Screen use amongst children and teens in the US and elsewhere is an enormous concern – with adolescents aged 13 – 18 spending an average of 8.5 hours daily on screen-based media. This is at least one-half of all their waking hours – and it is time that could be spent in so many other ways.
And some of these 8.5 hours of phone use take place in school.
Yes, kids are on their phones at school.
The issue of whether kids should even have their smartphones with them during the school day is one that comes up again and again – including in this blog. Some parents feel it is a safety precaution in case their children need to get in touch with them. Others feel that phones are a distraction from learning and are better left in lockers or in a central location at school.
But there has been very little good data concerning how much time kids actually spend on their phones at school to date.
Finally, however, there is a study which looks at this. Just published in the Journal of The American Medical Association Pediatrics, this study begins to help us understand kids’ phone use at school.
The researchers not only answered the question of how much time kids spend on their phones but they also looked at what kids are doing on their phones during school hours.
As it turns out, kids spend an average of an hour and a half on their smart phones over the course of a six-and-a-half-hour school day. But a quarter of kids spend more than two hours on their phones while at school. And the most looked at apps or categories of phone use are messages, Instagram, video streaming, audio and email.
These are very revealing findings. They are not surprising….but they are shocking. The researchers who performed this study said, “Parents and adolescents may derive benefit from access to phones for communication and learning purposes during school. However, application usage data from this study suggest that most school-day smartphone use appears incongruous with that purpose. The analyses show high levels of social media use during school.”1
In other words, kids are not just using their phones to communicate with their parents during the school day. They are using their phones for the same purposes they use them out of school: scrolling social media, watching YouTube, etc.
It is time for us as a society, and for parents as individuals to think about whether this is the best use of kids’ time – both in school and out.
This is the third in a series on phone use in school.
Footnotes/References
1 Christakis DA, Mathew GM, Reichenberger DA, Rodriguez IR, Ren B, Hale L. Adolescent Smartphone Use During School Hours. JAMA Pediatr. Published online February 03, 2025. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.66
This is the second in a series on Gentle Parenting
The term, Gentle Parenting was coined by Sarah Ockwell-Smith, a British writer who has authored a variety of books on the subject. She emphasizes the importance of empathy, respect, understanding and boundaries in parenting. And in doing so, she shares some of the best practices of good parenting.
But you may be surprised to know that Ockwell-Smith actually has no qualifications for calling herself a parenting expert. She has an undergraduate degree in psychology, she is a mother, but otherwise, nada.
Her ideas are her own. Like other parenting experts before her such as William Sears (attachment parenting), she speaks based on her own opinions and observations rather than from scientific research findings.
In other words, Gentle Parenting has no data behind it.
And it is just beginning to be studied.
So how can parents know if it is an effective technique for raising happier children?
Well, they can’t.
But this has not stopped many parents from adopting Gentle Parenting wholeheartedly and feeling deeply that this is the “right” way to parent.
It is important for such parents to keep in mind that since parents started to parent, there have been styles of parenting that have been popular and then gone by the wayside, ways of parenting that have been considered “right” at the time and then, just as quickly, have gone out of fashion.
And in the last 75 years there has been a particular trajectory to parenting styles: Since Dr. Benjamin Spock wrote his first parenting book in 1946, parenting has become progressively more “child-centered” with Gentle Parenting being the most child-centered of them all.
But is this actually good for children?
Let’s look at what little data there is.
In one of the first studies of Gentle Parenting, professors Annie Pezalla and Alice Davidson gathered data from 100 self-identified “Gentle Parents”. And what they found may not surprise you. They said that these parents are “at risk of burnout”.
It turns out that this parenting style is extremely hard for parents to implement. For example, the expectation that a parent can remain calm at all times regardless of children’s behavior is extremely emotionally taxing for parents.
This is what they said, “Parenting young children has always been hard, but evidence suggests that it might be getting harder. The pressures to fulfill exacting parenting standards, coupled with the information overload on social media about the right or wrong ways to care for children, has left many parents questioning their moment-to-moment interactions with their family and leaving them with feelings of burnout. 1
And they found that gentle parents were not always so gentle on themselves: “the emergent theme of self-critique, expressed by over one-third of gentle parents, and the findings that, among those self-critical gentle parents, the levels of self-efficacy were significantly lower, illuminates the need for more explorations and more support of these parents. One of the gentle parents in our sample, a 40-year-old mother of two children, wrote that her approach to parenting is about “Trying to remain calm…but I do reach my limit sometimes.” Gentle parenting seems to represent an approach that is extraordinarily gentle for the children, but perhaps not-so-gentle for the parents themselves. “1
Moreover, it is also not clear that remaining calm at all moments is actually helpful for children.
While extreme emotional outbursts from parents in reaction to children’s misbehaviors are obviously not advantageous, I would suggest that there is a natural feedback system that is in place in parent-infant/child interactions both in humans and in most other mammals: when a child or young animal misbehaves by doing something dangerous or annoying, the parent naturally reacts accordingly – with an angry word or growl and sometimes a correction. From this, the child understands that she has done something she should not have. The parent’s negative reaction is the logical and normal consequence for a child’s misbehavior and the child learns what the parent will and will not tolerate.
