tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/child-rearing-1308/articlesChild rearing – The Conversation2023-12-19T23:20:05Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2194772023-12-19T23:20:05Z2023-12-19T23:20:05ZSame-sex couples divide household chores more fairly – here’s what they told us works best<p>Who does which household chores – or who does the most – is a perennial source of tension for many couples. From cleaning the toilet to taking out the trash, it’s sometimes the little things that can cause the biggest trouble.</p>
<p>Not without reason, either. Research shows women still do the bulk of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/yet-again-the-census-shows-women-are-doing-more-housework-now-is-the-time-to-invest-in-interventions-185488">housework and caregiving</a> in most heterosexual couples. And this unequal labour can lead to <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/the-juggle-is-real-parents-want-greater-flexibility-in-return-to-office-20220325-p5a820.html">burnout, health problems and financial stress</a>. </p>
<p>We also know same-sex couples often have a far <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-give-mum-chocolates-for-mothers-day-take-on-more-housework-share-the-mental-load-and-advocate-for-equality-instead-182330">more equitable division of labour</a> than heterosexual couples. But it’s not clear how same-sex couples manage to achieve this fairer split of household chores. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/27703371.2023.2285276">recent research</a> aimed to shed some light on this. We surveyed same-sex couples in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, and identified three key factors that enabled them to share the chores in ways they both feel is fair. </p>
<p>The couples in our study focused on achieving a sense of fairness and equality over time, rather than a strict 50-50 split. They all had different patterns of dividing tasks. However, they shared some common strategies that offer valuable lessons for any couple, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. </p>
<h2>1. Keep changing things up</h2>
<p>We know that when couples negotiate roles based on their individual availability and what they like doing – or what they least despise – it contributes to a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023120924805">sense of fairness and satisfaction</a>. </p>
<p>Same-sex couples we interviewed embraced flexibility when it comes to dividing housework. They negotiated chores based on their specific needs, preferences and availability. Flexibility is key – if the person who usually takes the children to swimming lessons has a lot on at work, the other partner would step in.</p>
<p>Beyond the day-to-day, same-sex couples often play the long game, balancing unpaid labour with each other’s career progression. Some couples in our study planned their working and family lives so both partners could progress at work by taking turns as the main caregiver when their children were born. </p>
<p>Others recognised that task specialisation – such as one person always doing the taxes, and the other always cooking – could lead to dependence and rigidity. So they consciously practised task sharing to avoid this. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-last-nights-fight-affects-the-way-couples-divide-housework-92582">How last night's fight affects the way couples divide housework</a>
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<h2>2. Communicate</h2>
<p>Couples who engage in honest conversations about their labour responsibilities <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0959353510375869">tend to view</a> their household division as fair. On the flip side, negative communication – aggression, avoidance or criticism – <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-023-01422-5">fosters a sense of unfairness</a>. </p>
<p>In our research, effective and open communication was key to achieving an equitable division of unpaid labour. But these conversations weren’t always easy. </p>
<p>Couples who felt guilty about not doing enough around the house, or frustration with their partner for not pulling their weight, found simple conversations could become emotionally intense. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yet-again-the-census-shows-women-are-doing-more-housework-now-is-the-time-to-invest-in-interventions-185488">Yet again, the census shows women are doing more housework. Now is the time to invest in interventions</a>
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<p>We all have different standards of cleanliness, gender socialisation and family background that shape how we approach housework. And this can also make it difficult to understand a partner’s perspective or expectations.</p>
<p>Couples in our survey navigated disagreements through candid conversations, transforming conflict into opportunities for greater mutual understanding and agreement. </p>
<p>It’s not just about talking, but also about regular “check-ins” to see how each person is feeling about the labour load, and renegotiating things when household circumstances or feelings change. </p>
<h2>3. Remember unpaid labour is valuable</h2>
<p>Housework is often devalued when compared with paid work. Previous research has shown how undervaluing housework <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-022-01282-5">diminishes the quality</a> of relationships. </p>
<p>Same-sex couples in our research sought to revalue unpaid labour by assigning it equal worth to paid labour. As one person said: </p>
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<p>The domestic tasks, we might not enjoy them, but we both value them equally. We both think they are important. </p>
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<p>Some couples actively acknowledged and appreciated difficult and time-consuming tasks, such as their partner cleaning the bathroom. Participants also found value in unpaid labour beyond the chores themselves, viewing them as acts of love, and found joy in small tasks. </p>
<p>One couple even turned household chores into a game, writing tasks on slips of paper and randomly selecting them from a bag – including enjoyable activities like walks or coffee breaks as rewards. </p>
<p>This not only lightens the mood but is also a strategy for involving children with less fuss.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-married-mothers-end-up-doing-more-housework-when-they-start-out-earning-their-husbands-183256">Why married mothers end up doing more housework when they start out-earning their husbands</a>
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<h2>4. Do a stocktake of the unpaid load</h2>
<p>We often fall into patterns of domestic labour without realising it. In our study, we found completing simple time-use surveys and discussing them can illuminate disparities in responsibilities. </p>
<p>Why not try it yourself? List down the household tasks done last week, including physical chores (like shopping or cleaning), emotional tasks (caring for children or pets), and mental tasks (planning meals, managing finances). </p>
<p>Estimate the time both you and your partner spent on each task. Then, have a heart-to-heart about who is doing what, how you both feel about it, and how it can be fairer.</p>
<h2>Lessons for all couples</h2>
<p>Adapting these strategies in heterosexual relationships isn’t easy. Deep-seated gender norms and societal expectations about the feminine “homemaker” and masculine “breadwinner” can be tough to shake. </p>
<p>And same-sex couples are <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/same-sex-married-people-more-likely-than-opposite-sex-counterparts-to-be-in-labor-force.html">more likely to both be working part-time</a> rather than having one partner at home and one working. </p>
<p>But that’s the challenge – to redefine and negotiate labour in a way that works for your unique relationship. Start by tossing out the old gender scripts about who should do what. Next, open a dialogue about chores. </p>
<p>Flexibility, communication and revaluing unpaid labour are strategies available to everyone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219477/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Who does what chore can be a major source of tension in many households. Our survey of same-sex couples and their routines revealed four key strategies that can help lighten the load for everyone.Alice Beban, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Massey UniversityGlenda Roberts, Postgraduate Researcher/Project Manager, Massey UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1856612022-08-05T12:12:37Z2022-08-05T12:12:37ZParenting styles vary across the US<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476739/original/file-20220729-13683-uha9wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=51%2C42%2C5640%2C3745&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Parents take different approaches to raising their kids.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/mother-sitting-by-teenage-son-studying-at-home-royalty-free-image/1321465605">Maskot via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most people agree that children <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK402020/">should have enough to eat</a>, not be sexually molested and never be punished in a way that requires medical treatment. But beyond those basics, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=erA8gbIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">my research</a> has found that parenting styles in the United States <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0749-x">vary by region</a>.</p>
<h2>Differing styles</h2>
<p>I have found that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0749-x">parents in the South</a> were more likely than parents in central Florida to demand obedience and respect from their children and believe that children should be treated strictly. Parents in central Florida, which is demographically and culturally different from other parts of the South, were more likely to discuss family decisions with their children, allow disagreement and let children make their own decisions. </p>
