Whether to spank children as a method of discipline is hotly debated. Some evidence suggests spanking predisposes children to behave aggressively. Others say spanking does no harm if it’s carried out dispassionately.

A study published today in Archives of Disease in Childhood shows that mothers are more inclined to spank their children if they are depressed, live in a home where they are exposed to violence or if their children are difficult to control.

Researchers at Boston Medical Center studied almost 13,000 mother-child pairs as part of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort. The mothers answered survey questions on whether they had serious disagreements with their spouses that involved hitting or throwing things at one another. They also completed a depression assessment. The children’s behavior was assessed by their kindergarten teachers.

Among mothers with neither depression nor exposure to violence at home, one in four said they spanked their children. Among mothers who said they were either depressed or exposed to violence, one in three spanked. But among those with both depression and exposure to violence, one in two spanked. Moreover, children who had trouble controlling their own behavior got walloped more. Among mothers with depression, 33% of children with good self-control were spanked compared with 53% of children with poor self-control.

That last finding is important because there is a lack of data that reveal how a child’s behavior affects the risk of physical punishment. Indeed, any research that helps explain the causes and ramifications of spanking is valuable considering the lack of evidence that spanking is more effective than other forms of discipline. Spanking is discouraged by the American Academy of Pediatrics. For more information, see the AAP’s web page for parents on discipline and spanking.

Source: Los Angeles Times, CA
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2008/09/research-sugges.html

Better childcare will curb social ills

The first few years of a child’s life are the most important; it is in these early years that the quality of their lives is laid down. Yet too many parents who wish to nurture their children at home are being forced back to work by financial pressures when their children are still babies.

We need to level the financial playing field for parents. The current system pressurises mothers - and it is mostly mothers - into going back to work soon after their children are born. Yet the research shows that the seeds of later unhappiness and antisocial behaviour by young people are often sown by the failure of parents to form a close and loving relationship with their babies.

Society is paying a high price for the quick fix of getting mothers back to work so soon after birth.

We seem, as a society, to place economic and academic concerns well above relationships despite the latter’s crucial role in a child’s - and later an adult’s - wellbeing. Regardless of the very large body of scientific and sociological evidence, children’s policy and political thinking miss the influence of the early years on a host of social problems we face today.

I asked Dr Samantha Callan to form the Early Years Commission to study this question. Its report, which will be published tomorrow, should make compelling reading for policy makers and parents. Crucially it shows that violent and antisocial behaviour by young people can be traced back to parental neglect when they were very young. They in turn pass on this dysfunction to their own children, perpetuating the cycle.

Professor Margot Sunderland, a child mental health expert on the commission, unambiguously stated that the quality of childcare has lifelong consequences for mental health as the first three years of a child’s life are crucial for healthy brain development and psychological stability.

The yardstick of quality applies across the spectrum of childcare: parental, informal and formal. It’s not the case that home care is always good and nursery always bad. But whether it is politically correct to admit this or not, there is a “hierarchy” of quality in childcare that policy is currently ignoring.

If parents want more than anything else to be with their children most of the time in the early years, and want to give them the continuity and intensity of relationship that science says they need, then surely they are the ones best placed to provide it.

Facilitating this aspiration should be a cornerstone of childcare policy. If parents don’t want to do this or cannot (and 81% of parents said financial pressures made them return to work early), the emotional and cognitive needs of their children must still be met.

This can be done by well motivated family members, well trained nursery nurses or other childcare professionals who have the time to give them enough one-to-one care. The evidence shows that, after motivated parents, family members offer an excellent childcare source.

Yet at present they are discounted by policy makers. Worryingly the commission also heard that childcare professionals are unsure if they should even hug children and that many nurseries prioritise health and safety and administrative needs, not personal childcare. Empathy doesn’t feature in the measurement of care quality, yet it is critical.

It seems that most of the public sense that policy is wrong. When asked in our poll, 82% of adults said that more should be done to help parents who wish to stay at home in those early years and some 70% felt that parents were encouraged to put their children into daycare too soon.