And the effectiveness of providing a consequence for misbehavior has been widely researched. As I discussed in my last post, in the parenting style known as Authoritative Parenting, parents make their expectations clear, they support children’s feelings and needs and they provide gentle punishments or consequences when children misbehave. And this parenting style has been shown, in many studies, to be the most effective parenting method (amongst the three types of parenting styles: Authoritative, Authoritarian and Permissive) and the one that yields the happiest children.
Gentle Parenting does share some characteristics of Authoritative Parenting – it advocates clear boundaries and provides support for children’s feelings and needs.
And where Gentle Parenting also gets it right is in the area of advising parents to stay calm in the face of children’s extreme feelings. A parent’s ability to remain calm in the face of an infant or young child’s distress – sadness, pain, frustration, IS helpful – and we have known this for a long time. Theorist Wilfred Bion wrote about the mother’s ability to contain her infant’s highly charged affects by reacting with soothing as being one of her most important functions and the one that helps infants learn to tolerate their own distress. He explained that the mother who can grasp the importance of, and take into herself, some of the baby’s earliest and most primitive anxieties helps her baby to internalize the mother’s capacity to tolerate and manage anxiety.
So this is a well known function of the mother, one that was recognized before Gentle Parenting and which Gentle Parenting wisely incorporates – just as it includes a variety of other important parental functions including empathy, endeavoring to see matters from the child’s point of view, verbalization of the child’s feelings and motivations and support for these.
Where Gentle Parenting goes wrong is that it asks WAY too much of parents and it asks WAY too little of children.
At this point in history, most parents work to earn a living and face a host of demands just to survive. Adding to this the expectation to stay calm in the face of every sort of child emotion and behavior, being endlessly empathic, and having no consequences for misbehavior may just be asking too much of parents.
Parents need a sense of having SOME control at home. Sometimes they need a child just to do what they have told them to do. And parents need some way to express themselves to their children. When a child does not comply with what a parent has expected of them, it is natural for the parent to be annoyed and to say so. This is life. Children need to know that not everything they do is acceptable and that some things they do come with unpleasant consequences. They really need to learn what not to do and what to do – because once they go to school and eventually to internships and to jobs, once they have friends, and eventually romantic relationships, this will be the reality of their lives. Not every person in life will be understanding and empathic. Not every motivation for every kind of behavior is equally acceptable in life.
Moreover, research has shown that children feel safer when they know what is expected of them AND they feel less guilty when they have a consequence when they do not comply.
In the end, this is what the researchers who did one of the first studies on Gentle Parenting had to say: What seems to be unique about the gentle parenting movement is that it has not been presented or advocated by scholars of human development; rather, it has largely been the product of social media. Considering that parents are increasingly stressed or burned out by their caregiving responsibilities, it is imperative that evidence-based guidance is made available to those who are interested in gentle parenting. What does this approach entail? How is it related to other parenting approaches? Is it a sustainable approach for caregivers? These are empirical questions, and they deserve empirical answers.
Should children suffer consequences when they don’t do what we tell them to do?
This question has come up a great deal recently in light of the advent of “Gentle Parenting“.
Most of you have probably heard of Gentle Parenting and some of you may even be using the Gentle Parenting philosophy to raise your kids. But for those who are not up to speed, the Gentle Parenting movement was started by Sarah Ockwell-Smith, a British author and mother of four. She has written a variety of books about gentle parenting, including The Gentle Parenting Book. She emphasizes understanding children’s feelings and acknowledging the motivations behind challenging behaviors as opposed to correcting the behavior itself. She advocates setting firm boundaries, giving choices, and avoiding punishments.
According to a New Yorker article on the subject, “Instead of issuing commands (“Put on your shoes!”), the parent strives to understand why a child is acting out in the first place (“What’s up, honey? You don’t want to put your shoes on?”) or, perhaps, narrates the problem (“You’re playing with your trains because putting on shoes doesn’t feel good”)4
This sounds great – and it IS great: trying to understand why your child feels the way she does, and putting this is into words for her is part of good parenting. And yet, this may not be enough. It may not result in the desired outcome…and parents are getting tired of exerting all the energy this style of parenting requires.
We want our children to do the things we want them to do—like getting dressed, coming to meals promptly, sitting at the table, doing their homework, not fighting with their siblings, etc.—and we struggle with how to accomplish this without violating current parenting norms.
And we don’t just want our children to do these things when we tell them; we also want them to learn to do these things without having to be told.
But there’s more. We want our children to internalize good values. We want them to develop their own moral compass. By the time they are 9 or 10, we want them to understand the importance of listening to others, following rules, treating others with consideration, and being honest, among other things.
And often we don’t know how to reach this goal.
So what do we do? Talk to our children each time they do something we don’t like or when they fail to do something we want them to do in the style of Gentle Parenting? Provide consequences when they don’t do what we tell them to do? Or do we go back to old fashined punishments – and actually punish them—whether by a spanking, the removal of a privilege, or by taking away a promised treat?