<p>Wider-ranging research I conducted with two doctoral students, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3mdvHHIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Melanie Stearns</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=EUky6d4NRBwC&hl=en">Erica Szkody</a>, found differences in how <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0192513X211055114">young adults in the Northeast, Midwest, South and West</a> are parented.</p>
<p>Overall, there were some commonalities. A <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/h0030372">style of parenting</a> called “authoritative,” in which parents are both responsive and demanding, providing support alongside rules and limits while encouraging communication, was most common across the U.S. Also relatively common was a different parenting style called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/h0030372">authoritarian</a>,” in which parents are less responsive but still demanding, providing rules and limits without as much support and requiring more obedience to authority.</p>
<p>Less common was “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/h0030372">permissive</a>” parenting style. That’s when parents are responsive but less demanding, tending to be warm and caring but perhaps without consistent rules and indulging children more often than other styles.</p>
<p>But there were key regional differences.</p>
<h2>Regional variations</h2>
<p>In the Northeast, Midwest and South, some young adults said their mothers were more supportive and caring, while their fathers were more demanding and obedience-driven. In general, this could reflect <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1185-8">traditional gender roles</a> of a responsive mother and a strict father, as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01014-6">other research</a> has also found. This combination was less common in the West.</p>
<p>In the Northeast and West, small but significant groups of young adults reported parents who were more supportive and even indulgent, without a lot of insistence on obedience. We believe that this finding could be related to how parents in these regions might be <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.2.279">more individualistic</a> and encouraging of communication and equality than parents in other regions of the U.S.</p>
<p>The South was the only region where some young adults stated that they had stricter mothers but more responsive fathers. This is a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/12/17/parenting-in-america/">difference from overall national trends</a>.</p>
<h2>Potential causes</h2>
<p>Many forces influence parents’ approaches, including <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/12/17/3-parenting-approaches-and-concerns/">demographic factors</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fjcpp.12705">religious traditions</a>, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/12/17/parenting-in-america/">economic status</a> and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/07/28/parenting-children-in-the-age-of-screens/">technology</a>. </p>
<p>Typically, the <a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/Bronfenbrenner.html">most important factors</a> are family, friends, neighborhoods, schools, economic status and access to resources. Those obviously can vary widely even within a region of the U.S.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13539">Cultural attitudes and laws</a> are also key factors in parenting styles that are more broadly shared – and that <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Traditional-regions-of-the-United-States">vary by region</a> across the country.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Stearns received the APA Division 36 Student Research Award ($500), which funded participants fees for the study on regional differences in parenting we conducted.</span></em></p>In some regions of the country, mothers and fathers have different approaches than their counterparts in other regions.Cliff McKinney, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Mississippi State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1541522021-02-02T15:29:09Z2021-02-02T15:29:09ZWhy your kids know when you’re trying to put on a brave face<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381977/original/file-20210202-15-ai0i2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C8%2C5590%2C3724&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cute-young-boy-holds-magnifying-glass-112048604">Prixel Creative/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s 7:30am on a Monday morning and you’re trying to get your little darlings out of the house for school. The week has only just begun but already you can feel your temper being tested: your children appear to be physically incapable of getting dressed. You put on a nice faux smile and implore them through gritted teeth to “get dressed <em>right</em> now”. Despite your best efforts, though, somehow your real emotions have shone through: your children have started to cry.</p>
<iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/why-your-kids-know-when-youre-trying-to-put-on-a-brave-face-154152&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p>This situation will be familiar to many parents – myself included. Numerous times, I’ve tried to conceal how I’m really feeling when talking to my daughter by “putting on a brave face” that I hope masks my true feelings. However, my team’s <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022096520305221">new research</a> suggests that all of this effort might actually be in vain. </p>
<p>We’ve found that children prioritise sound over sight when identifying emotions – which means that the emotion you carry in your voice’s tone, volume and pitch registers with your kids despite the careful physical mask you put up to hoodwink them. As such, rather than putting on a brave face in difficult moments, parents should perhaps try to “put on a brave voice” instead.</p>
<h2>The reverse Colavita effect</h2>
<p>Our research was inspired by the esteemed psychologist <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92851/">Francis Colavita</a>, who ran an experiment in the 1970s that produced a curious result. When presented with flashes of light (visual stimuli) and tones (auditory stimuli) at the same time, adults tended to ignore the auditory stimuli and only report the visual ones. </p>
<p>This was coined the “Colavita effect” and was taken as evidence of visual dominance in adults. More recently, the opposite was found in <a href="https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01856.x">children</a>. Under the same conditions, children – those up to the age of around eight – tended to report the auditory stimuli and ignore the visual. This was dubbed the “reverse-Colavita effect”, a case of auditory dominance.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/should-you-hide-negative-emotions-from-children-104710">Should you hide negative emotions from children?</a>
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<p>Since this research was published, the limits of the effect on children have been tested. Instead of simple flashes and tones, more complex stimuli – like pictures of animals and the sounds they make – <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022096515001824?via%3Dihub">have been used</a>. For instance, these studies found that when shown a picture of a dog accompanied by the sound of a cow, children would only report what they heard – not what they saw. </p>
<p>This demonstrated that the reverse-Colavita effect wasn’t simply due to a preference for tones over flashes like in the original study, but instead appeared to be a preference for any auditory stimuli, even complex and meaningful sounds. These sounds were so dominant that they are all the child would report perceiving.</p>
<h2>Sounding out</h2>
<p>We wanted to push this effect further and try and find out whether children show an auditory dominance for emotionally meaningful stimuli. We created an experiment to test this, using <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00181/full">emotional bodies</a> (photos of people’s bodies looking scared, sad, happy, or angry) and emotional <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BRM.40.2.531">voices</a> (recordings of people sounding scared, sad, happy, or angry).</p>
<p>We presented adults and children (aged between 6 and 11) with these images and sounds in different combinations, both matching and mismatched. A happy body and a happy voice made for a matching pair of stimuli, whereas a sad body with an angry voice would be a mismatched pair of stimuli.</p>
<p>We asked our participants two things. First, we asked them to ignore what they saw, telling us instead the person’s emotion based on the voice. Adults and children could do that no problem. Then we showed exactly the same stimuli but this time asked them to ignore what they heard and tell us how the person felt based on their body. Here again the adults could do this with no difficulty, but the children found this extremely difficult.</p>
<p>When viewing a picture of a person cowering in fear, for example, children in our study would tell us that person was happy if they heard a laugh at the same time. In effect, children could not ignore auditory stimuli when judging emotion. Our study is the first evidence of an auditory dominance in children when detecting and recognising emotion.</p>
<h2>Loud and clear</h2>
<p>If children have an auditory dominance when it comes to emotional information, it is the emotion in the parent’s voice that will “override” any visual emotional information in their body language. That means an angry voice is likely to be detected by a child, even if it’s hidden behind a forced smile.</p>
