Psychologist explores how our ability to function in adult relationships is directly connected to our mother factor legacy

Clinical Psychologist Stephan B. Poulter demonstrates in THE MOTHER FACTOR: HOW YOUR MOTHER’S EMOTIONAL LEGACY IMPACTS YOUR LIFE (Prometheus Books) that most of us will never understand the complex legacy imparted by our mothers or its far-reaching impact on our lives. The initial bond formed at birth becomes the foundation from which our emotional development, communication style, and personality type evolve through adulthood. No other relationship in our lives has the potential to shape us like the one we share with our mothers, and the more we understand the emotional components of it, the more choices and opportunities for relationship change and personal growth will be available to us.

Poulter defines the mother factor as our emotional development, functioning, and ability to form meaningful relationships in family life, in social life, and with intimate partners. It is an emotional template started with the mother-child relationship that influences our feelings of frustration, love, fear, and hope; our mothers’ style of parenting as the template for our emotional disposition and our core sense of who and what we are in the world; our emotional functioning as consciously and unconsciously shaped by our mothers.

The mother factor can work for or against us. Poulter shows that in order for it to work for us, we must understand the pervasive influence of our mothers. By focusing on our mother factor from many different angles and perspectives, Poulter strives to give us a more complete view of our own legacy. Once we have these new and crucial insights, we will have the personal power to make different choices, to let go of old self-defeating patterns, to take new and positive action, and to have a deeper sense of fulfillment.

“This entire investigation into your mother factor is for the sole purpose of gaining new, valuable insight and clarity, which will open more options to your life,” Poulter explains.

He also explores how our emotional connections in adult relationships are based on the “style” of our mothers. Poulter defines the five styles of mothering as:

* The Perfectionist Mother- whose family must look perfect in every way

* The Unpredictable Mother- whose ups and downs can create lifelong anxiety and depression in her son or daughter

* The “Me First” Mother- whose children come second or last

* The “Best Friend” Mother- who’s now in vogue but can wreak havoc

* The Complete Mother- who provides guidance and shows compassion to her child

THE MOTHER FACTOR makes clear that no matter what type of mother we have— and most mothers are a combination of the above—her style of mothering affects our lives in ways that should not be ignored. Through an investigation of the strengths, insights, and liabilities that derive from each mothering style, Poulter seeks to help us transcend the mysterious anger, anxiety, depression, and shame that we feel and achieve the kind of relationships we deserve. Dr. Poulter demonstrates how the internalized “rulebook” we inherit from our mothers is a very powerful force, as well. These unspoken rules govern our work, relationships, emotions, separation, and independence. Unless we become aware of the rules that guide our behavior, thoughts, and beliefs, we won’t have the ability to make our own choices.

Dani Levine, PhD, Clinical Psychologist and President of The S.T.E.P. Group (School Placement and Educational Placement), says THE MOTHER FACTOR “brilliantly captured the reality that although we are products of our mothers’ legacy, we are not prisoners. Dr. Poulter not only offers insight, but also provides the tools to escape the fate of falling into maladaptive patterns. I would recommend this book to the masses, as we are all in relationships today that have been influenced by our mothers.”

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Stephen B. Poulter, PhD (Los Angeles, CA), is the author of three previously published books including THE FATHER FACTOR, which was praised by NEWSWEEK and PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, among other publications, and received widespread attention with author appearances in ABC’s GOOD MORNING AMERICA, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel FOX & FRIENDS. He has practiced as a clinical psychologist specializing in family relationships for twenty-four years.

Source: EurekAlert, DC
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/pb-hym042308.php

They are age-old questions, from the moment of birth: What’s your baby thinking? How much does your child really understand?

“They’re not just wailing away. There’s something going on that’s important to their development, right from the very beginning,” said speech professor Patricia Kuhl of the University of Washington.

Researchers at the UW are now using baby caps that can detect the most minute electrical current being sent out by a baby’s brain.

Little Isabella is listening to a very unusual audio tape.

To most adults the syllables all sound alike, but in fact they are just slightly different. Believe it or not, Isabella, who isn’t even yet talking, can tell the difference and her brain waves prove it.

“Their brains are set automatically to capture this information in ways that are completely surprising,” said Kuhl.

Kuhl and her husband, psychology professor Andy Meltzoff, are two of the world’s top scientists in the growing field of early learning.

Their research has shown up in every major magazine. Their book, The Scientist in the Crib, is now published in French, German, Chinese - more than 10 languages in all.

Several years ago, they started the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, bringing together 50 scientists at the UW, studying both the brain and behavior, and discovering that babies understand far more than parents or scientists ever thought possible.