We need a fairer system in which the financial sacrifice of giving up work to look after a baby is offset by extra help from the tax and benefit system. The commission’s report recommends “front-loading” child benefit so a larger proportion of the child’s total entitlement would be available during the first three years when parents most want to spend time caring for children and when attachment and intensive nurture are most important.

It also recommends transferable tax allowances to reflect the fact that, if one spouse is not working outside the home, that family requires more support from the tax system. Similarly the benefits system should not penalise low-income couples who want to live together – which requires tackling the “couple penalty”. And it proposes a change in the rules to allow working parents to use childcare tax credits to pay unregistered close relatives to look after children.

With the growing demand on mental health facilities, the rising number of children in care and the peculiarly high levels of dysfunctional family behaviour, our failure to place cognitive and social development in the early years at the heart of our policy for children is already costing us dear. It is surely time to change all of that.

Source: Times Online, UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article4692207.ece

Almost half of the women in senior positions in investment banking have no children, according to new research seen by The Observer, underlining the sacrifices required for females to advance in the City.

A large proportion of those who are mothers balance work and family through role reversal: a quarter of the women surveyed had stay-at-home husbands.

The research, by Ruth Sealy of the International Centre for Women Business Leaders at Cranfield School of Management, suggests that there are even fewer women in senior City roles than elsewhere in industry. At the banks she investigated, just 5 per cent of managing directors were female, compared with 11 per cent of FTSE 100 directors and 19 per cent of MPs, according to the latest annual survey by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Sealy interviewed 34 women managing directors at leading City investment banks and found that 16 - nearly half - had no children. Their average age was 42. Fewer than a fifth of women in the population as a whole remain childless. However, women in other areas of finance, such as fund management, may find it easier to combine a career with motherhood.

Of those surveyed 28 had partners, of which eight did not work or were the primary carers - again, a number well in advance of the general population. Sealy believes this underlines the difficulty of combining a City career with a family. ‘A lot of [the women] talked about postponing having a family,’ she said.

Herta von Stiegel, who has held senior positions at JP Morgan, Citibank and AIG Financial Products, said she believes the ‘macho’ culture of investment banking is unnecessary. She said: ‘I have led some of the most complex deals in corporate finance, and I can tell you there is no need to push 24/7. If you are organised, you can structure yourself better.

‘The system was created by men, for men. We do not want the same treatment as men; we want to cater for people’s diversity. In my view, that takes enlightened men and brave women.’

Source: guardian.co.uk, UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/07/banking.women

For years, new parents have been hearing that “breast is best,” and each decade, more and more women choose lactation as the primary food source for their newborns. It appears that breastfeeding may now produce a generation of smarter, happier babies. Studies have shown that babies need touching and nurturing to develop and survive and breastfeeding supplies both needs on a regular basis.

Breastfed babies followed from birth to 6 years had higher IQ scores than formula-fed babies. This is not a new finding. Past research has shown that mothers from more affluent backgrounds were more likely to breastfeed. Consideration was given to the fact that improved mental abilities may have been related to family circumstance as much as breastfeeding.

Researchers from Canada’s McGill University attempted to overcome the possible influence of family economics by evaluating children born in hospitals in Belarus. The group studied over 13,000 breastfed babies born in 31 maternity hospitals. Some of these hospitals ran breastfeeding promotions to boost rates across all groups. Some provided nursing training and provided support for breastfeeding mothers. The mothers who received the training and continuing support were more likely to nurse for a longer period of time.

The children were divided into groups for evaluation depending on whether their mothers were given nursing training or not. Babies who were exclusively breastfed for the first three months scored 5.9% higher on IQ tests in childhood. Tests indicated that the longer the babies were breastfed the more significant the intelligence difference.

When these children began school teachers also gave them significantly higher academic ratings in both reading and writing than children in control groups. The Archives of General Psychiatry lead researcher Professor Michael Kramer said, “Long-term, exclusive breastfeeding appears to improve children’s cognitive development.” Professor Kramer also said that it was not known if the increased intellectual development was due to some nutritive value of breast milk, or related to the physical and social interactions of breastfeeding.

There are several reasons that breastfeeding may improve the mental development of babies:

* Breast milk contains fatty acids and other nutrients that are necessary for the development of babies.
* Physical and emotional aspects of breastfeeding may lead to permanent improvements in brain development.
* Breastfeeding may increase verbal interaction between mother and child which could aid development.

