brighid

Sure we can! Simply put forth the duties and obligations you believe a mother to have that no other person could fulfill. However, I doubt you would be able to because there is nothing about giving birth to a child, as oppossed to not giving birth to a specific child that makes one unable to properly care, love and nuture said child.

Are you saying that you cannot agree that parents should do their best to provide for their children's education?

I do not maintain they are immoral for having children in the first place. Why would I, or any one else label capable, loving, caring, working parents as immoral because they do not have the financial ability to live an adequate life on one income? Is it the fault of the families that safe neighborhoods are expensive, that orthodontical care is exhorbitant, that the necessary advance education their children WILL need to be independent, self-sufficient, contributing members of society costs $100,000 or more and that the government, with its irresponsible tax cuts have burdened our children with reprehensible and avoidable debt, as well as destroyed most of the financial aide they may have been able to get?

Should couples not be allowed to reproduce because an unproven theory about the "best" and "traditional" families maintains that the women must stay home and take of the children, if they require two incomes to survive in the modern world?

The "conservative" and "traditional" viewpoints need to be relinquinshed and placed where they belong, in the 50's. This is the year 2003 and we live in a very different world. A man can no longer enter a trade right after highschool and make enough money to support a family. Women are no longer restricted to mother, teacher, nurse, or nun and have the choice to do more with their lives then reproduce and care for children.

It is my opinion that any woman who cannot support herself, or her family, at least in part is setting herself and her family up for potential ruin in the very likely times of misfortune and tragedy. That was the curse of our grandmothers and mothers, and it should not be the curse of the modern woman, her daughters or grand daughters. I have seen too many "traditional" woman and their children fall victim to poverty and destitution by adhering to their "God given" duties of mother and wife only when a husband leaves, is taken ill, or dies prematurely.

My child will not be shackled by the slavery of poverty because some priest, politician or man has told me my rightful place is exclusively in my home.

And honey, the proof is in the pudding and thus far the bonding with my child has been unaffected despite working full-time for his entire life. He is a good student, exceptionally well-mannered, well adjusted and a joy to be around. All this despite my single parenthood. It's called quality and quality forever will surpass quantity. Oh, and I absolutely love being a mother but that does not mean I have to sacrifice "self-fulfillment" of any kind because I gave birth to a child. His needs have and will always come first, but sometimes that means doing things that are otherwise "non-traditional" like working so we can eat, live, and have a future.

So again, prove up!

Brighid

brighid

You may see a causal link between the two, but you have yet to provide any information, or factual and verifiable evidence that such a link exists.

You have thus far presented no credible evidence that the parent-child bonding is harmed by a mother working outside of the home and placing a child in day care.

I think the vast majority of working parents (at least those that I know) work because they put their childrens needs first (and theirs somewhere after) because there is a NEED for the mother to work, not just for her own fulfillment (which in turn leads to her happiness, familial harmony, etc.) but fulfills the greatest needs of a family - food, adequate shelter, medical care, education, etc.



You know better then that! That is only part of the definition and you know the standard of proof here is empirical and scientific. Your evidence (which you have provided NONE) has to be more then your opinion, or in your case assertations. So I would like PROOF and I have asked more then once that the nay-sayers prove up their claims. Assertations are not proof. Demonstrate the actual causal link you "see" that is actually detrimental to the parent-child bond. How about give us some recent research on the subject? That would suffice.


Now that is a weak statement! Sure we can and we all have such the luxury by our ability to reason and make judgments based upon the evidence. Unfortunately, you and fatherphil haven't provided any evidence to support your case and therefore it is your claims that have little authority. Convienent, don't ya think?

What is the purpose of discussion and debate if we cannot formulate conclusions? I certainly don't need a judge, or jury to make up my mind for me. We are adults here. Just use that brain of yours and let go of your misogynistic, archaic notions about "traditional" families and take an objective look at the empirical evidence. You can make an educated conclusion.

You mean like MOTHERS? Parents run out on their children ALL the time and hence why there are so many single mothers. It's just the fathers that typically run out on their obligations to the children they father! A hireling need not be on call 24/7. They just need to be there during their hours of employment, unless they are hired for a 24/7 job. Even nannies get a break, pay and vacation!

Hire care providers who don't have other children and you can avoid the whole "precedence" mess.