Physical Punishment
Well, let’s start with physical punishment. That is an immediate no – because we have long known that physical punishment is not beneficial for children. In a review article on the subject, Anne B. Smith states that while physical punishment has often been considered an effective, and even necessary means of socializing children, research has revealed it to be a predictor of a wide range of negative developmental outcomes for children. There is widespread agreement on this throughout all the recent research done in the area. Physical punishment is associated with increased child aggression, antisocial behavior, lower intellectual achievement, poorer quality of parent–child relationships, mental health problems (such as depression), and diminished moral internalization.2
In a review of the literature on this subject, one researcher found that there was also widespread agreement among studies that physical punishment tends to lessen the chances that children will internalize parental rules and values.2
Talking to Our Children
Now let’s move on to another alternative: talking to our children. This has been found over and over to enhance children’s understanding of parental expectations as well as maintaining the affectional bond between parent and child.
But, as I mentioned, talking is often not enough. While some advocates of Gentle Parenting may differ, it has been found that what is more effective than talking alone is setting clear expectations, instituting gentle punishments, such as consequences for misbehavior, and being consistent.
This is called authoritative parenting.
Authoritative Parenting
And the research on parenting is clear on this. In many studies of three types of parenting: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive, authoritative parenting has been found to be the most effective as well as the style that yields the happiest children.
Authoritative parents are responsive to their children’s feelings and needs, and they are more often supportive than harsh with their children. This style of parenting is associated with talking together with children about their behavior as well as setting up mild punishments or consequences for misbehavior. Studies have shown that this type of parenting results in lower levels of depression and higher levels of school commitment among adolescents.3
Authoritarian Parenting
Meanwhile, authoritarian parents are those who are low in responsiveness to their children yet highly demanding of them. The authoritarian parenting style is associated with emphasizing obedience and conformity and expectations that rules be obeyed without explanation. Authoritarian parents exhibit low levels of trust and engagement toward their children, discourage open communication, and engage in strict control. And it has been found that verbal hostility and psychological control are the most detrimental of the authoritarian parenting behaviors. Adolescents from authoritarian families have been found to exhibit poor social skills, low levels of self-esteem, and high levels of depression.3
Permissive Parenting
Permissive parenting is characterized by high levels of responsiveness to children coupled with low levels of demandingness. Permissive parents affirm their children’s impulses, desires, and actions and consult with their children about decisions. In results that may surprise you, adolescents from permissive families report a higher frequency of substance use and school misconduct and are less engaged and less positively oriented to school compared to individuals from authoritative or authoritarian families. And permissive parenting is also associated with low self-esteem in children.
So back to the question: What is the best thing for parents to do?
Well, it seems to me that what some people call “gentle parenting” can end up being a lot like the “permissive parenting” I described above.
And, according to the research, authoritative parenting seems to yield happier children and children who eventually internalize the rules.
So this means setting clear rules and limits for your children starting early, talking to them about these, and instituting clear, mild punishments, or what I call consequences, for when children do not do what you have told them to do.
And notice, I use the words, “what you have told them to” instead of what you have “asked.”
It is time to stop saying, “OK?” after each thing we tell our child to do. As the parent, it is time we stop asking our children to do things we actually want them to do. It may be hard to act like an authority with our children, but generational boundaries are important. Our children need to know that, in the end, we, as the parents, are the boss.
As parents, we are often afraid to set limits or to give consequences. We are afraid of making our children unhappy or angry. We are afraid of meltdowns—whether in public (embarrassing) or at home (frustrating).
But we have to understand that we need to be able to tolerate our children being upset, disappointed, sad, or even angry with us if we want them to learn how to do what we want them to do and if we want them, eventually, to internalize the values we hold dear.
So, let’s start to institute consequences, be consistent, and let the consequences fit the misbehaviors. Often called logical consequences, these will make sense to you and your child. For example, if your child does not put on her pajamas in time for her to have books read to her on a certain night, then story time will have to wait until tomorrow.
References
1. A. Mageau, Joannie Lessard, Joëlle Carpentier, JeanMichel Robichaud, Mireille Joussemet, Richard Koestner (2018). Effectiveness and acceptability beliefs regarding logical consequences and mild punishments. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Vol 54, Jan-Feb, 2018.
2. Smith, Anne B. (2006) The state of research on the effects of physical punishment, Ministry of Social Development, New Zealand.
3. Hoskins, Donna. (2014). Consequences of Parenting on Adolescent Outcomes.Societies, 4(3), 506–531; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc4030506
4. Winter, Jessica. 2022. The harsh realm of gentle parenting. March 23, 2022, The New Yorker.
There seems to be a problem going on amongst middle and upper-middle-class parents which involves not just hovering and helicoptering but also downright coddling and intruding.
Children from 2 to 32 are being treated as incompetent people who can never do the simplest things — tasks their own parents — and certainly their grandparents did starting very early in life.
The thing is — children are more competent than we give them credit for — and they always have been.
By hovering and helicoptering we get in the way of their developing their own skills, and worse, we interfere with their ability to have experiences that teach them how to do what they need to do in life. As a result, we limit the development of their feelings of competence, confidence, and mastery.
In our parenting groups, I have observed that parents are feeling exhausted. And part of this is because they feel they have to help with everything. If a child doesn’t like what is for dinner, the parent feels like they have to provide something else. If a child wants the parent to help them with their homework each day, the parent feels they have to do this. If the child wants to look at a device during dinner, the parent feels they have to say yes to avoid a meltdown. And in the bathroom? Don’t get me started…
When a five or six or seven year old asks for help with wiping, the parent feels they have to go right in.