“Babies learn more in the first three years of life than we ever will again,” said Dr. Meltzoff.

What we know is they learn by copying us. In a very simple experiment, Dr. Meltzoff stuck out his tongue and found that even a two-week-old baby knows how to imitate.

“It shows that they’re born learning. Really, babies are born learning,” he said.

Perhaps more remarkable is what Dr. Meltzoff discovered with slightly older babies. If you show them how to play with a toy, even if you don’t let them imitate immediately, they will save it in their brain. They’ll imitate you when you give them the toy - up to four months later, demonstrating that babies have incredible memory.

“Often times, the parents would say, oh I know I’ve seen that toy before, but I can’t remember what to do with it. And the baby would do the right thing,” said Dr. Meltzoff.

“That’s what’s different about the brain of a baby,” said Dr. Kuhl.

Meanwhile, Dr. Kuhl has spent years focusing on language. What struck her is that all mothers have a special way of talking to a baby.

Kuhl calls it “motherese,” or “parentese,” because dads do it naturally too.

Why do we talk that way? Are babies getting anything out of it?

It turns out they are.

“The vowels, if you measure ee, ah and ooh, in words like sheep and shoe and keys, they’re much more distinct in motherese. They’re further apart acoustically. It’s like being able to show a baby, here’s what to listen for. Here are the components,” said Dr. Kuhl.

She discovered that babies learn about language long before they utter their first word.

In a speech lab, she took 9-month-old babies and exposed them to a second language, either Spanish or Mandarin. And after just 12 sessions over one month, the babies could detect subtle phonetic sounds in the foreign language.

“The babies in the United States, exposed in that way, are as good as the babies in Taiwan for example, at hearing the Chinese distinctions,” said Dr. Kuhl.

Isabella was exposed to Spanish for a month, which is why she now distinguishes sounds that most English-only speakers cannot.

In another lab, Dr. Meltzoff is studying the crucial moment when a baby learns not just to look at mom, but to follow where mom’s eyes are focused.

He said 10-month-old babies, who are good at following where an adult is gazing, had about twice as many words in their speech eight months later.

“So when she’s around in the living room and says, ‘here’s a rattle, look at the rattle,’ the babies need to know to follow where she’s looking and that’s what the word refers to,” he said.

All these studies suggest that babies are learning an incredible amount that first year, and yet scientists cannot explain why we as adults have no specific memories of our time as babies.

We’re tempted to think maybe there isn’t that much going on in their brains, but Kuhl and Meltzoff say it’s just the opposite, that babies absorb culture, language, social interaction, emotions - the most basic building blocks of who they’ll become some day.

“The news is that babies are even learning from their peers at day-care centers, and learning from us so we’re role models right from the beginning,” said Dr. Kuhl.

“It is lasting learning. It’s the kind of learning that makes a profound effect on the baby’s brain and mental operations, and that sets them up for later.”

Source: KING5.com, WA
http://tinyurl.com/6a7zh6

Perhaps the government confused fantasy with reality the day it endorsed Brain Gym

Man the lifeboats. The idiots are winning. Last week I watched, open-mouthed, a Newsnight piece on the spread of “Brain Gym” in British schools. I’d read about Brain Gym before - a few years back, in Ben Goldacre’s excellent Bad Science column for this newspaper - but seeing it in action really twisted my rage dial.

Brain Gym, y’see, is an “educational kinesiology” programme designed to improve kiddywink performance. It’s essentially a series of simple exercises lumbered with names that make you want to steer a barbed wire bus into its creator’s face. One manoeuvre, in which you massage the muscles round the jaw, is called the “energy yawn”. Another involves activating your “brain buttons” by forming a “C” shape with one hand and pressing it either side of the collarbone while simultaneously touching your stomach with the other hand.

Throughout the report I was grinding my teeth and shaking my head - a movement I call a “dismay churn”. Not because of the sickening cutesy-poo language, nor because I’m opposed to the nation’s kids being forced to exercise (make them box at gunpoint if you want) but because I care about the difference between fantasy and reality, both of which are great in isolation, but, like chalk and cheese or church and state, are best kept separate.

Confuse fantasy with reality and you might find yourself doing crazy things, like trying to wave hello to Ian Beale each time you see him on the telly, or buying homeopathic remedies - both of which are equally boneheaded pursuits. (Incidentally, if anyone disagrees with this assessment and wants to write in defending homeopathy, please address your letters to myself c/o the Kingdom of Narnia.)

Perhaps the Department for Children, Schools and Families confused fantasy with reality the day it endorsed Brain Gym. Because while Brain Gym’s coochy-coo exercises may well be fun or relaxing, what they’re definitely good at is increasing the flow of bullshit into children’s heads.