Though the exact mechanism of improved intelligence as a result of breast feeding is not known there are also other reasons for breastfeeding; children who are breastfed generally have fewer gastrointestinal problems and they have better protection against obesity, diabetes and cancer. Women who breastfeed have a quicker recovery from childbirth and breastfeeding reduces a women’s risk of developing breast cancer.

Breastfeeding is natural and good for the baby and the mother. A pregnant woman who wants to breastfeed but isn’t sure how to began can ask her physician or midwife for a referral to a professional, or any of the many groups who advocate breastfeeding.

Source: HealthNews, CA
http://tinyurl.com/6lvajn

With a pre-schooler to raise, household chores and new life priorities, the first years of motherhood are not the most obvious time to seek promotion.

On Tuesday, the results of an Australian Public Service Commission survey on the promotion of female public servants after they took maternity leave was touted as proof that motherhood is the death knell for career advancement.

The survey found that only a third of women who had taken maternity leave in 2000-01 had been promoted six years later, while more than half the women who had not taken leave had advanced in their positions. The finding was labelled “alarming”, particularly as the public service is deemed to have the most family-friendly working conditions in Australia.

There was a chorus-style response to the news from stakeholders. All agreed it was not fair. All agreed that when a woman decided to have a child, they had to begrudgingly accept their career opportunities would be limited from that time on. All asked for jobs and workplaces to be redesigned to accommodate the changed circumstances of young mothers.

When did we get so full of ourselves? Who started the idea that the world should revolve around mothers?

Didn’t our society get the memo about not being able to have it all? Why on earth do some people still want it for themselves and for others?

Why is it seen as a right that a woman can match it with the boys in the career stakes, have a fulfilled, loving, healthy relationship with another, have a child when they choose and combine it all with enormous success? Memo to the idealists: it is impossible.

Moreover, while most women have been given the notional, legal and social right to limitless career advancement, commentators and critics seem to miss the point. Could it be that fewer mothers want promotions in the workplace? The question was not asked in the survey. Could it be that their work-life balance is hard enough without having to learn the ropes of a new and more senior role in their place of work?

I not only think so, I know so.

If a woman chooses not to have a child because she wants to pursue a sparkling career instead, I say go for it. Whatever floats her boat. But only a handful of mothers with babies or small children (the ones in the public service study all had babies in the past seven years) crave more responsibility at work. Only a few want to forge a path, climb the ladder and reach new heights.

Most find they want to share time with their child and that they have more in their life now than their work and career path. Nothing can change the view or the heart like having a child. Many mothers also have the emotional and financial need to continue working, but work finds a different place in their life, as it should.

This is not to say that mothers do a worse job in their paid employment, or lose interest in their work. On the contrary, I wager that mothers use their time more efficiently, are more focused and have a clearer sense of purpose in the work they do. Most of them just don’t want to do it all the time.

I had three children in three years. I never had more than a few months off and have worked all their lives. My children did not spend a day in daycare. How is this possible?

Equality does not mean doing the same things or participating equally in all activities. This is naive and simplistic. Equality means celebrating the differences, but valuing each role.

Now that our oldest child is almost an adult, there might be a lot of lost sleep, odd work hours and unexpected professional roles in our pasts, but if we had our time again, neither my beloved nor I would have done anything differently.

You can’t have it all, but it is possible to combine work and parenthood and have no regrets.

Source: Courier Mail, Australia
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24212923-27197,00.html

Growing numbers of people are concerned about the impact of working mothers on family life, a survey by Cambridge University suggests.

It compared results of social attitude polls from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

In 1998, 51% of women and 45.9% of men believed family life would not suffer if a woman went to work.

This had fallen to 46% of women and 42% of men in 2002, amid “growing sympathy” for the old-fashioned view women should be in the home and not the workplace.

‘Super mum’

The survey, which questioned between 1,000 and 5,000 people, was conducted by Professor Jacqueline Scott from the university’s department of sociology.

She used recent data from the International Social Survey Programme and older polls.

Professor Scott said the idea that support was steadily growing for women taking an equal role in the workplace, rather than their traditional role in the home was “clearly a myth”.