But the question parents must ask themselves from the time their children are two years old through adulthood is this: Am I actually helping my child become more competent and confident? Or am I expecting too little from them? Am I stepping in and doing too much for them? And if I am stepping in too often, why am I doing this?
Is it just easier to do things for our children rather than insisting they do them for themselves? Or is it too painful to watch children struggle — to watch children make mistakes and suffer the consequences — to watch children feel frustrated? Bored? Angry?
Or do we have expectations of ourselves as parents that are too high? If so, why? When did we cease to believe that experience was the best teacher? And when did we decide that we, as parents, are really the best teachers and that it is our job to help our children avoid difficult feelings such as frustration, failure, boredom, and anger?
Let’s look to the scientific literature for help.
In studies of what promotes feelings of competence amongst students, structure and support for their autonomy have been shown to be important. Students feel more competent when their teachers give them the opportunity to do work on their own, and when there are clear instructions as to what they should be doing.1
Students also feel more competent when they have the opportunity to help others, and to get support for themselves from peers.1
The attitude of the adults who are around kids is also pertinent as to what makes them feel competent. In a survey, students described teacher kindness, support for autonomy, relatedness, and non-controlling orientation as factors that contributed to their competence satisfaction. For instance, the students felt competent because their teachers had an approachable, helpful, and interactive teaching style and provided them with opportunities to interact with each other.1
Additionally, students mentioned that participation opportunities, respectful teacher-student interactions, and teachers who were responsive to their views, needs, and interests facilitated their competence satisfaction in class. This means that opportunities to give their opinions, to do hands-on work and to be met with a respectful attitude was helpful.
What’s more, students indicated that they feel more competent when teachers make expectations clear, and provide appropriate help when necessary.
Other research has looked at social and emotional competence and has found over and over again that children with better social skills and those who are able to manage their own feelings feel more competent — in addition to being more trusting, empathic and intellectually inquisitive.
So there is quite a bit of research, but often these studies are not translated into actual methods by which parents can learn how to promote competence in their children.3
So, how can parents apply the research findings to their own approach to parenting?
Well, first, we know that being attuned to our babies and children’s feelings and needs is crucial. From birth, we need to observe how they are feeling, and when they are upset, we need to be able to tell the difference between times when they need help calming down and when they are able to soothe themselves.
We must try to stay attuned to their feelings as they engage in difficult tasks (starting with tummy time and going all the way through writing high school papers) and only intervene when it is clear that they have become so frustrated that they cannot continue. We can be there and be available in case help is needed – but we should not jump in at the first sign of frustration.
Second, we must make our expectations of our children clear, but not try to control what and how they do things.
Third, being kind and respectful toward our children and their efforts to accomplish things helps them to internalize a kind and respectful attitude toward themselves.
Fourth, helping children to manage, recognize and understand their own feelings and talking with them about the feelings of others supports social and emotional competence.
Fifth, it is important to encourage independence and autonomy in our children while providing as much structure and support as we think they need.
So, for example, we can help a toddler learn how to pour her own orange juice — but we can suggest starting out doing this activity while standing on a stool and doing it in the sink. As she becomes more capable of pouring without spilling we can ask her if she has noticed how much better she’s gotten and invite her to pour her juice at the table.
Or, when a high schooler is having difficulty with writing a paper, rather than jumping in to read it over or to aid with the writing, we can start by helping them calm down and talk about what is making it so hard for them – before we take ANY action whatsoever.
In summary, helping a child or teen with a task by telling them how to do it or doing it for them is not actually the most effective way to help a child feel competent.
These days, we often feel we have to help our children before they may actually need it. And we may praise our children rather than pointing out the improvement the child has made and asking the child if they notice their improvement or whether they feel proud — of themselves.
In the end, we all want our children to feel competent and good about themselves. And we want them to feel this from the inside rather than waiting for praise from the adults around them or for A’s from their teachers. We want them not only to be competent, but we want them to feel competent.
References
1 Reymond, N. C., et al. (2022) Why students feel competent in the classroom: a qualitative analysis of students’ views. Frontiers in Psychology, Oct 13. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9612881/
2Housman, D.K. (2017) The importance of emotional competence and self-regulation from birth: a case for the evidence-based emotional cognitive social early learning approach. ICEP 11, 13. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40723-017-0038-6
3 Miller, J. S., et al. (2018) Parenting for Competence and Parenting With Competence: Essential Connections Between Parenting and Social and Emotional Learning. School Community Journal, V. 28 (2) p. 28. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1201828.pdfMorereferences
As of Weds morning, there are many jubilant Americans and many devastated Americans.
What can I say that will add anything at this point?
I myself am in a news blackout. That is what I need to do to continue to keep an even keel.
And, at this point everyone needs to find a way to keep themselves stable.
Whether you immerse yourself in the victory or you seek refuge in nature or poetry or music or Netflix or sleep.
And we need to do this so that we can be available to those who need us – most especially our children.
Whichever category you fit into, try to remember how you behave and how you speak about the election results in front of your children will influence and affect them.
This will be a confusing time for them.
They are hearing all sorts of things at school, from their friends, on social media and elsewhere. There is a great deal of emotion – elation, anger, sadness, dire predictions, threats, and promises – any of which may or may not be welcome.