For instance, according to the Brain Gym teacher’s manual, performing the “brain button” exercise increases the flow of “electromagnetic energy” and helps the brain send messages from the right hemisphere to the left. Brain Gym can also “connect the circuits of the brain”, “clear blockages” and activate “emotional centering”. Other Brain Gym material contains the startling claim that “all liquids [other than water] are processed in the body as food, and do not serve the body’s water needs … processed foods do not contain water.”

All of which sounds like hooey to me. And also to the British Neuroscience Association, the Physiological Society and the charity Sense About Science, who have written to every local education authority in the land to complain about Brain Gym’s misrepresentation of, um, reality.

Look at the accredited practitioners of the art: top of their list of qualified Brain Gym “instructor/consultants” is a woman who is apparently also a “chiropractor for humans and animals”. That’s nothing: I read tarot cards for fish.

And check out the linked bookshop, Body Balance Books. Alongside Brain Gym guides and wallcharts, it stocks titles such as Awakening the Child Heart and Resonance Kinesiology, which, apparently, “holds information on how to move forward with truth, without the overlays of people’s beliefs and ideas about what is best for themselves and others”. Huh?

If we mistrust the real world so much that we’re prepared to fill the next generation’s heads with a load of gibbering crap about “brain buttons”, why stop there? Why not spice up maths by telling kids the number five was born in Greece and invented biscuits? Replace history lessons with screenings of the Star Wars trilogy? Teach them how to whistle in French? Let’s just issue the kids with blinkers.

Because we, the adults, don’t just gleefully pull the wool over our own eyes - we knit permanent blindfolds. We’ve decided we hate facts. Hate, hate, hate them. Everywhere you look, we’re down on our knees, gleefully lapping up neckful after neckful of steaming, cloddish bullshit in all its forms. From crackpot conspiracy theories to fairytale nutritional advice, from alternative medicine to energy yawns - we just can’t get enough of that musky, mudlike taste. Brain Gym is just one small tile in an immense and frightening mosaic of fantasy.

Still, that’s just my opinion. Lots of people clearly think Brain Gym is worthwhile, or they wouldn’t be prepared to pay through the nose for it. If you’re one of them, here’s an exciting new kinesiological exercise that should dramatically increase your self-awareness - and I’m giving it away free of charge. Ready? OK. Curl the fingers of your right hand inward, meeting the thumb to form a circle. Jerk it rhythmically up and down in front of your face. Repeat for six hours. Then piss off.

Source: Guardian Unlimited, UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/07/education

Asked by Gordon Brown to investigate the new dangers to children being brought up in the digital age, Tanya Byron last week produced a 224-page report. The child psychologist’s recommendations included a cinema-style system of classification for video games and a thorough public education campaign. However, she warns that protecting children against all risks stunts their development and an important part of growing up is learning to assess and deal with danger

Shortly before she published a report last week on keeping children safe in the online age, Dr Tanya Byron was invited to lunch with Gordon Brown at Chequers. It was a family affair: Byron, her husband Bruce, who plays DC Terry Perkins in The Bill, and their two children, Lily, 12, and Jack, 10, all went along.

Lunch at the prime minister’s country estate is the sort of occasion when any parent would want their little ones to be bright, presentable and on their best behaviour. But not even Byron, a child psychologist who has advised millions on parenting through her television series, is immune from modest rebellion.

“My son piped up just before we were going and he said, ‘Mummy, I could take my PlayStation and I could really make you scared in front of the prime minister’.”

He could. The prospect of son Jack smuggling in some dodgy game and whipping out his portable PlayStation to blast away in front of the prime minister had Byron “feeling slightly twitchy”. That’s not surprising given that she was about to advise Brown on how to protect young children from unsuitable computer material. But in typical calm style she simply said: “No, darling. You don’t play those games, so let’s not go there.”

A tall, curvaceous woman with wide eyes and a warm smile, Byron must be as annoying as hell to all those postfeministas who say you can’t have it all. She is clever, articulate, attractive and a natural performer, as well as being a mother and government adviser.

Although most people know her from television programmes such as Little Angels and The House of Tiny Tearaways, she is no pop-psycho with more beauty than brains. She did her first degree at York, a masters at University College London and a doctorate at University College hospital and Surrey University.

For 18 years she worked in the National Health Service, rising to be a consultant for children with severe mental disorders. She still works one day a week as a consultant in child mental health, although most of her time is taken up filming with the BBC.

Glamour, fame, acclaim – yet Byron, 41, also retains the common sense of an ordinary mum: making her the perfect candidate for a report into children growing up in a world where the risks, as well as benefits, of the internet and computer games are all-pervasive.