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<img alt="A child folds her arms in a grumpy posture while her mother looks on concerned" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381782/original/file-20210201-17-1mla13t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381782/original/file-20210201-17-1mla13t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381782/original/file-20210201-17-1mla13t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381782/original/file-20210201-17-1mla13t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381782/original/file-20210201-17-1mla13t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381782/original/file-20210201-17-1mla13t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381782/original/file-20210201-17-1mla13t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘It’s not what you said – it’s how you said it’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mom-psychologist-talking-counseling-upset-offended-1282522006">fizkes/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>The implications of these findings go beyond just avoiding tantrums. Currently, huge efforts have been made by teachers to make online learning as engaging as possible for home-schooled children during the pandemic. Given our findings, perhaps lesson design should focus less on the visual elements, and more on auditory elements. </p>
<p>If a child’s perception of what they see can be so influenced by what they hear, then their sensory environment may matter a great deal. Our findings suggest that, for remote lessons at least, children may actually benefit from working with headphones on or earphones in – to avoid competing, confusing auditory stimuli.</p>
<p>In any case, next time you want to conceal how you really feel from your child, it may be worth remembering that it’s your voice that will betray you – not your face or your body language.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154152/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paddy Ross does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rather than putting on a ‘brave face’, parents might be better putting on a ‘brave voice’ to conceal their emotions.Paddy Ross, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1427142020-07-20T19:49:26Z2020-07-20T19:49:26ZYes, women outnumber men at university. But they still earn less after they leave<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348302/original/file-20200720-37-jx0t47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/university-students-cooperation-their-assignment-library-513707488">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his best-selling book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2612.The_Tipping_Point">The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference</a>, Canadian journalist <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/105251-the-tipping-point-is-that-magic-moment-when-an-idea">Malcolm Gladwell describes</a> a tipping point as “that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behaviour crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire”.</p>
<p>For women and their education, that point happened sometime in the 1970s. Perhaps it was triggered by Gough Whitlam’s nation modernisation, including making <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/gough-whitlams-free-university-education-reforms-led-to-legacy-of-no-upfront-fees-20141021-119bws.html">university free</a>. </p>
<p>Whatever the tipping point, female enrolments went from one in three at the beginning of the 1970s to <a href="https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/time_series_data_1949_-_2000.pdf">reaching parity just over a decade later</a>. In 1987, for the first time, women made up the majority of enrolments — now, they <a href="https://www.education.gov.au/selected-higher-education-statistics-2018-student-data">make up 55.5%</a>. This figure has been <a href="https://www.iie.org/Research-and-Insights/Publications/Women-on-the-Move-The-Gender-Dimensions-of-Academic-Mobility#:%7E:text=Women%20now%20make%20up%20the,number%20women%20in%2057%20countries.&text=When%20it%20comes%20to%20earning,44%20percent.">emulated across western democracies</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/there-are-fewer-males-at-university-so-should-they-be-an-equity-group-46319">There are fewer males at university, so should they be an equity group?</a>
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<p>But besides these gains being made in higher education, a fundamental unfairness remains: while women value education more highly, and see it as a strategy for economic security, men still outperform women after they graduate in terms of both salary and seniority.</p>
<h2>Why women outnumber men at university</h2>
<p>Much has been written about the feminisation of higher education; the issue of whether <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-are-fewer-males-at-university-so-should-they-be-an-equity-group-46319">men should be considered an equity group</a> has been raised many times over the years too. </p>
<p>While women in non-traditional disciplines such as STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) <a href="https://docs.education.gov.au/node/53025">are officially still an equity group in Australia</a>, men are not, despite their under-representation in every discipline (with the exception of <a href="https://www.sciencegenderequity.org.au/gender-equity-in-stem/">STEM</a>).</p>
<p>For every 100 women enrolled in university in Australia, there are just 72 men. And once there, <a href="https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiM2MwMWQ2ZDMtNGViNy00Mjc5LThkOTgtNzJhMmM5ZDQwYWUxIiwidCI6ImRkMGNmZDE1LTQ1NTgtNGIxMi04YmFkLWVhMjY5ODRmYzQxNyJ9">men are more likely to drop out</a>. Government data shows while 65.5% of female students who enrolled in 2013 <a href="https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiM2MwMWQ2ZDMtNGViNy00Mjc5LThkOTgtNzJhMmM5ZDQwYWUxIiwidCI6ImRkMGNmZDE1LTQ1NTgtNGIxMi04YmFkLWVhMjY5ODRmYzQxNyJ9">completed their degree within six years</a>, the figure was only 60.3% for men.</p>
<p>Of course, the drivers behind the dramatic expansion of women’s attendance in higher education are a complex interplay of social, cultural and economic factors.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/isaac-newton-invented-calculus-in-self-isolation-during-the-great-plague-he-didnt-have-kids-to-look-after-137076">Isaac Newton invented calculus in self-isolation during the Great Plague. He didn't have kids to look after</a>
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<p>A potted history of the past five decades would point to the rise in feminism and its attendant changes in attitudes about women’s role in the home. It would include the contraceptive pill, which reduced the number of children women had while increasing the age at which they had them. </p>
<p>It would also address advances in technology which, to a degree, freed women from the drudgery of manual housework. </p>
<p>And it would include structural changes in the economy in the 1980s which saw a rapid decline in the number and types of unskilled jobs available to women. Secretaries and stenographers became occupations of a bygone era while nursing and teaching were professionalised requiring degrees as entry-level qualifications.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/06/03/2002861117">recent study</a> found the combination of reading proficiency at 15 years old and social attitudes towards women attending universities could predict gendered enrolment patterns five years later. Looking at 447,000 students across OECD countries the researchers found, unsurprisingly, more girls than boys enrolled in universities in nations</p>
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<p>in which citizens had less discriminatory attitudes towards girls’ university education and in which girls performed well in reading.</p>
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<h2>And yet, women remain worse off</h2>
<p>The feminisation of higher education is an important issue, given the well-documented personal and social benefits that come from a degree: higher salaries, better health outcomes, stronger levels of community engagement and lower levels of criminal behaviours, to name a few.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348287/original/file-20200720-33-wmwp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348287/original/file-20200720-33-wmwp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348287/original/file-20200720-33-wmwp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348287/original/file-20200720-33-wmwp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348287/original/file-20200720-33-wmwp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348287/original/file-20200720-33-wmwp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348287/original/file-20200720-33-wmwp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348287/original/file-20200720-33-wmwp5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Male dominated careers, like construction, are still valued more highly than those occupied by women.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/two-business-man-construction-site-engineer-626410364">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>And yet, a <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/report/risks-and-rewards-when-is-vocational-education-a-good-alternative-to-higher-education/">2019 Grattan Institute report</a> found female university graduates are expected to earn 27% less than men – A$750,000 – over their career. The gender pay gap is down slightly from 30% a decade earlier.</p>
<p>So herein lies the dilemma: a <a href="https://www.wgea.gov.au/topics/the-gender-pay-gap">stubborn gender pay gap</a> and men <a href="https://www.wgea.gov.au/topics/about-workplace-gender-equality">moving up the career ladder</a> more steeply than women, even in female-dominated sectors such as health care and education.</p>
<p>Why is it <a href="https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/causes-gender-inequality/">women fail to capitalise</a> on their higher-level educational attainment relative to men? </p>
<p>The reasons are complex but solvable. One includes self-selecting segregation (half of all female commencements each year are in feminised, lower-paid sectors such as teaching nursing, childcare and humanities) while men outnumber women in two fields only — <a href="https://melbourne-cshe.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/2894718/Gender-Enrolment-Trends-F-Larkins-Sep-2018.pdf">engineering and IT</a>.</p>
<p>Then there’s the issue of built-in bias as to how certain careers are valued (childcare pays poorly but construction well); social expectations around child rearing; recruitment practices and self-perpetuating corporate cultures to name a new.</p>