Brighid

yguy

If I may be so bold, Your Majesty, feigning stupidity so as to annoy your opponent isn't quite cricket, is it?

They can't come rushing home every time a kid scrapes a knee, but in case of an emergency, any father worth his salt will put work on the back burner with or without the boss's permission.

Running the household is part of the job, so I don't see how that's an exception. Participating in the community is secondary.

yguy

To the extent that parents have to work to fulfill legitimate needs, selfishness is obviously not a factor. The area of what constitutes legitimacy here would be another discussion altogether.

Seems to me you and I have had this conversation already - or at least somebody and I have. I have never agreed to any particular standard of proof. If you find that unacceptable, your obvious remedy is to terminate the conversation.

Neither is empirical data, necessarily.

If I had such material, I doubt that it would. You could always claim the research is biased in some way, or that the methodology is not verifiably sound, or that what the study calls harm isn't really harm at all. Maybe you wouldn't, but in your position, that's what I would be inclined to do, the alternative being to take it at face value based on the perceived credibility of the organization which produces or endorses it. That's why, in the rare instances that I cite such evidence, it tends to come from sources I can reasonably expect to be biased in favor of my opponents. I suppose if I had the inclination and an extra 24 hours a day, I could sift through APA endorsed studies and possibly find evidence to back me up, but it's not feasible.

Sure. I make the judgment that conclusions based on my personal observations are correct, and you make the judment that they are not, or at least that I haven't provided sufficient evidence to merit consideration. Does the fact that there are more here who hold to your view than to mine mean I'm wrong?

Galileo's claims didn't have any authority either, until a sufficient number of people believed they had merit.

Who's stopping you?

I would call it a conclusion based on faith in the innerancy of the scientific priestcraft.

In the overt sense that is true, but a mother can be there and yet not be there. If you had abusive parents you probably know that.

Obviously. That's the point. Parents can never expect a break if they have young children. Even if Grandma is babysitting, if the kid gets seriously ill or injured, vacation's over.

How many parents can afford to be so picky?

brighid

Thank you. There are legitimate needs, including and in part, the need for a woman to be something more then just a mother and wife.


Now isn't that a bit silly? If you cannot make any sort of determination as to what is an acceptable standard of proof you cannot come to any sort of valid conclusion about anything, and you surely cannot ever expect to reasonably support any point you have if you won't even develop sound criteria as to proof.

Awhhh ... but it's just too much fun

Empirical data is a better foundation to begin with then supposition!

Yes, I could claim that it is biased in some way or somehow unsound if I could determine that the methodology and/or conclusions of your evidence were in fact biased, or unsound. If however, you provided me with empirical evidence that I could not find flaw with I would, at the very least, be put in a position to more closely consider your position.

I am sorry, if you were in my position that would be inclined to such things.

Oh, it is certainly feasible to find these studies. You are on the Internet and I assume you know how to do a search for information. I found plenty rather easily and I am sure an earnest, if not cursory search on your part might be able to produce something ... whether or not that would be factual or credible is entirely different.

Morally speaking, if you are so set on a position you owe it to yourself to employ the methods of intellectual integrity and carefully consider all the evidence and weigh it, even if it doesn't agree with your tightly held opinions.


Absolutely not! If you are able to prove your position to be correct I would be forced to concede, at least in part, that your position is correct.

Unfortunately that was because many people have limited information and were dogmatically opposed to anything that didn't fit their "traditional" world view. His position gained merit because the evidence could no longer be ignored.

Ah, such loaded statements! I do not place faith in science. Science is able to clearly demonstrate things to me so I may KNOW and no believe without evidence. It's all about the evidence and being open to being proved wrong, which is at the very heart of scientific inquiry.

Certainly, parents with a good support system can expect a break even if a parent's obligations are only temporarily put on hold. I don't think a single person here has contended otherwise. Responsible parents attend to their children in illness, injury, etc. regardless of who happens to be carrying for the child in their absence.

Few or many, depending on the resources of a family. Certainly many nannies and au paires fit into this category.