“When I came to doing the report . . . concerns were very much fuelled by a lack of understanding of the technology. People were asking, is it all big, bad and scary out there? I know a lot more than I did six months ago. It’s made me feel more positive and confident and less anxious.”

Of course she recognises the dangers – from paedophiles to porn, violence and cyberbullying. In her report, which arrived with much ministerial fanfare last week, she carefully examines the scientific evidence about how children are affected by nasty computer games or hardcore porn. Research, she concludes, shows mixed results.

Although, for example, there is a correlation between aggression and playing violent computer games, it’s not clear that there is a causal relationship – that violent games make children more violent. Convenient, since any kind of ban would be a political minefield. In person, though, she is more forthright. “I’m really clear that adult content is harmful and inappropriate for young children particularly,” she says. “They do not have the neural networks in place to be able to critically evaluate the content, to differentiate fantasy from reality.”

Byron would like the law on such matters to be clearer and to be applied with more vigour: “I am saying clarify the law . . . be clear about when there is content on websites that is breaking the law.”

She also encourages parents to challenge the classification of computer games if they think they are inappropriate: “It’s important to have a system where there can be a challenge, where people can complain.”

A less astute person might have let such conclusions suck them into recommending censorship of violent games or websites. Byron knows that won’t work: “If you go down the censorship route, the content would still be there somewhere. Children would go online to websites outside the UK, to unmoderated sites.” And parents, already struggling to keep up, might have even less idea what their youngsters are doing.

“The rapid pace at which new media are evolving has left adults and children stranded either side of a generational digital divide,” she says. Older people may still regard the internet as a parallel universe that somehow arrives through a machine at the office or home, but for youngsters it’s a seamless part of their lives. They are the cyborg generation.

The answer, Byron believes, is to trust in the better side of human nature. Families can navigate the risks provided they are informed and sensible. “I’m more of a ‘half-full’ girl than a ‘half-empty’ girl. That’s how I like to live life,” she explains.

Her report, which runs to more than 200 pages, is packed with recommendations some of which the government has promised to adopt. Key measures include a UK council on child internet safety to develop voluntary codes of practice for the industry and better information for the public; teaching adults about “parental control” systems on computers; a new classification of computer games like those used for films; and courses in schools to teach children “e-safety”.

It’s hard to argue against any of it (although whether the portly public sector needs yet another quango is debatable). Byron, using common sense, already regulates her children’s use of computers: “They don’t have a computer in their own rooms. We have got some in the office and one downstairs in the kitchen. Gaming and going online is good . . . but in a way that is right for their age and stage of development. It’s something you do after your homework. It never takes place instead of a family meal. When my son is gaming and I’m cooking, he’s there and I know what he’s doing.”

Her daughter, two years older, is given more leeway and Byron admits that she does not know exactly what her daughter does online: “We have a good relationship and I respect her privacy. In the same way I don’t know entirely what’s in her diary. But I know my child; I know when something has upset them or when they are distressed.”

They talk, they work it out, just as they would some other problem.

That, in a nutshell, is how Byron believes parents should approach bringing up children in the digital age. You can buy software to block websites, you can spy on children’s internet history, you can restrict access when they are young – but in the end children are going to go out into the big wide world and need to be able to look after themselves.

“We live in a risk-averse culture, but risk is a developmental imperative of childhood and I think we need to recognise that. It’s about fostering the independent child. What I want to get across is that [dealing with the online world] is similar to how we would parent children in the offline world.”

That old world has its own temptations, for adults as well as children. It’s clear that Byron enjoys the cameras and corridors of power: “I really like advising politicians. I really liked saying to the PM this morning, ‘The UK child internet safety council, you set it up, we could take a global lead, what do you reckon?’ And he says, ‘Okay’.”

Is she going to be on the internet safety council? “Oh no,” she laughs. “I’m outta here. It’s all about kids for me. I’d much rather work on behalf of children.” So she doesn’t want to be a politician? She gives that big disarming smile again: “Do you know, I really like advising them…”

She has already become too much of a politician to say no.

Source: Times Online, UK
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article3645034.ece

Punishing a child, even with the mild `naughty step’, may suppress bad behaviour, but probably won’t stop it happening again, according to a man heralded as America’s `most eminent living child psychologist’.

However, he insists: “The book isn’t about disparaging the advice in other books; what it’s about is what you do before behaviour, and then how you praise it afterwards. If you do it this special way, the results are unbelievable.”

To illustrate his method, Kazdin uses the example of a child having a tantrum - although he stresses that the time for the child to learn the `positive opposite’ of their behaviour is when they have calmed down afterwards.