<p>As COVID-19 has laid bare, there is strong undercurrent in <a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-19-has-laid-bare-how-much-we-value-womens-work-and-how-little-we-pay-for-it-136042">our society of devaluing “women’s” work</a> even though that work is essential to the successful running of an economy. It’s a bitter pill to swallow.</p>
<p>And there’s the fact more women leave full-time work to bring up children. While the number of women staying in the workforce has increased in recent years thanks to a universal paid-parental leave scheme, <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/4125.0%7ESep%202018%7EMain%20Features%7EEconomic%20Security%7E4">at the age of 35</a> 80% of men are engaged in the workforce full-time compared to only 40% of women</p>
<p>It is not until their 50s that 50% of women are back in the workforce full time. And this is too late for most to accrue independent wealth to see them through their retirement years should their marriage go bust.</p>
<p>What that also means is there is a significant percentage <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-26/age-discrimination-searching-for-work-in-your-50s/10520134">of older women who are part-time, unemployed, or underemployed</a>.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the government’s proposed changes to tuition fee subsidies (with STEM courses costing less than most in the humanities) have attracted <a href="https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/university-fee-changes-could-see-young-women-saddled-with-more-debt-for-decades-to-come/">media attention</a> in part because they look set to benefit men while negatively impacting women.</p>
<p>Whether this an intentional form of policy bias to improve higher education participation among men is unlikely. However, it brings us back to the question of whether men should be considered an equity group.</p>
<p>The answer for the time being at least is a robust no. Firstly, men are not being squeezed out of university places just because there are more women — they are making choices based on the opportunities available to them. </p>
<p>And men have, by and large, access to more well-paying career paths that don’t require a university degree. Trades, for example, <a href="https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/au/pdf/2018/is-tertiary-education-worth-it.pdf">continue to be male dominated</a> and maybe because of the gendered way in which our society values work, can be well-rewarded, unlike similar occupations for women. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-you-have-a-low-atar-you-could-earn-more-doing-a-vet-course-than-a-uni-degree-if-youre-a-man-121624">If you have a low ATAR, you could earn more doing a VET course than a uni degree – if you're a man</a>
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<p>Women also have to contend with the gender pay gap, interrupted careers and fewer opportunities to enter leadership positions. Because they make the “choice” in a partnership to be the primary carer, women almost never make it up again financially when they go back into the workforce.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142714/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Hare is involved with the 50/50 by 2030 Foundation with the University of Canberra.</span></em></p>Women make up around 55% of enrolments at university. But men are not at a disadvantage. They outperform women after they graduate in terms of both salary and seniority.Julie Hare, Honorary Fellow, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/837522017-11-20T02:25:59Z2017-11-20T02:25:59ZDiapers, potties and split pants: Understanding toilet training around the world may help parents relax<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195246/original/file-20171117-19245-1c14v0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chill: There's no one right way.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/david_martin_foto/24073729359">David D</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Are two-year-olds too young to start toilet training?</p>
<p>For many children, yes. Especially boys. At least, that’s what American pediatricians would likely say. Nowadays, only <a href="http://www.aafp.org/afp/2008/1101/p1059.html">around half of children in the U.S.</a> are fully toilet-trained by age three.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195240/original/file-20171117-19320-ipdm73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195240/original/file-20171117-19320-ipdm73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195240/original/file-20171117-19320-ipdm73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195240/original/file-20171117-19320-ipdm73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195240/original/file-20171117-19320-ipdm73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195240/original/file-20171117-19320-ipdm73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195240/original/file-20171117-19320-ipdm73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195240/original/file-20171117-19320-ipdm73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Split pants let a Chinese boy go when he needs to.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chinese_boy_with_open_rear_pants_closeup.jpg">Daniel Case</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Chinese grandmothers would be appalled. They’d likely point out that with “split pants,” most kids are trained by age two. This traditional wardrobe item features an opening along the crotch seam, allowing children to urinate and defecate freely without soiling their clothes. These garments remain the pants style of choice for toddlers living in the Chinese countryside.</p>
<p>Parenting advice about divergent toilet-training methods (not to mention plenty of other child-rearing questions) is typically dished out as if it were the only reasonable, reliable option. Nowadays, parents are confronted with guidance claimed to be scientifically founded, and presented as relevant to all children, even when different strategies are in direct conflict with each other. With over 2,000 parenting advice books in print in English – and, along with so many parenting blogs, there’s even a <a href="https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/great-parenting-blogs-through-the-ages">parody of the genre</a> – it’s easy to see why many modern parents feel confused about how to raise their children.</p>
<p>As an anthropologist, I’ve been studying child-rearing practices around the world for 25 years. Living with my husband (writer Philip Graham) in small villages in the rainforest of West Africa for extended periods convinced me that we humans are a resilient species, able to thrive in so many distinctive settings. Discovering the incredible diversity of ways to raise children inspired us to rethink and change some of our own family’s child-rearing practices (around bed-sharing, independence and household tasks, for instance).</p>
<p>There’s no one-size-fits-all model of child-rearing advice for all the world’s parents. To spread this message, my colleagues and I collaborated on the book “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316480625">A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Eight Societies</a>,” based on our own and others’ long-term ethnographic fieldwork in places ranging from Israel and the Palestinian territories to China, Portugal, Peru, Denmark, Côte d'Ivoire and a Somali-American community in Minneapolis. By presenting multiple solutions to the commonest challenges facing parents, we hope to provide a bit of a tonic for parents, to assure them that there’s more than one path to raising a well-adjusted child.</p>
<h2>Toilet training from birth?</h2>
<p>So, why do parents choose a given child-rearing practice? Often, it comes down to money and availability. Let’s revisit that question about toilet training.</p>
<p>In Côte d'Ivoire, Beng mothers begin training their infants’ bowels a few days after birth. They administer enemas twice daily, beginning the day a newborn’s dried-out umbilical cord stump drops off. By the time the little one is a few months old, caregivers shouldn’t have to worry about him pooping during the day at all.</p>
<p>What could account for such a seemingly extreme practice? For one thing, disposable diapers are unavailable in Beng villages – and throughout much of the global south. Moreover, even if they were sold in local markets, few subsistence-farming families could afford them. (And the planet can’t afford them, either. Environmentalists calculate that “disposable” diapers constitute the <a href="http://realdiapers.org/diaper-facts">third-largest single consumer item in landfills</a>, and their <a href="http://www.peggyomara.com/2014/01/16/a-tale-of-two-diapers/">production requires some 7 billion gallons of oil each year</a>.)</p>
<p>But availability and affordability tell only part of the story. The structure of labor plus deep-seated values also shape parents’ choices.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195254/original/file-20171117-19320-u89aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195254/original/file-20171117-19320-u89aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195254/original/file-20171117-19320-u89aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195254/original/file-20171117-19320-u89aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195254/original/file-20171117-19320-u89aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195254/original/file-20171117-19320-u89aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195254/original/file-20171117-19320-u89aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195254/original/file-20171117-19320-u89aa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A Beng babysitter carrying a young charge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alma Gottlieb</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>In Côte d'Ivoire (as elsewhere across sub-Saharan Africa), Beng babies spend most of their days attached to someone’s back. Often, that someone is not the mother – who is working in her fields, producing crops to feed her large family. Beng society (unlike traditional Chinese society) also rates all feces (including those of babies) as disgusting, and the thought of a baby pooping on someone’s back produces revulsion.</p>
