“Social scientists have long tried to determine why some children grow up to be successful adults and others don’t,” fatherhood blogger Kevin Hartnett wrote in the Washington Post. “The causes are hard to untangle.”
Really? I think the causes are pretty obvious. Number one being parents.
Hartnett’s opinion piece was entitled, “What matters more to my kids’ future: Their school or quality time with their parents?” Frustratingly, Hartnett’s not sure, though he “intuitively” feels his two very young sons would gain more benefit from additional time with their parents than a better school.
Harnett and his wife are beginning careers, concerned about the trade-offs between earning higher income to afford the best schools versus providing more parental time at home.
So he turned to several researchers:
- Susan Mayer, author of the book, What Money Can’t Buy: Family Income and Children’s Life Chances, and a professor at the University of Chicago, believes that inexpensive trips to the museum or books in the home are often more important than expensive tutoring or schools.
- “I think it’s very reasonable for parents to choose to work less in order to have more face time with their children,” Professor Annette Lareau of the University of Pennsylvania told Hartnett, “even if that means their children attend a school where they’re not challenged as much as the parents might like.”
- University of California at Irvine Professor Greg Duncan looked at the impact of non-parents on children and concluded, “Schools and neighborhoods might have some effect, but I think it’s pretty clear that a lot more of the action around child development takes place at home.”
The future will be shaped at home, more than at school.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
7 replies on “Look in the Backyard”
I forgot the name of the researcher, but one followed students for some 15 – 25 years (again, not sure exactly the length- but a long time). Started- gave each student 1 MARSHMELLOW. told them, if they do NOT eat it (now) will get a second one.
Some ate it righrt away ( these were young children); others waitied.
Following the students, THSOE WHO WAITED DID BETTER IN SCHOOL; MARRIAGE AND CAREERS.
i AGREE- BUT WHY ARE YOU 9QUITE OFTEN) AND OTHERS almost always QUICK TO BLAME SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS? sOME ARE INCOMPETENT, BUT WHERE THE HELL ARE THE PARENTS?
There was no mention of the schools or teachers in this commentary and certainly no blame placed upon them. It is parents who have the power and they should use it.
“•University of California at Irvine Professor Greg Duncan looked at the impact of non-parents on children and concluded, “Schools and neighborhoods might have some effect, but I think it’s pretty clear that a lot more of the action around child development takes place at home.””
The psychologists like to refer to their clever “enriched environment” experiments, in which rats that have a busier and more populated cage have a larger neuropile than the rats kept in a cage by themselves.
This is an interesting study, but it compares apples to oranges. To truly compare what underlies optimal brain development, they need to compare rats in a cage with their parents and siblings with rats in a cage full of toys and strangers. This would yield more accurate results, IMHO.
Also, remember that at a neurosynaptic level, attachment research shows a few important bonds organize the brain in terms of self-regulation and new learning, not a social situation with many peers. This is true into adult life as well, where longitudinal studies have shown that important benefits to mental well-being are linked to life long marriage.
Take home point is: a larger neuropile could just mean that the rat has been subjected to, and had to learn to cope with, a lot of anti-social behavior from other rats in a crowded cage.
Mr. jacob,
In this episode, teachers and schools were not mentioned. In others, from you/Common Sense, theya re-often negatively.
The same is true on/in other sites.
I did not intent to infer that schools and teachers were mentioned in this — just they often are blamed, in other articles, for poor perfromance, by children.
Of note: home schoolers tend to blow away the public shooled academically. Way bigger advantage to get your schooling from your folks than the government.
To slightly alter an Obama quote:
“You didn’t build that kid on your own, you had government’s help”. Liberals want government or “the village” to be responsible, rather than parents (or business builders). Where the responsibility goes, so does the freedom. And freedom/responsibility for government, means slavery/irresponsibility for the people.