The parent should tell the child they’re going to play a game, with the same scenario that caused the tantrum. But in the game he/she can’t get angry and if he/she manages that, he/she can have a star which will ultimately lead to a reward.

If the child does this, says Dr Kazdin, the praise should be effusive, and the parent should touch him/her. The `game’ should then be practised four or five times a week for a few weeks - by which time the positive behaviour should be the child’s automatic response.

“The child has to know what he can get ahead of time. The process changes the brain and it will lock it in as a habit.”

He points out that humans are `hard-wired’ to pick up negative behaviour. “Don’t focus on what the child shouldn’t do - turn it around, and look at the child’s positive behaviours. If you punish, it won’t suppress the behaviour, except at that moment.”

He stresses that his method doesn’t need to be used long-term, pointing out: “The intention is that you build the frame of the method around your child’s changing behaviour, but that once the desired behaviour takes deeper root you quickly scale down the frame and then take it down entirely.”

Dr Kazdin claims his method also improves life for parents.

“It’s about getting parents to act in a different way. Once they practise alternatives to punishment, they get results from their child. Parental stress and depression go down, family relationships improve and home life is made much less stressful,” he said.

Source: Manchester Evening News, UK
http://tinyurl.com/2o9ga2

Some classic games help limit anti-social behavior

Other work has shown that measures of executive control can predict future success in school at least as well as IQ tests, which gauge only a limited range of mental abilities. Improving executive function could be a promising way of getting kids ready for the real world, said Adele Diamond, a co-author of the study that appeared last November in the journal Science.

Many applications

“You need these kinds of skills in all facets of your life,” said Diamond, a professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia.

Scientists believe executive control comes from an area of the brain called the pre-frontal cortex, which underlies much of our ability to make conscious, deliberate choices.

It’s also one of the last brain areas to reach maturity in children, and that shows in the often impulsive behavior of young kids. When young children see someone else with a toy they want, they simply take it. When they want food, they grab it. Executive control includes the power to think twice and avoid such missteps.

Many researchers believe another key aspect of executive function is what’s called “working memory,” the small store of memory that people keep in mind while doing a task such as solving a math problem or spelling a word. Improving working memory also could aid self-control, said Philip David Zelazo, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development.

“Working memory is important for executive function because you have to keep something in mind while ignoring various distractions in the environment,” Zelazo said.

Diamond’s work suggests that schools can teach young children better executive control, just as they now teach skills in math and reading.

Her team had teachers of low-income children use a curriculum called “Tools of the Mind,” which emphasizes having children do planned imaginative play in which they act out specific roles for an extended period.

The theory is that such play helps children develop executive control by forcing them to inhibit actions that are inconsistent with their role and to stick with the plan instead of simply reaching for an alluring toy. Teachers also focused on activities that forced children to take turns rather than have someone else tell them what to do.

Fighting an impulse

To see whether the approach improved the children’s self-control, the researchers administered several formal tests of executive function. In one, children were given a piece of paper with a heart or flower on one side, and they were told to press on the side that does not have an image. Because a natural tendency is to point at the image, having children go against that instinct is considered a good test of their ability to inhibit their first impulse.

The children who received the special play curriculum performed significantly better on such tests than children on an ordinary preschool curriculum, the researchers found.

“Those are great games that kids used to play a lot more than they do now,” Diamond said. “And they played them for a very good reason.”

Source: Chicago Tribune, United States
http://tinyurl.com/yscglh

A new Tufts University study sees the emergence of a “digital skills divide” based on socioeconomic status.

The study, published in the March/April issue of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, finds that wealthy, educated Americans are more capable of identifying untrustworthy information about child-rearing on the Internet than poor, uneducated Americans.

Fred Rothbaum, a professor in the department of child development at Tufts University, and colleagues conducted interviews of 60 mothers and 60 fathers from low, middle, and high socioeconomic strata, as measured by education and income, about Web use and online information.

Rothbaum said that the research was conducted four years ago and is only now being published because of the time it has taken to analyze the study.

After answering questions about how they used the Web, parents were asked to search for information on a specific topic and then asked how confident they were that the information found was trustworthy.

While confidence levels did not vary by socioeconomic status, the justifications provided about why specific information was trustworthy did. Among parents in the high socioeconomic group, 40% said they were more likely to trust Web sites affiliated with credible organizations, like universities or research entities. Only 26% of parents in the middle socioeconomic group and 16% of parents in the low socioeconomic group expressed similar confidence in credible organizations.

The study also indicates that wealthy, educated parents are more likely to choose their own search engine, rather than accept the default search engine on their computer. Among that group, 55% preferredGoogle (NSDQ: GOOG), compared with 28% in the middle socioeconomic status group and 8% in the low socioeconomic status group.