<p>Given the local attitude toward feces, no potential babysitter would take care of a child likely to poop on her back while being carried. Hence, starting potty-training from birth aims to help a mother get her farmwork done. In that sense, early toilet-training promotes an adequate food supply for a mother’s family.</p>
<p>A Western observer might shrink in horror from this practice, imagining long-lasting emotional maladjustments from early trauma. But, discounting the ravages of poverty that challenge health and deny educational and economic opportunity, these very early toilet-trained babies appear to grow into just as happy and well-adjusted adults as diaper-wearing children might become.</p>
<h2>Context counts for what works</h2>
<p>In motivation, this practice may not even be as exotic as it might appear to a non-Beng reader. In the U.S., women’s labor needs may also dictate potty-training schedules, albeit with a later timeline. Many daycare centers accept only children who are fully potty-trained. If a working mother lacks both in-home daycare options and babysitting relatives, she may work frantically to potty-train her toddler as soon as possible, so she may return to full-time paid work.</p>
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<span class="caption">This Palestinian girl cares for her baby brother as part of the extended ‘hamula’ family who raise children collectively whenever possible.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bree Akesson</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>For stay-at-home moms, or working moms who have nearby relatives to care for their child, different life situations may dictate toilet-training decisions. In the Palestinian territories, for instance, many women start toilet-training around 14 or 15 months. They’re able to start early because they aren’t working outside the home, so they have the time. On the other hand, a Palestininan working woman may start toilet-training later, maybe around age two. In this case, women in the extended family (“hamula”) would care for the child while the mother worked, so no daycare rule compels early toilet-training.</p>
<p>Once we explore the local context of people’s daily lives, seemingly exotic or even abusive practices – split pants, infant enemas – suddenly seem far less so. Opening the minds of worried new parents to “other” ways of raising children may assuage fears that if they fail to “do the right thing,” their children will be doomed. Through exploring comparative commode customs, along with many other parenting practices, it’s clear there are many “right ways” to raise a child.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83752/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alma Gottlieb is a Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Visiting Scholar in Anthropology at Brown University. She is on the advisory boards for the following organizations: Cape Verdean-American Community Development (Pawtucket, RI); World Affairs Council of Rhode Island; Cape Verdean-Jewish Annual Seder (Boston); and IndivisibleRI. She is on the Editorial Board of the following scholarly journals: AnthropoChildren: Perspectives Ethnographiques sur les Enfants & l'Enfance/Ethnographic Perspectives in Children & Childhood; Anthropology and Education Quarterly; Anthropology Today; and Mande Studies. Since 1979, she has received funding from the following agencies: Jacobs Foundation (Zurich), European Commission/U.S. Department of Education, National Endowment for the Humanities, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, American Association of University Women, and Social Science Research Council. She is co-founder and co-director (with Philip Graham) of the Beng Community Fund, a non-profit, 501 (c) (3) organization to benefit the Beng community of Côte d’Ivoire.</span></em></p>Opening the minds of worried new parents to other ways of raising children may assuage fears that if they fail to ‘do the right thing,’ their children will be doomed.Alma Gottlieb, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, African Studies, and Gender and Women's Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/807272017-07-20T23:30:30Z2017-07-20T23:30:30ZParents who worry about their children’s sleep problems at risk of depression<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178294/original/file-20170714-14296-1l6aq3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Up to 30 per cent of young children suffer from sleep problems</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Waking up in the night. Waking early. Trouble falling asleep. Behavioural sleep problems like these affect 20 to 30 per cent of young children. </p>
<p>Much research has focused on the negative effects of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097/YCO.0000000000000109">children’s behavioural sleep problems on their own wellbeing</a>. But less attention has been paid to the effects of children’s sleep problems on their parents. </p>
<p>Some studies have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.107.6.1317">linked maternal depression to infant sleep problems</a>, with depression scores decreasing <a href="https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2007-3783">after nurses have helped mothers improve infants’ sleep</a>. Only minimal attention has been given to the <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12160-016-9815-7">effects of infants’ sleep problems on fathers</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-017-1284-x">Analyzing data from Canadian parents,</a> our research team wanted to examine links between their thinking about sleep problems, mothers’ and fathers’ sleep quality, parental fatigue and depression in the context of infants’ behavioural sleep problems. </p>
<p>After an intervention for infants’ sleep problems, we found that mothers’ depression was associated with their sleep quality, fatigue and thoughts about infant sleep. (These thoughts included doubts about managing infant sleep, anger about infants’ sleep and setting limits around infants’ sleep). Fathers’ depression was linked with their sleep quality, fatigue and thoughts about infant sleep (doubts about managing infant sleep, and setting limits around infants’ sleep). </p>
<p>Sleep quality and fatigue are often viewed as <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5172/jamh.2012.10.3.277">symptoms of maternal depression</a>. These findings are therefore important because paternal depression has been examined less often and parental thoughts about infant sleep have been largely overlooked. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178509/original/file-20170717-6075-1v9dx4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178509/original/file-20170717-6075-1v9dx4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178509/original/file-20170717-6075-1v9dx4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178509/original/file-20170717-6075-1v9dx4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178509/original/file-20170717-6075-1v9dx4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178509/original/file-20170717-6075-1v9dx4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178509/original/file-20170717-6075-1v9dx4l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Spending quality time with infants during the day can help reduce parents’ concerns about neglecting their children at night.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Parental thoughts about infant sleep influence whether they are comfortable with helping their children learn to soothe themselves back to sleep. These thoughts also influence whether parents feel they are neglecting their responsibilities if they are not consistently getting up at night to respond to their children. </p>
<p>Without assistance with both their thoughts and infants’ sleep problems, parents can end up questioning their competence to care for their children or thinking they are bad parents. </p>
<p>Parents were excluded from participating in our study if they were diagnosed with or being treated for depression. Despite this, we found that, before the intervention, about half of the mothers and one-third of fathers reported high depressive symptoms. This decreased to 18 per cent of mothers and about 15 per cent of fathers following the intervention. </p>
<p>We also found that almost 30 per cent of mothers and 19 per cent of fathers reported depression scores that indicated clinically significant depression. After the intervention, that decreased to nine per cent of mothers and eight per cent of fathers. </p>
<p>These findings suggest that parents experienced depression directly associated with infants’ sleep problems, which was improved by an intervention to reduce infants’ problems. </p>
<h2>Tips for parents</h2>
<p>How can parents prevent or reduce their feelings of depression? </p>
<p>Parents need an opportunity to discuss their expectations and thoughts about infant sleep problems and manage them with a supportive care provider. It is important for parents trying to manage infant sleep problems to acknowledge their needs in addition to those of their children. </p>
<p>Healthy infants who are older than six months and feeding well during the day do not need to wake frequently at night to feed or have their parents resettle them several times a night. </p>
<p>Parents who are trying to help their infants learn to self-soothe are improving their infants’ wellbeing by preventing longer-term sleep problems linked to increased risk for children’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097/YCO.0000000000000109">psychological problems</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2147/NSS.S125992">cognitive difficulties</a> and <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.5665%2Fsleep.6234">obesity</a>. At the same time, parents are also improving their own sleep, fatigue and wellbeing. </p>
<p>The best way to prevent parental depression is for parents to seek reputable assistance for infants’ behavioural sleep problems rather than hoping children will “grow out of them.” </p>
<h2>Family and friends can help</h2>
<p>For parents living with a partner, taking turns to manage infant sleep problems can permit the other parent to get some uninterrupted sleep, which is important. Enlisting support from family members and friends so that parents can get more rest can also reduce parents’ risks of depression. </p>