She added: “Instead, there is clear evidence that women’s changing role is viewed as having costs both for the woman and the family.

“It is conceivable that opinions are shifting as the shine of the ’super-mum’ syndrome wears off, and the idea of women juggling high-powered careers while also baking cookies and reading bedtime stories is increasingly seen to be unrealisable by ordinary mortals.”

Overseas figures

Yet, it also showed the numbers of people who believed it was the man’s role to work and the wife’s to look after the children had fallen.

In 1984, 59.2% of women and 65.5% of men believed that was the case, compared to 31.1% of women and 41.1% of men in 2002.

The survey focuses on results from Britain, the US and, because the earlier surveys pre-dated the fall of the Berlin Wall, the former Federal Republic of Germany.

In the US the percentage of people arguing that family life does not suffer if a woman works has plummeted, from 51% in 1994 to 38% in 2002.

About the same number of West Germans (37%) agree; but the number there has risen, having been just 24% in the mid-1990s.

‘Considerable strain’

The report adds there should now be further investigation to understand why the attitude shift is occurring.

It asks whether this is because caring for the family is seen as women’s work, or because people feel there is no practical alternative to a woman taking the role.

Prof Scott said a change in attitude was not the same thing as a change in behaviour, but it mattered.

She said: “Women, particularly mothers, can experience considerable strain when attitudes reinforce the notion that employment and family interests conflict.

“If we are to make progress in devising policies that encourage equal working opportunities for women, we need to know more about what gender roles people view as practical, as possible and as fair.”

‘Transformation needed’

Meanwhile, the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for equality between women and men in the UK on pay and pensions, said attempts to force women into a male-created workplace were failing.

Its campaigns officer Kat Banyard said: “The long working hours culture and lack of flexible working means women are presented with impossible choices - forced to choose between caring for a family at home or maximising their career opportunities.

“The result is that motherhood carries a penalty and women and men are strait-jacketed by gender stereotypes.

“We need wholesale transformation.”

Source: BBC News, UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7543576.stm

It’s not a matter of race or class. Our economic structure is to blame for the lack of real fathers

Fatherhood is back in the political ring. In the right corner, David Cameron’s comments about black fathers revive the Conservative instinct for a scapegoat. In the left corner, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission’s Working Better initiative has joined with Mumsnet.com and Dad Info to launch ‘Home Front: What do mums and dads need to make life work?’ For the right, paternal responsibility is the bedrock of patriarchal social order. For the left, paternal responsibility is about a new kind of democratic settlement between men and women.

Fatherhood today is measured against the model of the man as family provider, the breadwinner supporting wife and children. This is a modern invention of the middle classes and only became the norm in the 1950s. In the past paternity was never enough to qualify men for fatherhood. Patriarchy was limited to propertied men. Colonialism ensured it was further restricted to white men.

There were plenty of biological fathers who lived without families. This was not about men’s moral failings, but a structural problem. Since the 1950s historic changes in the economy and in gender relations have returned us to this age. Paternity no longer means fatherhood.

In the 1980s, mass unemployment and the closure of manufacturing industries destroyed many men’s role as family breadwinner. Capitalism restructured around a low-wage, flexible labour market. Men’s ‘family wage’ and job for life disappeared and large numbers of women were drawn into the workforce. As men’s incomes stagnated or fell, women took on a double shift of paid work and unpaid domestic labour. Working class survival and middle class lifestyle once managed on a man’s single income now require two incomes, and often multiple part-time jobs. The role of family breadwinner is now unattainable for the majority of fathers in Britain.

For many young working-class people, marriage and setting up a family home has become a distant dream. Low wages and a lack of affordable housing makes it increasingly difficult for many young men to create an independent life of their own. The traditional rites of passage into adulthood – leaving home, entering employment, establishing a family, and taking on legal obligations and rights – have disappeared.

Research by the centre right think tank Civitas suggests that the higher rates of single parenthood and cohabitation in low income areas are not about feckless fathers or an anti-marraige trend but to do with the structural problems of poverty and a low wage economy.