So, if, as parents you are overjoyed at the win, if you are celebrating, remember, your kids are watching and you are sending a message about how to handle victory.
Or, if you as parents are upset, frightened, furious or disheartened, also, remember what message you are sending.
Are your children thinking they can lord the win over their friends who wanted a different result? Are your children upset and afraid about what’s to come?
Children need to be reassured: this is what democracy looks like. There was an election, there was a winner and we must live with the results.
Children also need to know that the adults in their lives will work to make sure there are other elections in 2 and in 4 years and we will have a choice again then.
They need to know that if we don’t like what happened this time, we can work to tip the scales back in a direction we like better in two years – and we can start to work on that as soon as we feel up to it.
AND parents need to try – no matter what – to reassure their children that they will keep them safe even if there are those who may talk about making changes to our system that we don’t agree with.
Children need to know that in their house, values of kindness and fairness still apply.
And if children are getting messages from other kids or teachers at school about who should have won or who did win, they need to know that you want to hear about it and talk about it with them.
However, if children observe parents doom scrolling, or panicking or feeling helpless or hopeless, they may feel that there is no one to help THEM with with their own anxieties.
So, here are some options:
– Whether you feel jubilant or hopeless, try to manage your own feelings in a way that will be tolerable to your children and teens.
– If your kids are anxious, if they are asking lots of questions or finding it hard to go to sleep at night, try to reassure them – especially your children twelve and under. Remind them that you are there for them and will work to keep them safe. Sit with them a little longer before it’s time to go to sleep. Read an extra book with them.
– Remind them that over the arc of history, there have been many heated political campaigns, many changes in government, and many scary and difficult events in this country – but that we are still here.
– Remind them that in this country there are still checks and balances and that the President does not have absolute power. Whether you want him to institute certain changes or you are afraid he will institute certain changes – it is not entirely within his power to do so.
– Keep the news and political commentary off the screen until your younger kids go to bed
– And with your teenagers, keep the conversation open. Talk to them about how they feel, don’t hide what you feel, but also try not to denigrate those on the other side of the political spectrum as you talk with them.
***Please comment on this post and tell us how you are feeling and WHAT you are doing – for yourself – and for your children***
A recent New Yorker article starts with the following:
“At the end of the summer, the U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, issued an advisory on the mental health of the nation’s parents. Too many families, Murthy wrote, are beset by economic factors beyond their control, including the costs of health care, child care, elder care, housing, and groceries. Murthy cited alarming results from a survey by the American Psychological Association, conducted in 2023, in which forty-one per cent of parents said that “most days they are so stressed they cannot function,” forty-eight per cent said that “most days their stress is completely overwhelming,” and fifty per cent said that “when they are stressed, they can’t bring themselves to do anything.” 1
This is outrageous!
So many parents are so stressed!
We have to talk about this.
And it is also time to fully acknowledge how little support there is for families in this country.
Unlike other developed nations, we have little to no governmental support for the care of our young children. Parents are not subsidized to stay home to care for infants and young pre-school aged children – and at the very same time, the survival of most families AND the survival of our economy require both parents to work in most families.
But, as the article says, “insufficient or erratic child care is a major disruptor of parents’ work schedules”1 and “In eleven states and the District of Columbia, child care costs at least twice as much as typical monthly rent or mortgage payments, and two-thirds of parents nationwide report spending twenty per cent or more of their take-home pay on child care. For sole parents, this share rises to thirty-five per cent.”1
The Build Back Better bill, proposed by President Biden included funding for child care and early childhood education.
And yet, even knowing how important childcare is to family well being, the Build Back Better agenda did NOT receive widespread bipartisan support, and the provisions for daycare were completely cut from the final bill which was passed, called The Inflation Reduction Act. 2
The Democrats’ plans included universal pre-kindergarten, lower child care costs, paid family and sick leave and the enhanced child tax credit, among other provisions, but all of these were ultimately eliminated during negotiations between Democrats and Republicans. Those cuts became the ninth time in just two and a half years where proposed legislation aimed at helping women and families have been removed, according to a CNN analysis of data from the Congressional Budget Office and Congressional Research Reports.
Paid family leave alone has been trimmed down or dropped five different times since March 2020, and universal pre-kindergarten, paid family leave and an expanded child tax credit were all left out of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Now we have a presidential candidate who is introducing a six-thousand-dollar tax credit for parents of newborns, and a cap on child-care expenditures at seven per cent of a family’s income. She has also signalled her commitment to pro-family economic policy in choosing Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, as her running mate. As Governor, Walz has made school breakfast and lunch free in Minnesota and has made public higher education free for low-income students, he has added more than two billion dollars to Minnesota’s K-12 school budget, expanded the state’s child tax credit, and enshrined paid family and medical leave.
If instituted on a nationwide basis, these policies would do a LOT to decrease family stress –
and yet the presidential race is still neck in neck.
Obviously, many fathers and mothers are not putting help for families at the top of their priority list when choosing who to vote for.
It’s obviously time that we name the problem loud and clear: children and families are not considered important in our country.
To many, “it’s the economy, stupid” which is important.
But let’s connect the dots: the workers of today, parents, need to be less stressed to do their jobs. And the workers of tomorrow, children, need to be well cared for in order to be the healthy community members and the creative and productive workers the economy needs.