<p>Spending quality time with infants during the day and on weekends can help parents appreciate the loving and supportive relationships they have with their children and reduce their concerns about neglecting their children during the night.</p>
<p>Parental depression is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2009.10.005">linked to more intrusive or withdrawn parenting interactions with children</a> and maternal depression has been <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/imhj.20199">linked with paternal stress, depression, and poorer interactions between fathers and children</a>. So it is important for parents to share with each other and care providers when they are feeling down and having difficulty focusing on regular caregiving activities. </p>
<p>Parents’ thoughts about infant sleep problems can contribute to their feelings of depression before, and even after, an intervention to help infants sleep better. Helping parents manage their children’s behavioural sleep problems can improve the quality of infants’ and parents’ lives alike.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80727/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wendy Hall has received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for this work. </span></em></p>Children’s sleep problems can affect not only their own wellbeing, but that of their parents. Helping parents manage these problems can also reduce their own risk of depression.Wendy Hall, Professor, Associate Director Graduate Programs, UBC School of Nursing, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/589812016-05-23T19:41:00Z2016-05-23T19:41:00ZHow diversity and change has made the Australian family stronger than ever<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123501/original/image-20160523-9543-d5wi71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Blended, rainbow, single or two-parents are just some of the ways to make a modern family.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nostalgia is a powerful force in how we think about family. There is a persistent myth that family structures were better in the past; that the “golden age” of marriage is over, and the family is in decline. Historical and sociological research tells a different story. </p>
<p>There were dramatic changes to ideals and practices of family life across the 20th century. The five decades between the end of the first world war and the 1970s saw the triumph of ideals about <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137328625">mutuality in love and romance</a>. Ordinary people could afford to marry for love, rather than on the basis of economic strategy. In the 1950s, more people married than ever before and married young. </p>
<p>As many historians have observed, this all changed in the 1970s. The sexual revolution introduced new ideals about love, sex and relationships. Sex could be separated from love and marriage. No longer bound to life-long monogamy, sex could be viewed as “a rewarding form of play”.</p>
<p>This loosening of the bounds of sex and marriage was enabled by significant social, medical and political changes: the contraceptive pill, safer access to abortion, no-fault divorce. The new attitudes to women, reproduction and marriage that underpinned and emerged the sexual revolution also altered understandings of the family. </p>
<h2>Did the sexual revolution destroy the family?</h2>
<p>The significance of marriage certainly changed. Marriage no longer regulates social life as was once the ideal. It is no longer the reason most people leave home and establish their own household, start a career, and embark on adulthood. Now, it’s something people contemplate after having achieved those goals.</p>
<p>Marriage is no longer the structure in which people expect to make their sexual debut. It is not necessarily the structure in which people have and raise children. Nor is it the structure in which many people expect to live out their final years.</p>
<p>However, marriage is far from being “over”. Demographic research reveals that the profile of family life in Australia has been remarkably stable for the last 20 years.</p>
<p>People are marrying later, but marriages lasting slightly longer. Almost all couples live together before marrying (almost 80%). And marriages are becoming more equal.</p>
<p>US historian Stephanie Coontz recently reissued her study of the American family, <a href="http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/books/thewayweneverwere/">The Way We Never Were</a>. Coontz suggests the ongoing claims of social conservatives that the family is in crisis are not well-founded.</p>
<p>While divorce rates are high, they are actually falling. And divorce isn’t necessarily bad for families. Coontz found that after the introduction of no-fault divorce, suicide rates of wives plummeted, and so did rates of domestic violence.</p>
<p>Despite more women engaging in paid work, parents have actually increased the amount of time spent on child care. Women’s hours of child care have increased slightly, and men’s have tripled. While women still do more domestic work, the combined hours of paid and domestic work for men and women are similar. Men tend to increase their hours of paid work after having children.</p>
<p>This increase in equality in the home appears to be good for couples. Coontz found:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… heterosexual couples who share housework and childcare equally now report the highest levels of marital and sexual satisfaction – and the most frequent sex.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Anecdotal evidence suggests that marriage is actually increasing in popularity. Rather than life-long heterosexual monogamy being the only family ideal, new family values have emerged. Most Australians now recognise and value rainbow, blended and diverse family structures.</p>
<p>So rather than the sexual revolution having undermined the family, it appears that the family is thriving. Our family values have changed, though. For most Australians, marriage is no longer a ritual that initiates a family, but something contemplated when the family has become established.</p>
<h2>Have our politicians kept up with changes to the family?</h2>
<p>Families are always spoken about in politics as homogeneous, unchanging and timeless. </p>
<p>The last 50 years have seen the development of a range of “ideal” families. The vast majority of Australians now support marriage equality for LGBT people, recognising the dignity of value of existing LGBT families. </p>
<p>It’s time for our political leaders to catch up.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>See our megagraphic on the changing shape of Australian families <a href="http://theconversation.com/how-we-live-now-australian-families-at-a-glance-59680">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy W. Jones receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Research Theology Foundation Incorporated. He is a committee member of the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives. </span></em></p>It’s tempting to look back nostagically when thinking about the idea of the “family”, but the evidence shows that it’s strong, functional and flourishing.Timothy W. Jones, Senior Lecturer in History, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/586312016-05-05T19:46:20Z2016-05-05T19:46:20ZWhat’s Mother’s Day if you’ve been born in a machine and raised by robots?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121116/original/image-20160504-1305-awn20n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C185%2C3254%2C2375&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Could a robot raise a child without the need for a mother?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Linda Bucklin </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As far-fetched as it may seem today, there are a couple of compelling reasons why some humans may one day be born without either a mother or father as we now know them, and with no other humans around to bring them up.</p>
<p>The first is the uninhabitable Earth scenario: doomsday. This is the idea that one day <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141230-apocalypse-when">our planet will not be able to support human life</a>.</p>
<p>This may be due to catastrophic climate change brought on by <a href="http://www.physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=97">a large asteroid or comet impact</a>, a nuclear winter following a <a href="http://bigthink.com/dangerous-ideas/5-stephen-hawkings-warning-abandon-earth-or-face-extinction">global nuclear war</a> or <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Bill-Gates-fear-infectious-disease/2015/05/27/id/647134/">a pandemic so severe</a> that humans do not survive.</p>
<p>Whatever the cause of our demise, if humans want to ultimately survive and one day re-emerge, it makes sense to store the building blocks of people – ovum and sperm – ready for a resurrection of the human race once our planet is habitable again.</p>
<p>There are already <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34658200">gene banks around the world</a> that have been created to store plant seeds for just this kind of eventuality.</p>
<p>The second scenario is the interstellar spaceship idea, where spacecraft are launched from our solar system to nearby stars in search of potentially habitable planets.</p>
<p>In this <a href="http://www.jbis.org.uk/paper.php?p=2012.65.283">form of galactic colonisation</a>, new humans are only created if the planets found are suitable. This is a common theme in science fiction and was a core part of the story in the recent <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/">Interstellar movie</a> where 5,000 embryos were sent in the Endurance spacecraft.</p>
<p>In both scenarios, there is an assumption that humans can be automatically conceived, survive gestation in a machine, and be born and raised to live an independent life.</p>
<p>They will then be able to have their own children and hence ensure the ongoing survival of the human species. The current best bet for this to succeed <a href="http://www.academia.edu/17916712/Robots_and_humans_in_space_flight_Technology_evolution_and_interplanetary_travel">is to use robots</a> as surrogate parents for the first generation of new humans. </p>