Debates about fatherhood in recent years have all failed to recognise the structural changes within which men and women are forced to make choices and take decisions. Politicians of all parties go along with tabloid explanations of ‘deadbeat dads’. The Right wants to rewind 200 years and reimpose the patriarchal roles of mothers and fathers. Labour, despite the best efforts of feminism, is silent and evasive about both masculinity and fatherhood.

The growing popularity of Cameron’s Conservatives has emboldened them to revive the old right wing ‘responsibility agenda’. Chris Grayling, the Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions has made a number of eloquent speeches on the subject: “We have a growing generation of young men, alienated and drifting without a purpose in life; They are causing trouble; Welfare programmes don’t work and the criminal justice system is too soft; Many have grown up without fathers and many are becoming ‘fathers in name but not in action’; The lack of fathers is a huge problem for all of us.”

Grayling is good at describing the problem, but pointing the finger of blame at individual behaviour does not confront the bigger problem. He has no solutions. Nor, for that matter, does Labour. The fact is that the kind of democratic fatherhood society aspires to is not compatible with our economic and class system which leaves men with either too little or too much work. Only one in five men takes advantage of the new paternity leave provision of two weeks off, paid at £117 a week. Because of financial pressures 40 per cent don’t take up the right. As the EHRC’s NIcola Brewer has argued, “The central issue is that the economic penalty for fatherhood is too high.”

Source: guardian.co.uk, UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/19/race

Research shows that two parents are better than one. So why does the legal system still favour mothers?

In the 1979 movie Kramer vs. Kramer, a New York mother bored with child care bolts to Los Angeles “to find herself,” leaving her husband suddenly in sole charge of their little son.

The heart of the movie is the riveting evolution of a patriarchy-era father — career-obsessed, domestically disengaged — into a New Man: putting career ambitions second to his child’s needs, parenting clumsily and frantically at first, but eventually with tender efficiency.

Not without realistic missteps and emotional pain along the way, they form a loving bond. The child is happy. Nevertheless, when the mother swoops back into town 18 months later and sues for custody, a patriarchy-era court ignores the dad’s obviously superior moral claim — and the child’s wishes — awarding the mom custody on the basis of her gender.

Thirty years later, New Men are the norm in bourgeois society. But the instinct to privilege the mother-child nexus, ironically a dominant feature of both the sentimentalist patriarchy and today’s feminist-dominated family law, continues to rule in family court.

Thus, with mom-friendly courts always the trump card up a mother’s sleeve, even the best of fathers in all custody negotiations must depend on the mother’s good will, rather than justice for anything approaching equal access to his children.

In 1997, when the current Divorce Act came into effect, a special joint committee was convened to make recommendations on child custody and access. After 55 hearings and more than a year of study, the 48 recommendations of the 1998 report, For the Sake of the Children, converged on one theme: The sole-custody adversarial system, as it pertains to the majority of custody and access disputes, denies children and non-custodial parents basic human rights, and puts children’s psychological and emotional health at risk.

The report recommended the “non-rebuttable presumption” of equal parenting (in the absence of abuse) as both fair to parents and best for children. But it was ignored by the then-Liberal government and fell into a political black hole.

We know what Canadians think on this issue: Polls show that 80% of Canadians support equal parenting.We will know the present government’s frame of mind when Saskatoon-Wanuskewin MP Maurice Vellacott’s Motion M-483 in support of equal parenting comes up for debate in Parliament this fall.

A hopeful sign: On June 19, the Northwest Territories passed a supportive motion for Vellacott’s initiative with a vote of 11 to zero (with seven abstentions).

Vellacott has lined up 17 of a necessary 20 seconders to his motion and feels optimistic about its reception: “The social science is air-tight on the importance of fathers and mothers in the whole range of life experience as [children] grow older.”

He is correct about the social science. In a September, 2007, policy paper, University of British Columbia sociology professor Edward Kruk, Canada’s foremost expert on custody, adduced a wealth of peer-reviewed data to support the superior effects of “shared parental responsibility.”

Yet, as he observes, judges in family courts tend to perpetuate old stereotypes, ignoring evidence in cases where the father is provably the more responsible caregiver, or presuming fathers only seek sole custody to evade financial responsibility.

