.”
These are just some examples. But collectively, they come under the umbrella of a big, modern mix-up: the idea that it’s okay if we spend quantity time at work as long as we spend quality time at home. Child-development findings — better yet, a conversation with your grandma — would reveal these claims to be illogical at best and absurd at worst.
But guilt is a powerful thing. And it can cause us to accept fake news rather than feel guilty.
Yet the Myth Continues
So powerful is this need to resolve our untenable position that many industries work diligently to support this myth. One group with which many are familiar is the teacher∕doctor∕big pharma∕researcher industrial complex.This complex promotes psychotropic medications for our children to settle them quickly, when what many really need is an academic setting that is more developmentally appropriate, or simply more attention at home.
And then there is the academic∕journalist industrial complex. This group is known for publishing and reporting studies supporting the quality∕quantity mix-up, regardless of the rigor with which the studies were conducted. In March of 2015, one such study, which concluded that time spent doing hands-on parenting had little impact on child outcomes, was widely reported by major outlets such as the Washington Post, the Guardian and NBC News.The study was pulled only after Justin Wolfers of the New York Times decided to take a closer look, determining that or data made the study’s conclusion essentially a nonfinding.[1]
In a follow-up, David Leonhardt shed some light on what we had just witnessed:
But the notion that time doesn’t matter for parenting makes almost exactly as much sense as the notion that time doesn’t matter for, say, journalism. Do you think a reporter who spends an hour on the beat will usually produce as good a story as someone who spends 10? And we shouldn’t let academics off the hook here, either. They have the same ingrained bias as we journalists do.[2]
That’s right. The people doing the studies and writing the stories are parents who are also stuck. They need this mix-up as much as the rest of us.
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/04/upshot/upshot-letter-our-anti-parenting-bias.html