B

pilaar

The 'conservative' and 'traditional' viewpoints do not only depend on the time frame but also on the location. The man as the 'provider' and the woman as the 'providee' seems to be an English Victorian creation for the family structure. I come from central Europe and this model of family is alien to me. The area where I grew up was never touched by Victorian influence and the social conditions never allowed for this family model to be possible. Before industrialisation, the basic family structure consisted of many members not only father, mother and children, all adults contributed to the economy of the family through working on the fields, making products which were sold in the market, having home business (tailoring ...). After 'work' moved outside the home both men and women started going to work. There never was a time where the woman did not contribute financially to the wellbeing of the family. The social structure was created alongside to cater for this arrangements. Before, the children were looked after by different family members and/or were taken along when the work was done. Once majority of people started going to work in factories and offices, grandparents normally looked after the children. The family now more and more consists of only mother, father and children, but both parents still have a job unless they have business at home. Children are considered not only the responsibility of parents but of the whole society as they are the future. So, childcare centres are either free or heavily subsidised and mothers get maternity leave of 1 year and receive 80% of their wage throughout their leave. The notion of mother not working does not even come on the agenda as there is no tradition of 'stay at home mum' unless she is ill or works from home.

Australia, where I now live, has the 'tradition' of stay at home mum and it does not have social safety net yet, even though there has been a dramatic change in the last few years and there are now more families where both parents work than those with full time stay at home mothers. These tend to be families where the man has very high income and the family can afford to live on one income.

Children of working parents in continental Europe do not experience higher teenage pregnancy rates, crime rates, murder rates, drug or alcohol abuse rates, poverty etc. I think that USA, Australia and England top the charts of most of these even though there were and still are more 'stay at home mums' in these three countries than in continental European counties. So the 'working mother' is not the cause of some sort of a decline of the society, there are other reasons if that seems to be happening.

The notion of children spending whole day with one adult person is strange to me as they don't get to socialise and learn about relating with many different kinds of people
Also, financial contribution to the welfare of the family is a valuable and essential part for the wellbeing of each person and I would consider myself a failure if I did not do so. So, I find it ridiculous when some try to put me in a position where I would have to defend, justify and make excuses for working or where my desire to work and be a mother at the same time is considered a selfish act on my part. I find it selfish that the societies which can afford it do not care enough for their future to make it easier on children and parents who care for them. I also find it selfish of many fathers to refuse to contribute equally to the care of the children and their home. Most mothers, if at work or at home, still do the majority of caretaking of children, at least here in Australia.

I am glad that more and more women, who do the best they can in the circumstances they are facing, refuse to be put in a position where they would be called by some to defend and justify their choices all the time, and at the same time receive little or not enough help from fathers or society at large. While at the same time, so little is said, discussed and done to get fathers to pull their act together and care fore their own children in equal measure. In Australia, children have problems with absent fathers and men's lack of involvement with childcare much more than they have the problem with absent mothers. They experience problems with lack of male role models while growing up, and yet, when discussions and articles deal with the issues children are facing these days, the culprit for all the problems seems to the 'working mother'.

I think that women have done their time having to justify their own actions, it is time that men in general justify and change theirs, then their imput will have equal credibility in these matters.

And it is great that there are so many wonderful participating fathers out there too I just wish there were more.

pilaar

Roland98

I was thinking about this last night, and yguy's "bonding" issue (or supposed lack thereof between working moms and their children). I got to thinking about a story I'd read about some women in Africa, who'd asked an American missionary if Americans "really put their kids in cages at night" (meaning, of course, cribs). Of course, in many cultures, the babies are "worn" on the moms, everpresent in slings and swaddles as the mother goes about her daily tasks--and then they share the bed at night (often with many siblings as well). So cultures like this often doubt that Americans (or other such cultures) can really bond with their children, even if the moms stay at home--because (except in rare cases), the children still aren't held by their mothers around the clock.

I just see this as another level of incredulity--these women can't comprehend even SAH moms having a real bond with their children, since they're not skin-to-skin essentially all day; those like yguy don't seem to comprehend that moms who work outside of the home can have effective bonding with their children when they spend 8 or so hours a day at work; and all the while, moms simply ignore the nay-sayers and bond effectively with their kids in the time they have.

fatherphil

APA News Release


November 7, 1999

Contact: APA Public Affairs Office
(202) 336-5700


Study finds that Child Care Does Impact Mother-Child Interaction
Quality of Child Care, Maternal Education, Maternal Depression and Child's Temperament Also Affect Mother-Child Bond

(Washington, DC) - The more hours a child spends during the first three years of life in nonmaternal care the less positive the child's interactions with his/her mother, reports a new study, published in the November issue of Developmental Psychology published by the American Psychological Association.