“I thought it was rather striking that more educated people were using Google (NSDQ: GOOG),” said Rothbaum.

The most popular choice among those with low levels of income and education was AOL. The research didn’t suggest a significant socioeconomic status difference among users ofYahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) or MSN. MSN Search is now Windows Live Search, but was called MSN four years ago when the study was conducted.

Last year, Danah Boyd, a Ph.D. student at the School of Information Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, made a related observation about class divisions at Facebook and MySpace. She noted in an essay that high-social-status students seem to prefer Facebook and that those of lower social status seem to prefer the more garish MySpace.

The researchers conclude that the digital skills divide ought to be addressed through greater education about search engines, searching, and information evaluation. Given that the gap is largely defined by lack of education, the study might best be summed up by saying the uneducated should be educated.

“The point is that there are some very basic skills that the government should be helping its citizens become aware of, just as it helps all its citizens with basic literacy skills,” said Rothbaum.

Source: InformationWeek, NY
http://tinyurl.com/yp9y9z

Pregnant women who perceive having had a well-balanced relationship with their parents during their childhood will experience fewer difficulties in the transition to motherhood, as opposed to women whose relationship with their parents was characterized by unresolved anger or rejection – reveals a new study conducted at the University of Haifa. The study also found that women who tend to deny negative experiences in early childhood relationships expected to experience a relationship with their future children characterized by less warmth compared to other women who participated in the study.

The research, which was conducted by Ora Gazit under the direction of Dr. Miri Scharf, examined 160 Jewish women in the last trimester of their first pregnancy who live with their husband or partner. The researchers examined the expectations, thoughts and emotions of the pregnant women regarding themselves as future mothers and their future relationships with their babies – based on two approaches related to identity building. The first focuses on the way people perceive their early childhood relationship with their parents and how this is reflected in their thoughts, perceptions and behavior during their lives. The second focuses on existing differences between people whose motivation is derived from an aspiration for success and those who are motivated by an aspiration to avoid failure.

The results of the study revealed that women whose early childhood relationships with their parents were characterized by rejection and unresolved conflicts, expected to experience a high measure of separation anxiety, thought their child would be more demanding of them and thought they would set a lot boundaries, compared to other women in the study.

Among women who described their early childhood relationships with their parents as being characterized by rejection but who had difficulty recalling many of the events representative of this relationship, the study found a majority had positive thoughts about their impending motherhood and towards their unborn child. However, in comparison to the remainder of the women in the study, they expected to develop a less warm and close relationship with their baby. The women who had a balanced view of their early relationship with their parents had the most optimal expectations towards their impending motherhood. They expected to feel a low level of separation anxiety from their child, thought childrearing would be easy and that their relationship would be characterized by warmth.

In addition, the study found that women who were characterized by wanting to advance and reach set goals were positive and more optimistic, in comparison to women who were characterized by abstention and concern with self-defense, security and responsibility. According to the researchers, women in the first group thought they would be more fulfilled in parenthood, saw themselves and their child in a more positive light, thought they would be more productive and warm as mothers and expected to have good communication with their child. “The results of the research show that there is great importance in evaluating thoughts, perceptions and feelings about parental identity during pregnancy. Such an evaluation will enable early identification of women who are concerned they will have difficulty contending with parental roles and offer them tools that will help them adapt better to the transition to motherhood,” summarized the researchers.

Source: EurekAlert, DC
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-02/uoh-wwt022608.php

In a controversial new book, psychologist Susan Pinker uncovers the workings of the hormone oxytocin, which she claims explains why females are biologically driven to nurture their young rather than climb the corporate ladder

In 2006, when investment analyst Carolyn Buck Luce and economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett tried to get to the bottom of the “hidden brain drain” of female talent by surveying 2,443 women with graduate or professional degrees, they discovered that one in three American women with MBAs chose not to work full-time – compared with one in 20 male MBAs – and that 38% of high-achieving women had turned down a promotion or had deliberately taken a position with lower pay.

Instead of being forcibly barred from top positions by a glass ceiling, these women were avoiding them.

When the researchers looked at women’s motivations to work, they discovered that having a powerful position was the lowest ranked career goal of highly qualified women in every sector. For 85% of the women, other values came first: the ability to work with people they respect, to “be themselves” at work and to have flexible schedules.