<p>But how realistic is this? Do we have the technology now, or will we in the near future?</p>
<h2>Gestation in a machine</h2>
<p>There are three stages in the development of a human embryo and foetus that need to be considered when automating the process.</p>
<p>The first is in vitro fertilisation (IVF), which is already routinely carried out in a lab. Fully automating the IVF process is <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22480821">plausible in the near future</a> and is already desired to improve outcomes for potential parents today. Even if such technology did not exist, this step could be bypassed by using already fertilised eggs. </p>
<p>Scientists have already taken the first step towards this by showing that embryos can be grown in the lab for <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/health-36202622">two weeks after fertilization</a>.</p>
<p>The second stage is that of early gestation, prior to around 22 to 24 weeks gestation, when a foetus does not have viable lungs. During this time, the embryo would need to be housed in an artificial uterus.</p>
<p>Maybe surprisingly to many, there has been much research into the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/12/feminists-get-ready-pregnancy-and-abortion-are-about-to-be-disrupted">development of artificial wombs</a>, a field of science is known as <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ectogenesis">ectogenesis</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120743/original/image-20160430-28116-rsu0gf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120743/original/image-20160430-28116-rsu0gf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120743/original/image-20160430-28116-rsu0gf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120743/original/image-20160430-28116-rsu0gf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120743/original/image-20160430-28116-rsu0gf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1236&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120743/original/image-20160430-28116-rsu0gf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1236&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120743/original/image-20160430-28116-rsu0gf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1236&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Diagram of the artificial womb concept by Emanuel M Greenberg, 1955.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US2723660A">US Patent Office</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In fact, Emanuel Greenberg patented <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US2723660A">an artificial womb in 1955</a>. His invention contains all the apparatus he thought would be required to grow a baby. There is no evidence that such a machine was ever constructed.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.nexthumanproject.com/references/Artificial_Wombs_NY_Academy_Sciences.pdf">2011 paper, Dr Carlo Bulletti and colleagues</a> re-evaluated the chances of a laboratory uterus that would supply nutrients and oxygen to an incubated foetus and would be capable of disposing of waste materials.</p>
<p>They concluded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] the growth and development of fetuses between 14 and 35 weeks of pregnancy is within reach given our current knowledge and existing technical tools.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This leaves the first 14 weeks of gestation as a currently unresolved issue, but there are researchers working on the problem who have shown <a href="https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/06/12/artificial-wombs-the-coming-era-of-motherless-births/">some limited success using goat embryos</a>.</p>
<p>The final phase of foetal development can already be managed outside a mother’s womb. If a baby is born after 26 weeks in a modern hospital, it has <a href="http://www.babycenter.com/0_whats-the-outlook-for-premature-babies-born-before-28-31-33_10300031.bc?showAll=true">very good chance of survival</a>.</p>
<p>Given all of this progress in the science of artificially keeping a baby alive, it is not total science fiction to think that babies will be grown and born from machines in the future. </p>
<p>The drive to develop such technology is not coming from an impending doomsday scenario but from the common desire of people to want to have children.</p>
<h2>Child rearing by robots</h2>
<p>Once a robot has grown a baby, birthing will likely be easy. It may be as simple as opening a door on a machine and cutting the umbilical cord. </p>
<p>But how would such a child be raised? As most parents discover, birthing a baby is only just the beginning! The next 18-plus years of nurturing develop personality, character and humanity.</p>
<p>You may think that all children have been raised by people, but there is some evidence of a few cases of non-human parents. These are the stories of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/julia-fullerton-batten-feral-children_us_56098e95e4b0dd85030893a9">so-called feral children</a> who were raised by animals. </p>
<p>The concept of being brought up without human parents has fascinated people from many cultures for millennia. One myth of the founding of Rome begins with the twins babies <a href="http://www.ancient.eu/Romulus_and_Remus/">Romulus and Remus</a> being lost in the wilderness. They were found and suckled by wolves and then fed by birds until rescued by humans.</p>
<p>Mowgli from <a href="http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/bookmart_fra.htm">The Jungle Book</a> was raised by a menagerie of animals, and <a href="http://www.tarzan.org/">Tarzan</a> was brought up by apes.</p>
<p>Supposedly true stories of children raised by animals in the modern era are <a href="http://www.smashinglists.com/10-feral-human-children-raised-by-animals/">popular around the world</a>. Many are clearly hoaxes, but some are real. It has been estimated that there are <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/animalpeople/children-raised-as-animal:-what-can-we-learn/6750632">4,000 plausible cases</a> of children being away from other humans and growing up for some period without human contact.</p>
<p>Scientists have studied the effects of such experiences on these children and observed that, unsurprisingly, they suffered an <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/07/18/1153166383022.html">initial inability to communicate</a> that was impossible to fully remedy after proper human contact. For our smart robot parents this would not be a problem, as they would speak to and teach their infants language, as human parents do now.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120742/original/image-20160430-28141-1kewgs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120742/original/image-20160430-28141-1kewgs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120742/original/image-20160430-28141-1kewgs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120742/original/image-20160430-28141-1kewgs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120742/original/image-20160430-28141-1kewgs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120742/original/image-20160430-28141-1kewgs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120742/original/image-20160430-28141-1kewgs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120742/original/image-20160430-28141-1kewgs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A robot nanny is nothing knew: Tinker was created by Yorkshire inventor David Weston in the 1960s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Weston</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A robot parent would have a huge library of human cultural knowledge for their growing children to read, listen and watch. For example, the lack of a normal human family life could be compensated for by watching television soap operas such as <a href="http://tenplay.com.au/channel-eleven/neighbours">Neighbours</a>. Other television series and movies could be used to show various aspects of human behaviour.</p>
<p>There’s even the possibility of a Superman-inspired <a href="http://superman.wikia.com/wiki/The_Fortress_of_Solitude">fortress of solitude</a> holographic projector with human avatars could educate on ethics and morality, as well as the history of Earth.</p>
<p>The selection of which cultural traditions, ways of thinking and acting, and knowledge is presented to children and at what time is an age-old dilemma for any parent – human or robot. This would be a problem, but not a new one.</p>
<p>Some robots are already being marketed as being <a href="https://www.inverse.com/article/3713-only-the-worst-parents-ever-would-get-their-kids-a-robot-babysitter">able to babysit children</a>. For many human parents, the electronic babysitter, television, and more recently “learning” <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/08/are-tablet-computers-bad-young-children">through iPads</a> has been a popular temporary relief from parenting duties.</p>
<p>There have been calls that use of robots and iPads to help raise children is <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/attachments/115726/child-development-robots.pdf">ethically questionable</a>. But in the end-of-species scenario we are considering here, these dilemmas are less relevant than the greater ethical question of whether we ought to keep the human species going <a href="http://www.vhemt.org/">beyond our natural use-by date</a>?</p>
<p>So it does seem possible that robots could one day create new humans and raise them to adulthood.</p>
<p>But would such humans see their robot parents as a mother and father in the traditional sense we know today? That would depend on whether we could teach them to have an emotional connection with their robot carers, enough that they’d one day want to celebrate Mother’s Day (and Father’s Day) with them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58631/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Roberts is an Associate Investigator with the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision and is a human father of two human children and numerous robot creations.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly Greenop receives research funding from The University of Queensland, and consultancy work to industry on both the evaluation of people's responses to buildings, and 3D laser scanning.