Under mounting critical scrutiny in recent years, the judiciary’s lack of expertise in determining the “best interests of the child” has become increasingly apparent. As a result, a new parental “responsibility-to-needs” discourse has emerged in the socio-legal realm.

A child’s “needs” cannot be optimally met by a single parent, however loving. Kruk’s findings show that a child must spend at least 40% of his time with a parent to establish and maintain a beneficial attachment.

Kramer vs. Kramer ended happily, with the mother’s recognition that fairness to the child required voluntary relinquishment of her legal entitlement.

Unfortunately, Hollywood is not running the divorce industry in Canada. In real life, mothers are rarely so selfless; court-battle endings are rarely so happy for fathers and children.

In 2006, Stephen Harper’s electoral platform promised to implement “a presumption of shared parental responsibility, unless determined to be not in the best interests of the child,” with mediation as an alternate method of conflict resolution.

Campaign talk is cheap. When can divorced Canadian fathers — and their children — expect justice, so long demanded, so long promised and so long deferred?

Source: National Post, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/68eh7u

A new study reveals that verbally aggressive (VA) mothers tend to control their children’s choice of activities as well as use physical negative touch, along with directives, when trying to alter their child’s actions.

Researchers led by Steven R. Wilson of Purdue University videotaped forty mothers as they completed a ten minute play period with one of their children between the ages of three and eight years. The mothers then completed a series of questionnaires including the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale.

Mothers who scored higher on the self-reported VA Scale engaged in more frequent directing of their child’s behavior during the play activities. These mothers were more likely to control activity choices as well as the pace and duration of activities. High VA mothers did so repeatedly and in a manner that tended to enforce an activity choice they had made. Low VA mothers were more likely to follow their child’s lead or seek their child’s input about choice of activity.

“Our study has implications for parenting classes and interventions,” the authors conclude. “In addition to talking about why it is important for parents to avoid lots of verbally aggressive behavior to avoid damaging their child’s self-esteem, parents who have this tendency also need to learn how to follow their child’s lead and read their child’s signals, as opposed to just taking over the play period themselves.”
Source: Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080709155312.htm

Everyone knows nothing melts a mother’s heart like a baby’s smile.

But Houston researchers have found that it also activates a region of the brain known as the reward center, a middle area associated with feelings of euphoria. Previous research has shown the reward center also flips on when addicts take drugs.

“This could be described as a natural high,” said Dr. Lane Strathearn, a pediatrics professor at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital and the research’s lead investigator. “Mothers just had to look at their baby’s smiling face, and blood flow in the region picked up.”

Strathearn said the research is part of an effort to use new brain-imaging technology to better understand the mother-infant bond, a key to healthy child development. When something goes wrong with that bond and the relationship doesn’t develop normally, he said, it typically leads to abuse or neglect, which are devastating to a child’s development.

Currently, little is known about what exactly occurs when the bond goes wrong, or even when it’s right.

The finding, reported in today’s edition of the journal Pediatrics, one day could lead to the development of a drug treatment for mothers emotionally detached from their children, Strathearn said. Right now, he said, researchers are just trying to understand the process in the brain.

In conducting the study, Strathearn’s team captured still images of each child smiling, crying and displaying neutral expressions.

They then showed 28 mothers the photos of their own babies and infants they had never seen before while the women were in a functional imaging scanner, a machine that measures blood flow in the brain.

Though blood flow picked up when the mothers were shown the photos of other women’s infants, the greatest activity occurred when each mother looked at her own baby’s pictures, researchers found. The reaction was strongest when the baby was smiling.

The activity occurred in reward center pathways associated with dopamine, a pleasure-related chemical that ferries signals between brain cells.

Unexpectedly, the researchers found little difference in blood flow when mothers were shown photos of their own crying babies compared with pictures of the other children.

The finding about the “natural high” caused by a smiling baby contributes to a growing body of research about what triggers the brain’s reward center. Besides cocaine and other drugs, some triggers include humor, favorite foods, photographs of attractive faces, praise, sex, gambling and even charitable giving, according to recent studies.

The study was conducted at Baylor’s Human Neuroimaging Laboratory.

Source: Houston Chronicle, United States
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5874711.html