Logging millions of air miles, being available 24/7 and facing unpredictable demands and tight deadlines are the mainstays of top-tier jobs. Of the small minority of women in such posts, twice as many women as men described the negative fallout on their families – connecting their kids’ behaviour, school performance, television and eating habits to their own job pressures in what Hewlett calls “a veritable portrait of guilt”. Why is this? (…)

Most women in the West are now in the workplace and young women are doing exceptionally well at school and university in comparison with their male peers. But gifted, talented women with the most choices and freedoms don’t seem to be choosing the same paths, in the same numbers, as the men around them. Even with barriers stripped away, they don’t behave like male clones.

As a developmental psychologist, I began to wonder about the science. We have come to expect that there should be no real differences between the sexes. But the science that’s emerging upends the notion that male and female are interchangeable, symmetrical or the same. The psychology, neuro-science and economics of people’s choices and behaviour have exploded with amazing findings in the past 10 years alone.

In particular, an opiate-like hormone, oxytocin, which one anthropologist calls “the elixir of contentment” (it surges during breastfeeding, childbirth, sex, cuddling and nurturing), has emerged as a key to understanding Elaine’s decision to impose her own glass ceiling. LIKE Elaine, most of the women I have met in studying this phenomenon did not feel forcibly excluded from the most lucrative positions or feel that talented women are routinely barred from the top ranks. (…)

The science of sex differences is a grab bag of surprises. In the early 1980s I was not alone in thinking that men and women had nearly identical brains but had been socialised to take on different roles.

If my husband, a doting father, could leave our newborn daughter after two weeks at home and go to work for 10 hours a day without a backward glance, the script dictated that this was because he had learnt that his role was to be the provider.

And if I felt physical distress about tearing myself away from the baby to go back to work, I had internalised my role as the care giver.

Many of us thought that if only women could tame their outdated sentimentality, if only men offered their babies more bottles, then our parental roles could be reversed. I was amused but admiring when a male friend strapped on a device at a dinner party that allowed him to simulate breastfeeding.

At the time we assumed that men and women were equals – not just in rights and opportunities, as they should be, but also in underlying psychology and behaviour. Any differences, including physical differences, could be fixed via technology, policy or force of will.

There are distinctive design elements in female brains that evolved to promote the survival of infants. An avalanche of hormones at childbirth and during nursing trigger behaviour and emotions that don’t vanish simply because the new mothers have to go to work.

Breastfeeding releases hormones and neurotransmitters that induce euphoria in mothers. Prolactin turns on breastfeeding in females and circulates any time feeding, nurturing or protecting is on the agenda. And oxytocin, “the elixir of contentment”, is evolution’s way of making proximity to infants and feeding them so attractive.

Regular intimate contact becomes a physiological imperative. After infusing her brain with the analgesic and pleasure-inducing effects of oxytocin every few hours when she nurses her baby, a mother is suddenly cut off from her supply when not breastfeeding. That’s why nursing mothers newly returned to full-time work can’t wait to get home to feed the baby again. HORMONES are the catalysts that set dynamic sex differences in motion. Based on studies in animals, scientists expect that certain regions of the brain are not just transformed by hormones early on but are also endowed with receptors that enable the hormones to continue to play a role throughout life. (…)

Oxytocin, the underlying driver in tending children, is also the hormone of befriending. Besides being triggered by childbirth, breastfeeding, nurturing and orgasm, it is also released at critical moments in women’s relationships and menstrual cycles, damping down other stress responses. It helps to keep mothers going, providing sedative and analgesic effects, calming and immediately rewarding the women who instinctively reach out to others when they are in trouble.

Oxytocin is not just a feel-good, nurturing drug. It helps people to read emotions in other’s faces and increases their trust, according to two studies at the University of Zurich. These showed that oxytocin in nasal spray even has a positive effect on men’s usual behavioural limitations: it boosts their trust in social situations and their ability to read facial expressions.

Both studies bolster the idea that this hormone secreted in greater quantities in females – when they have babies, when they nurture them, when they cuddle or have sex with their partners, or when they reach out to others – facilitates females’ capacity for empathy and their trust in others.

Testosterone, secreted in greater quantities in males, may alter some neural connections related to reading others’ emotional states. And oxytocin seems to do the reverse. It seems to help women guess what’s going on inside the heads of other people, enabling them to trust them enough to seek them out, especially when they’re stressed, and to feel pleasure and relief when they do.

Studies have also shown that women on average perceive, experience and remember emotional events more intensely than men do and that these experiences are encoded in more areas of their brains than in men’s. From this, it makes sense that their emotional attachments will figure more strongly in their career decisions.

In the context of male-dominated “extreme” jobs, being aware of others’ needs can be a liability if promotion is the yardstick of success. (…)

(…) THE science showing that many women feel empathy more acutely than many men doesn’t mean they must or should make trade-offs over their work. It simply explains why some women might want to, as the British sociologist Catherine Hakim understands.