Based on data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care, a longitudinal study of approximately 1,300 children, the authors looked at associations between the amount, quality and stability of child care and mother-child interactions when the children were 6, 15, 24 and 36 months old. Families and their children were recruited from 10 research sites across the United States. Twenty-four percent of the recruited families were members of an ethnic minority.

According to the findings, children who regularly spend time in nonmaternal care have "somewhat less positive" interactions with their mothers than children who spend less or no time in nonmaternal care.

Variation in the number of hours in child care was related to both the mother's behavior toward her children and the children's positive engagement of the mother in their interactions. The findings may indicate that longer hours of child care are associated with some diminished familiarity and less ability of mother and child to be "in tune" with each other.

Although the setting of the care (home/center/relative's home) did not alter the results, the quality of the care did. Higher quality child care was associated with increased maternal sensitivity. The authors' submit two possible explanations for this finding: (1) higher quality care settings may provide mothers with positive role models for involved, sensitive interactions with their child, and, (2) the greater maternal sensitivity is a function of the effect of the higher quality child care on the child's emerging verbal skills, behavior compliance and social competence.

The authors point out that the findings of a small negative association between mother-child interaction and hours of care and a small positive association with quality of care may suggest that linkages with child care are more a product of mothers who use child care than a consequence of the care itself. The findings may indicate that mothers who are less sensitive to their infants' signals or who have children who are less engaging use child care for more hours. The findings may also suggest that mothers who are more sensitive choose higher quality care for their children.

In addition, to put the issue of child care quality and stability into an appropriate context, the authors looked at other predictors of mother-child interactions and found that maternal education was a much stronger predictor of maternal sensitivity than either child care hours or the quality of that care.

But, a child's temperament and maternal depressive symptoms were found to be similar to the use of and quality of child care in terms of their strength in predicting mother-child interactions.

Because of its large sample size, the NICHD study data allowed researchers to detect relatively small associations between child care and children. "The meaningfulness of these effects rests on the extent to which small degrees of difference in material sensitivity or the child's engagement with the mother relate to meaningful differences in children's developmental outcomes at these and later ages," the authors write.

# # #

Article: "Child Care and Mother-Child Interaction in the First 3 Years of Life," NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, Developmental Psychology, Vol. 35, No. 6.

Full Text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office or on the web beginning October 29 at http://www.apa.org/journals/dev.html



The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Early Child Care Research Network, consisting of 25 participating investigators, conducted this study. A list of the 25 investigators is attached.



The American Psychological Association (APA) in Washington, DC, is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 159,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 52 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 59 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting human welfare.



National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

Early Child Care Research Network



Mark Appelbaum, Vanderbilt University
Dee Ann Batten, Vanderbilt University
Jay Belsky, Pennsylvania State University
Cathryn Booth, University of Washington
Robert Bradley, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Celia A. Brownell, University of Pittsburgh
Margaret Burchinal, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Bettye Caldwell, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
Susan B. Campbell, University of Pittsburgh
Alison Clarke-Stewart, University of California, Irvine
Martha Cox, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Sarah L. Friedman, NICHD, Bethesda, Maryland
Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University
Aletha Huston, University of Texas at Austin
Elizabeth Jaeger, Temple University
Bonnie Knoke, Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle, NC
Nancy Marshall, Wellesley College
Kathleen McCartney, University of New Hampshire
Marion O'Brien, University of Kansas
Margaret Tresch Owen, University of Texas at Dallas
Deborah Phillips, National Research Council, Washington, DC
Robert Pianta, University of Virginia
Susan Spieker, University of Washington
Deborah Lowe Vandell, University of Washington-Madison
Marsha Weinraub, Temple University


PsychNET®
© 2003 American Psychological Association

Jamie_L

Now, the next question is: is reduced mother-child interaction necessarily bad for the child? Our knee-jerk is to say "yes". But it seems that one would need to support this assertion.

Jamie

fatherphil

i suppose you'd also have to prove that actually bonding with one's child is a good thing. that is if we can agree on what we mean by good.