If this is the only argument that will get through to some people, let’s make it!
As Winter suggests in her New Yorker article, a coherent, constructive debate about how to help working parents—about how our politics and institutions can foster a care economy that exists, in one form or another, in virtually every other developed nation on Earth—is needed.
This is an updated version of a post written for the election two cycles ago.
As we approach the presidential election, it’s a good time to talk to your kids about winning and losing.
The subjects of sportsmanship, humility and grace come to mind – as well as braggadocio, sore losing and bitterness.
Whatever side of the electoral battle you are on, you and your children will be having strong feelings.
So what do we say to our children? And at what age are they ready to have this conversation?
Well, really children of any age, starting around 3 know about winning and losing – and they can talk about the feelings that come when they experience each. Of course, depending on your child’s age, you will speak about this differently.
But the place to start is to remind your child – whatever age they are – that how your family feels at this moment about who you want for President is not the way that everyone feels. Some people are for one candidate and some people are for the other. This is a time to talk about values and WHY you prefer the candidate you prefer, what values and policies they represent, and why you are in favor of these.
This is the time to talk about the history of our country and what democracy is all about – and this includes the fact that in our country we allow the people (represented by the electoral college) to choose the president and that we are honor bound to stick with this decision.
HOWEVER – and this is where the more nuanced part of the discussion comes in – it is important, whatever you or your child feel, to help your child to be aware that when other people feel differently than we do, that it is important to treat them and their feelings with respect.
Good sportsmanship is something that kids who play on teams should be learning. You can provide this as an example: after a game, your team shakes hands with the other team to indicate that you both played a good game and that there are no hard feelings left over from the competition.
The losers can feel upset but still lose graciously. This is a concept that can be introduced to a 3 year old and also to a 16 year old.
And the winners can feel happy and joyous – but they can also behave graciously by telling their competitors that they played well. Children can be reminded that bragging about winning is not the way to go, even though inside it feels so good to win.
You can tell your children the story of “burying the hatchet”: when Native American tribes had disputes or wars with each other, when they were over, the two formerly opposing sides literally buried a hatchet in the ground to symbolize the end of the disagreement.
This is a way to handle winning and losing an election too. After someone has won or lost, it is time to bury the hatchet, to accept the defeat or the victory and to move back to getting along.
It is also time to continue to cling to the values you hold dear and to not give up on them.
I fervently hope that both we and our children can do this both before and after the upcoming election.
For many men, finding out that their partner is pregnant is the beginning of a roller coaster of feelings and an enormous amount of internal change. For those who welcome the pregnancy, first time fatherhood can represent the real marker of adulthood. And over the months of their partners’ pregnancies, these men often reevaluate their sense of self, their expectations of themselves, their values, their lifestyle and their priorities – and it’s not easy. (1)
They are in the process of a psychological overhaul.
Some men meet the news of the pregnancy with elation, some with mixed feelings and some with dread – but whatever their initial reactions, many men experience the perinatal period as the most stressful time of all in their transition to fatherhood. (2)
First of all, they often feel a bit disconnected from the reality of the pregnancy. Some take a number of weeks to really accept that the pregnancy exists. Many feel cut off, being able to experience the pregnancy only by proxy. While their partners have the embodied experience of the physical changes of pregnancy, they must rely on second hand accounts. (3)
And in one study, performed by Jan Draper, many of the men found that the reality of their partner’s pregnancies was different than their expectations. Some felt that the reality of the pregnancy alternated with periods during which they went about their lives as usual without an ongoing awareness of the pregnancy: “Some men suggested that their lack of continuous physical experience meant that they were able almost to opt in and opt out of their involvement of the pregnancy; they had an element of choice that their partners did not. These men remained focussed on everyday life, frequently their paid work, rather than on the minutia of the progress of the pregnancy. The sometimes part-time nature of men’s involvement was a theme…James, for example… was committed to the concept of involved fatherhood and apologetically contrasted his choice of part-time involvement with the continuous involvement of his partner. Steve, a novice father, described how the pregnancy kept `drifting away’ and how he felt guilty about `forgetting’ he was a father” (4).
Some also felt surprised by their reactions to their partners’ changing bodies. Some felt put off by the size of their partner’s bellies and some felt that the pregnant belly was actually a barrier between themselves and their partners.
Some just could not connect the pregnancy to the reality of a baby. One said, “I can see Julie pregnant and I can see her with a baby and the two don’t seem to go together and that’s a really odd feeling and I don’t know how to describe that. You see a pregnant lady and then you see someone with a baby and…. it seems two separate type things” (5)
But getting to see the scans of the fetus as they were happening or feeling the fetus move inside their partners bellies helped many of these men to connect more directly to the pregnancy. One father-to-be said, “It feels nice (feeling the baby’s movements). It does. I think it’s harder for me because I get frustrated that I can’t experience any of it physically at the moment, other than putting my hand on the outside and feeling the movement”. (6)
And all the men in Draper’s study valued and enjoyed the accounts given to them by their partners about the pregnancy and the fetus’s development.
During their partner’s pregnancies, some men feel the need to take on new responsibilities – to take care of their partner and prepare for the baby’s arrival. Some feel more protective of their partner and worried about the wellbeing of their unborn child.