“If you are seriously interested in a career you don’t have time for children and if you are seriously interested in bringing up more than one child, you don’t have the time, effort and imagination for getting to the top of a career,” she told me.

Half of all women in the top professional and managerial grades are childless, Hakim reports, which is similar to women in academic science and engineering. Reliable contraception has allowed them to choose how they want to direct their energies and to plan their ascent.

In Hakim’s case, over the past eight years she has written six books and “there’s no way I could have done that if I had had children. The fact is that children are a 20-year project and a career is a 20 to 40-year project and there is an incompatibility there”.

And she added mildly: “If someone tested me, I’m sure I’d have the highest level of testosterone.”

Source: Times Online, UK
http://tinyurl.com/yuu8dp

If there is such a person as a “baby whisperer,” it is the pediatrician Dr. Harvey Karp, whose uncanny ability to quiet crying babies became the best-selling book The Happiest Baby on the Block.

Dr. Karp’s method, endorsed by child advocates and demonstrated in television appearances and a DVD version of his book, shows fussy babies who are quickly, almost eerily soothed by a combination of tight swaddling, loud shushing and swinging, which he says mimics the sensations of the womb.

Now Dr. Karp, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, Los Angeles, has turned his attention to the toddler years, that explosive period of development when children learn language, motor skills and problem solving, among other things. The rapid pace at which all these changes occur is nothing short of astonishing, but it can also be overwhelming to little brains. A wailing baby is nothing compared with the defiant behavior and tantrums common among toddlers.

In his latest book, The Happiest Toddler on the Block, Dr. Karp tries to teach parents the skills to communicate with and soothe tantrum-prone children. In doing so, however, he redefines what being a toddler means. In his view, toddlers are not just small people. In fact, for all practical purposes, they’re not even small Homo sapiens.

Dr. Karp notes that in terms of brain development, a toddler is primitive, an emotion-driven, instinctive creature that has yet to develop the thinking skills that define modern humans. Logic and persuasion, common tools of modern parenting, “are meaningless to a Neanderthal,” Dr. Karp says.

The challenge for parents is learning how to communicate with the caveman in the crib. “All of us get more primitive when we get upset, that’s why they call it ‘going ape,’ ” Dr. Karp says. “But toddlers start out primitive, so when they get upset, they go Jurassic on you.” (…)

(…) Dr. Karp’s method of toddler communication is not for the self-conscious. It involves bringing yourself, both mentally and physically, down to a child’s level when he or she is upset. The goal is not to give in to a child’s demands, but to communicate in a child’s own language of “toddler-ese.”

This means using short phrases with lots of repetition, and reflecting the child’s emotions in your tone and facial expressions. And, most awkward, it means repeating the very words the child is using, over and over again.

For instance, a toddler throwing a tantrum over a cookie might wail, “I want it. I want it. I want cookie now.”

Often, a parent will adopt a soothing tone saying, “No, honey, you have to wait until after dinner for a cookie.”

Such a response will, almost certainly, make matters worse. “It’s loving, logical and reasonable,” notes Dr. Karp. “And it’s infuriating to a toddler. Now they have to say it over harder and louder to get you to understand.”

Dr. Karp adopts a soothing, childlike voice to demonstrate how to respond to the toddler’s cookie demands.

“You want. You want. You want cookie. You say, ‘Cookie, now. Cookie now.’ ”

It’s hard to imagine an adult talking like this in a public place. But Dr. Karp notes that this same form of “active listening” is a method adults use all the time. The goal is not simply to repeat words but to make it clear that you hear someone’s complaint. “If you were upset and fuming mad, I might say, ‘I know. I know. I know. I get it. I’m really really sorry. I’m sorry.’ That sounds like gibberish out of context,” he says.

On his DVD, Dr. Karp demonstrates the method. Within seconds, teary-eyed toddlers calm and look at him quizzically as he repeats their concerns back at them. Once the child has calmed, a parent can explain the reason for saying no, offer the child comfort and a happy alternative to the original demand.

Dr. Karp also offers methods for teaching children patience, and he suggests regularly giving children small victories — like winning at a game of wrestling. “If you give them these little victories all day long, when you want them to do something for you, they’re much more likely to do it.”

Sometimes, excessive tantrums can signal an underlying health problem, so parents with a difficult child should consult with a pediatrician.

“The thing about toddlers is that they are uncivilized,” Dr. Karp says. “Our job is to civilize them, to teach them to say please and thank you, don’t spit and scratch and don’t pee anywhere you want. These are the jobs you have with a toddler.”

Source: New York Times, United States
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05well.html?_r=1&oref=slogin