Are Career Parents Hurting Children?
by Kenneth Labich
Adapted from Current, Sept. 1991 (No.335), pp. 4-9.
1 Because children are the future, America could be headed for trouble. Some of the symptoms are familiar - rising teenage suicides and juvenile arrest rates and lower achievement test scores than 30 years ago. But what is the disease festering beneath that disturbing surface? Says Alice A. White, a clinical social worker who has been counseling troubled children in a prosperous suburb of Chicago for twenty years: "I'm seeing a lot more emptiness, a lack of ability to attach, no real sense of pleasure. I'm not sure these kids are going to be effective adults”.
2 Not all children, or even most of them are suffering from such a crisis of the spirit. In fact, some trends are promising. For example, drug use among young people has fallen sharply since the 1970s.But a certain insecurity seems to be spreading. Far more and earlier than ever before, children are pressured to take drugs, have sex, and deal with violence. In a world more competitive and complex, the path to social and economic success was never more obscure.
3 And fewer traditional guides are there to show the way. Divorce has robbed millions of children of at least one full-time parent. With more women joining the work force, and many workaholic parents of both sexes, children are increasingly left in the care of others or by themselves. According to a University of Maryland study, in 1985 American parents spent on average just 17 hours a week with their children.
4 This parental neglect would be less damaging if better alternatives were widely available, but that is decidedly not the case. Families that can afford individual child care often get good value, but the luxury of a compassionate, full-time, $250-a-week nanny to watch over their child is beyond the reach of most American parents. They confront a patchwork system of home arrangements and day care centers. Far too often, parents with infants or toddlers cannot feel secure about the care their children get. Says Edward Ziegler, a professor of child development at Yale, who has spent much of his career fighting the abuses of child care: “Children are dying in the system, never mind achieving optimum development”.
5 For older children with no parental overseer, the prospects can be equally bleak. Studies are beginning to show that preteens and teenagers left alone after school may be far more prone than others of their age to get involved with alcohol and illegal drugs.
6 For some experts in the field, the answer is to roll back the clock to an idyllic past. Mom, in a pretty apron, is merrily stirring the stew when Dad gets home from work. She and the children greet him with radiant smiles. Everyone sits down to dinner to talk about the events of the day. For others more in touch with the financial realities behind the rising number of working mothers, the solution lies in improving the choices available to parents. Government initiatives to provide some financial relief may help, but business corporations could make an even greater difference by focusing on the needs of employees who happen also to be parents. Such big firms as IBM and Johnson & Johnson (a pharmaceutical firm) have taken the lead in dealing with employee child care problems and many corporations are discovering the benefits of greater flexibility with regard to family issues.
7 Without doubt, helping improve child care is in the best interest of business - today's children are, after all, tomorrow's labor pool. Says Sandra Kessler Hamburg, director of education studies in a New York education research group: "We can only guess at the damage being done to young children right now. From the perspective of American business, that is very disturbing. As jobs get more and more technical, the U.S. work force is less and less prepared to handle them."
Ideological Bias Toward Research
8 The state of America's children is a political mine field. Any researcher who dwells on the problems of nonparental child care – of infants in particular - risks being labeled anti-progressive by the liberal academic establishment. If a male researcher says babies are at risk in some child care settings, he may be accused of wanting women to return to the kitchen. Much valid research may be totally ignored because it is deemed politically incorrect.
9 For example. Jay Belsky, a Penn State University specialist in child development, set off a firestorm in 1986 with an article in Zero to Three, a journal that summarizes existing academic research. His conclusions point to possible risks for very small children in day care outside the home. Though he included many reservations, stating that he might possibly be biased because his own wife stayed home with their two children, Belsky came under heavy attack. Feminist researchers even called his scholarship into question. He said, "I feel like the bringer of bad news who got shot."
10 Belsky's critics charged that he ignored studies that document more positive results. Since then, a study at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, found that a child's intellectual development may actually be helped during the second and third years of life if his mother works. This study, on a nationwide sample of 874 children from ages 3 to 4, determined that the mental skills of infants in child care outside the home were lower than those of children watched over by their mothers during the first year, but then picked up at ages two and three to balance out.
11 Whatever the merits of his critics, Belsky presents a disturbing picture of the effects on infants of nonparental child care outside the home. He cites a 1974 study showing that l-year-olds in day care cried more when separated from their mothers than those raised at home; another showed that day-care infants had more temper tantrums. To some extent, these observations seem to apply across socioeconomic boundaries. Among low-income women in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, a 1980 study found that infants in day care were disproportionately likely to avoid looking at or approaching their mothers after being separated from them briefly. Later on, they displayed less enthusiasm and persistence in challenging tasks, and were less likely to follow their mother's instructions. In 1985, a study of infants from affluent Chicago families in the care of full-time nannies showed that these babies avoided any contact with their mothers more often than those raised by their mothers in their first year. An infant's attachment, or lack of it, to the mother is crucial because it can portend later problems. Another study, that took a look at virtually all the 2-year-olds on the island of Bermuda, found more poorly adjusted children among the early day care group regardless of race, IQ, or socioeconomic status. Another study (1981) in the U.S., of 8-to 10-year-old children who had been in day care as infants showed higher levels of misbehavior and withdrawal from the company of others, no matter what the educational level of their parents. In another study, the early day-care groups were found more likely to hit, kick, push, threaten and curse their peers.