But some fathers-to-be may find themselves in conflict – on the one hand, feeling much of the above, and, on the other hand, resenting the new demands and responsibilities – whether the pressure to take these on comes from their partner, from what they perceive as societal expectation or whether it come from within themselves.
Contributing to these feelings may be the fact that in recent years, fathers have been expected to be more hands-on and more involved during the pregnancy and more intimate with their babies and children once they arrive than in previous generations. Fathers are generally expected to take at least an equal role in parenting – a job for which they may feel ill-prepared.
Many men have very little – if any – experience with babies and small children. They may never have held an infant before they hold their own – and they may know almost nothing about child care or child development.
And, of course, it is also confusing – because what constitutes fatherhood is ever-evolving. The wishes and needs of fathers and mothers and the societal norms around parenthood are alway in being reconfigured.
And then there are the physiological changes involved in impending fatherhood. For example, a study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings demonstrated that men go through significant hormonal changes alongside their pregnant partners and that these changes are most likely initiated by their partner’s pregnancy. The evidence suggests that fathers have higher levels of estrogen, the well-known female sex hormone, than other men and that increase starts 30 days before birth and continues during at least the first 12 weeks after birth – and possibly much longer. Although estrogen is best known as a female sex hormone, it exists in small quantities in men, too. Animal studies show that estrogen can induce nurturing behavior in males. So, it seems increasingly clear that just as biology prepares women to be committed mothers, it prepares men to be dads as well (7).
Furthermore, the study showed that men’s cortisol levels rise in the week before their baby’s birth and their testosterone levels decrease in the week after birth.
And then there are historical considerations in preparing for fatherhood as well: many men reflect on how they themselves were fathered. Old feelings are often stirred up around childhood memories, whether these are fond or those which include deprivation, harsh parenting, and abuse. And for those men who had fathers who were excessively strict, depriving, or angry, there will be many questions about how to father differently than they were fathered. They may have to evaluate how to deal with their own anger in ways distinct from their fathers, how to be more emotionally available than their own fathers, how to be more open than their own fathers, how to be less judgemental than their own fathers and/or how to be more generous than their own fathers
Fathers-to-be have to consider what they want to take from their own experience of being parented and what they do not. They have to think about what kind of father they want to be and how to separate themselves from automatically fathering as they were fathered.
And these thoughts can lead to potent feelings of uncertainty. In a study done by Meleagrou-Hutchins, the fathers studied anticipated various profound changes to their personal and professional lives beyond the birth of their baby. And they worried about their ability to cope with the demands of fatherhood. They were all planning ahead and preparing, to varying degrees, so as to manage, or minimize, the disruption that fatherhood would cause in their lives.
They also felt invisible. Many felt their partners were getting more attention than they were in regard to the upcoming birth and that their health and wellbeing was being overlooked. Some felt sidelined, ignored during medical appointments – and at the same time many wondered whether they were really entitled to support. Some also felt that they lacked a concrete goal during the pregnancy leading to feelings of powerlessness and frustration (8).
Many of these fathers reported feeling insufficiently supported as they worked to prepare themselves for fatherhood. Many felt their partner was their main source of support and yet they regretted putting further burden on her by needing this from her (9).
Preparing for fatherhood is a complex physiological and psychological process and clearly, men require more support in understanding their own experience as well as more institutional and societal support as they do so.
Genesoni, L. and Talandini, M., (2009). Men’s Psychological Transition to Fatherhood: A Review of The Literature, Birth, Dec;36(4):305-18. doi: 10.1111/j.1523-536X.2009.00358.x.
Meleagrou-Hitchens, L., Carla Willig (2022). Mens’s experience of their transition to first time fatherhood…. Department of Psychology, School of Arts and Social Sciences, City University London, EC1V 0HB London, UKDOI:10.31083/jomh.2021.102 Vol.18,Issue 1,January 2022 pp.1-11.
This is the seventh post in a series on The Transition to Motherhood.
In her book, Matrescence, Lucy Jones discusses the idea that society — and women themselves — often feel that childbirth and caring for young children diminish their memory and cognitive capacity. While they are pregnant and after they give birth, women often complain of not being able to remember anything, being scatterbrained, or feeling stupid.
But when looking at the research, Jones found the opposite!
In fact, it seems that having a baby concentrates the mind. Brain structure and the neurochemistry of the brain actually change during and after pregnancy in order to aid the mother to tune into her baby and her baby’s needs. It may be that some of the old things the mother used to think about are less the focus of her attention after her baby arrives and she may feel less capable of concentrating on them — but this is far different from being “stupid.”
In fact, Bridget Callahan, a researcher at UCLA, found evidence of enhanced learning, memory, and cognitive capacity after childbirth (Callahan, et al, 2022).
Of course, this makes sense, because new mothers need to expand their ability to tune in to their babies, to learn what helps and doesn’t help their babies to feel comfortable, and to learn how to solve the many problems of everyday childcare.
In fact, in reviewing the literature, researchers Erika Barba-Müller et al found that there are structural and functional changes in the woman’s brain both during pregnancy and following delivery which stimulate her to progress from being an individual with self directed needs to being responsible for her baby. These changes are highly adaptive and aid in the woman’s transition to motherhood.
Similarly, in a review of the literature, Winnie Orchard found that there is evidence that the brains of pregnant women become more flexible, efficient, and responsive.