12 Belsky, in summing up, is careful to point out that these findings do not apply to every child, and they must viewed in the light of the added stress that many families experience when both parents work, and good, affordable day care is not available. Belsky agrees that the quality of day care matters.
13 Research on older children who spend part of the day on their own is no less disturbing. Those who are latchkey kids (unlock an empty house with their own key) take care of themselves for 11 or more hours a week. They were much more likely later to smoke, drink alcohol and use marijuana.
14 There are problems, too, even when the family is physically together. When parents have little left to give at the end of a stressful day, the children's disappointment can be crushing. When adolescent children begin to test their wings by defying their parents' authority, stressed-out families may break down completely because no strong relationship between parents and children has developed over the years. In high-achiever families, says Chicago social worker Alice White, family life can become an ordeal where children must prove their worth to their parents in the limited time available. "Did you pass that test, get elected, score that goal?” There is no relaxed conversation that allows parents and children to know each other. White says that many children today don't understand how the world works because they haven't spent enough time with their parents to understand how decisions are made, careers are pursued, personal relationships are formed. The parents serve as a model of success, but the kids are afraid they won't succeed because nobody has shown them how.
Possible Remedies
15 While just about everyone agrees that this is a discouraging picture, opinions vary wildly as to what ought to be done - and by whom. For a growing band of conservative thinkers, the answer is simple: Mothers ought to stay home. They blame organized child care for everything from restraining children's free will to contributing to outbreaks of diseases. Still, the dual career trend continues; most American families could not afford to forfeit a second income, a fact that makes the conservatives' yearning for the past unrealistic at best. Real weekly earnings declined 13% from 1973 to 1990. So in most cases two paychecks are a necessity. Also, almost a quarter of American children - and about half of black children - live in single parent homes. Those parents are nearly all women. Though some receive child support or other income, their wages are usually their financial lifeblood. For the national economy, a mass exodus of women from the work force would be a disaster: There simply won't be enough available males in the future. Women now make up over 45% of the labor force, and they are expected to fill about 60% of new jobs between now and the year 2008.
The Need for High Quality Child Care
16 Even if a child's welfare were the only consideration, in many cases full-time motherhood might not be the best answer. Children whose mothers are frustrated and angry about staying home might be better off in a good day care center. And many children may well benefit from the socializing and group activities available in day care. A mother and a child alone together all day isn't necessarily a rich environment for the child. In the end, the short supply of high-quality day care is the greatest obstacle to better prospects for America's children. Experts agree on what constitutes quality - a well-paid, well-trained staff, a high staff-child ratio, and a safe and suitable physical environment. They generally concur, too, that under these conditions, most children will prosper.
17 But to monitor, much less improve child-care quality is a monumental task. Some 60% of the approximately 11 million preschool children whose mothers work are cared for in private homes. This can be a wonderful experience (Grandma or a warm- hearted neighbor baking cookies and caring for the little ones), or it can be hellish. Yale's Edward Ziegler speaks in horror of the home where 54 children in the care of a 16-year-old were found strapped into car seats all day. Low pay and lack of status associated with day care make it hard to recruit and retain qualified workers. Says Ziegler: "We pay these people less than we do zoo keepers, and expect wonders."
18 Some firms already support child-care centers in towns where most of its employees live. The experts have various schemes to make more money available. The Bush Administration has offered $732 million to the states for child care and has proposed increasing the low tax credits for it. Ziegler also suggests allowing parents to use their pension funds for up to three years and a reasonable maximum, per child, reducing retirement benefits proportionally. Under all these proposals, parents - especially women - could better afford to pay for good day care, reduce their work hours, or even stay home longer with a new baby if they wished. As competition for good workers increases, many companies will be forced to grapple with the problem that working parents face.
Questions – Are Career parents Hurting Children?
A. Pre-reading questions.
Read the first sentence of the text. Then read the last paragraph of the introduction (paragraph 7) and the last paragraph of the text.
1) We see the words "trouble", damage", "disturbing" and "problem".
a) What is the "problem"?
______
b) How can it be solved?
______
B Comprehension questions.
Part 1 – Paragraphs 1-7
2) In paragraph 1, what are the "symptoms"?
______
What is the "disease"?
______
3) From paragraph 2 and 3, give two causes of the disease (one each).
a) ______
b) ______
4) a) According to paragraph 4, what could cure the disease?
______
b) Why is it not possible for most parents?
______
5) What two situations are contrasted in paragraph 6?
a) ______
b) ______
c) What two words show the contrast? ______/ ______
6) From paragraph 7, if the cause is improving child care, what would be the effect?
______
Part 2 – paragraphs 8-14
7) What kind of research, according to paragraph 8, would the liberal academic establishment consider to be "progressive"?
______
8) Does the research described in paragraph 10 support or refute the opinion of the liberal academic establishment? ______