Minor difficulties in word finding and short-term memory often make women feel less competent during pregnancy and early motherhood — but this is not all that is going on.
Referring to Orchard again, Lucy Jones says that the lifetime impact of motherhood on cognition and the brain may be positive and that the cognitive load of adapting and adjusting to one or more growing children may help the brain to be resilient.
Think about it: So many people have started doing the daily word puzzles put out by the New York Times — as well as doing all sorts of gaming apps on their phones — in order to preserve and enhance their cognition. But these do not provide even a portion of the challenge that comes up in a day for the parent of a newborn or child of any age!
For a first-time mother — and her partner — the day they come home from the hospital is often a terrifying day. Suddenly, they realize that it is up to them to figure out how to care for their new baby and to keep them alive. Soon it is clear that caring for a newborn requires a completely new set of skills. And there is a great deal of trial and error. Every day new problems need to be solved. So much has to be learned — not just about babies in general — but about this particular baby, her sensitivities, and her preferences. And then, just as the parents are getting the hang of it, the baby starts a new sleep pattern, develops new feeding preferences, or enters a new developmental stage. And learning how to deal with these things requires a great deal more problem-solving.
So as for “Mom Brain” — yes, there is such a thing, but it is not what we often think it is. The Mom Brain is a more flexible, more competent, more resilient brain than the non-mom brain.
References
Barba-Müller, et al (2019). Brain plasticity in pregnancy and the postpartum period: links to maternal caregiving and mental health. Arch Womens Ment Health. 2019; 22(2): 289–299. Published online 2018 Jul 14. doi: 10.1007/s00737-018-0889-z
Callaghan, B. et al., (2022) “Evidence for cognitive plasticity during pregnancy via enhanced learning and memory”, Memory 30(5) , p. 519-536.
Jones, Lucy (2023). Matrescence.
Orchard, E. R., et al., (2022) “The maternal brain is more flexible and responsive at rest: Effective connectivity of the parental caregiving network in postpartum mothers”, bioRxiv
Let’s take a deeper dive into the transition to motherhood in this, the fourth post in a series on this subject.
In the Introduction to her beautiful book, Matrescence, Lucy Jones says, “Pregnancy, then birth, and then – big time – early motherhood, simply did not match up with the cultural, social, and philosophical narratives I had grown up with…I started to realize that that my mind had been colonized by inadequate ideas about womanhood, about motherhood, about value, even love… A sense that I had been fundamentally misinformed about the female body and maternal experience set in fast” (p. 9, 10).
She describes how, during her pregnancy she noticed changes in herself which she had no language to describe – but she noticed that her “consciousness felt different: restructured or rewired” (p. 10).
She says, “I thought the baby would grow inside my body, …that I would still be the same person. But that didn’t seem to be the case” (p. 10).
I think that many if not most women feel all of these things. But do they have the language to speak about them? Or do they feel permitted to speak about them?
I suspect not.
Jones talks about how ill prepared she was for motherhood – how she had never changed a diaper and knew nothing about what it took to raise and take care of another human.
And I think many women feel this way – especially with their first babies.
Jones speaks about her guilt if she tried to do anything just for herself during those first months of motherhood.
She also writes about the idea that women are supposed to have a built in maternal instinct and how this works against the acknowledgement that motherhood absolutely requires the acquisition of knowledge and skills about babies, children and mothering.
And in saying this, I think Jones puts her finger squarely on the shame and embarrassment many mothers feel when they don’t know what the right thing is to do for their baby – whether it is something as simple as whether to put them down for a nap or something as complex and important as when to call the pediatrician.
As she says, “this is a set up in which mothers (are) destined to fail” (p. 11).
She says, “I thought early motherhood would be gentle, beatific, pacific, tranquil, bathed in a soft light. But actually it was hard core, edgy, gnarly” (p. 14).
Finally, we have someone who tells the truth about motherhood.
We have needed a Lucy Jones for a long time.
Women feel that they are not allowed to talk about the utter fatigue, boredom, tedium, panic and downright hardship of childcare. Yes, the difficulty of juggling work and child care is talked about. And the under valuation of parenting work is mentioned now and then. But as a society? We do not have much of a discussion around many of these issues – and we certainly have not made changing any of them a priority – in our own minds, with our partners and friends, or at the ballot box.
There is still pressure to put on a good face as a mother, to treat the work we do as joyous and to present that point of view to anyone other than our closest and most trusted friends and fellow parents.
Jones calls this “cultural apathy”. And she says that many women feel that they themselves are to blame for the extent of their troubles as new mothers. However, the fact is that a majority of women feel anxious after having a baby, at least 45% report feeling low, and at least 35% describe themselves as depressed. One in five mothers do not tell anyone about their feelings and over half report not feeling supported by their families. Almost half say they feel like they have to handle everything alone.
But there is hope. Jones writes about a burgeoning field of neurobiology that is looking at the changes in the brains of pregnant women and those who care for young infants. And she quotes Alexandra Sacks, a psychiatrist interested in this subject, as saying that simply by talking about the difficulties inherent in transitioning to motherhood, many women will feel relief.
And this is why, Jones says, she wrote her book: as an invitation to start talking about the process of becoming and being a mother.
Thoughtful Parenting 