She is the human mother of two children and has no wish to be replaced by a robot.</span></em></p>In the future some humans may be born without either a mother or father as we now know them, and with no other humans around to bring them up.Jonathan Roberts, Professor in Robotics, Queensland University of TechnologyKelly Greenop, Lecturer in Architecture, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/467002015-09-09T10:19:29Z2015-09-09T10:19:29ZTo see why attitudes on having children have changed, look at…New Yorker cartoons?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93812/original/image-20150903-8793-izl5oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Researchers pored through 70,439 New Yorker cartoons. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/amalee/3278839935/in/photolist-5ZJUT2-5pEUSQ-5VDAig-561kiC-dbJ7R3-55W9eB-paBcbw-561kQS-8ZQzFz-8ZTFTJ-561kBw-8ZQBii-8ZTGsN-8ZTHoW-nZjCxY-nGVBrX-oFrUUV-vmwzjh-55W8Na-8ZTED1-8ZTEJd-8ZQBYc-8ZTGFN-8ZTHuL-8ZQC7H-8ZTH61-8ZQz52-8ZTHeC-8ZQzMg-8ZQASD-8ZQB8t-6gyrys-8AUQMt-8AXZiQ-nXnSLq-6tyWv8-8y83jG-dbJ69n-9v5b2C-7Wpcfu-6zCg9C-4Mi9nJ-6cNUD9-561kKQ-55W954-fcryza-5ZANNA-56aBdr-5Cm8dY-561kME">amy bernier/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the 1980s, sociologist Viviana Zelizer <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5452.html">proclaimed</a> that we were living in the age of the “priceless” child. </p>
<p>She noted that in the late 19th century, children were valued primarily for their economic contributions to their families, and to society at large. But by the early 20th century – and in the wake of child labor laws and declining rates of child mortality – the value of children started to be defined in sentimental terms. </p>
<p>Today, in an era of obsessive child-proofing and Amber Alerts and princess-themed birthday parties, the idea of the priceless child is easy to grasp. It can also be seen in the constant hovering of “helicopter” parents, ready to swoop in at a moment’s notice to protect their little darlings from harm, even minor inconvenience. </p>
<p>Yet popular culture also abounds with more complex – even overtly negative – portrayals of children and childrearing. We might think of the little terrors depicted in television shows like Toddlers and Tiaras and Super Nanny. Then there are the foul-mouthed pranksters of Southpark and The Simpsons. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10826-013-9716-3">scholars</a>, <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/howtoraiseanadult/julielythcotthaims">educators</a>, and <a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1940697,00.html">journalists</a> have all raised concerns about the consequences of constant hovering, both for parents’ stress levels and for the fate of their overly-doted-on kids.</p>
<p>These more complex depictions of children and childrearing led us to our research questions. </p>
<p>First: Are contemporary social attitudes toward children and childrearing as uniformly positive as scholars like Viviana Zelizer suggest? Or are they more varied? </p>
<p>And second: Have changes in social attitudes toward children and childrearing followed the linear and positive trajectory that Zelizer describes, or have they evolved in more complex ways? To answer these questions, we decided to do a content analysis of New Yorker cartoons. </p>
<p>You might wonder: why, of all the mediums to study, would we choose to analyze the cartoons of a literary magazine? </p>
<p>Well, for one, cartoons are great for <a href="http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/53/4/482.short">tapping into taboo attitudes</a> – like negative perceptions of children and childrearing – that might not be revealed in surveys. And second, educated elites – like <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7Eug02/newyorker/audience.html">those who read the New Yorker</a> – are <a href="http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/patterson/files/cricket_asr_final.pdf">often at the forefront of trends</a>. </p>
<p>We started with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Cartoons-Yorker-Robert-Mankoff/dp/1579126200">The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker</a>, which contains all of the cartoons published in the magazine from 1925-2006 (70,439 cartoons). We then used the cartoon index to identify all the images depicting or relating to children or childrearing (6,199 cartoons). Next, we coded each image’s attitude toward children and childrearing. </p>
<p>This involved two steps. First, we identified which cartoons took a “critical” stance on children or childrearing and which did not. Then we identified the predominant theme of each cartoon. </p>
<p>While there were many themes represented, we grouped the cartoons into seven broad categories: “Children are <a href="https://www.cartoonbank.com/search/-/search/results?_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_struts.portlet.action=%2Fview%2FshowDetail&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_pageNumber=2&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_search=feature%3Acncartoons+AND+family+AND+children&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_match=cartoonbank&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_breadCrumb=Children&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_tagId=cncartoons024522">Beneficial to Parents</a>,” “Children are <a href="https://www.cartoonbank.com/search/-/search/results?p_p_state=pop_up&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_struts.portlet.action=%2Fview%2FshowDetail&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_pageNumber=2&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_search=feature%3Acncartoons+AND+family+AND+children&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_match=cartoonbank&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_breadCrumb=Children&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_tagId=cncartoons025832">Costly to Parents</a>,” “<a href="https://www.cartoonbank.com/search/-/search/results?p_p_state=pop_up&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_struts.portlet.action=%2Fview%2FshowDetail&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_pageNumber=2&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_search=feature%3Acncartoons+AND+family+AND+children&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_match=cartoonbank&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_breadCrumb=Children&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_tagId=cncartoons025793">Bad Parents</a>,” “<a href="https://www.cartoonbank.com/search/-/search/results?p_p_state=pop_up&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_struts.portlet.action=%2Fview%2FshowDetail&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_pageNumber=1&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_search=father+reading&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_match=a&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_sort=d&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_searchFeatures=cncartoons&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_tagId=cncartoons016838">Good Parents</a>,” “Children Have a <a href="https://www.cartoonbank.com/search/-/search/results?_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_struts.portlet.action=%2Fview%2FshowDetail&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_pageNumber=1&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_search=scout&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_match=a&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_sort=d&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_searchFeatures=cncartoons&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_tagId=cncartoons012677">Positive Impact</a> on Society,” “Children Have a <a href="https://www.cartoonbank.com/search/-/search/results?_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_struts.portlet.action=%2Fview%2FshowDetail&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_pageNumber=2&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_search=feature%3Acncartoons+AND+family+AND+children&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_match=cartoonbank&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_breadCrumb=Children&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_tagId=cncartoons025183">Negative Impact</a> on Society” and “Children are <a href="https://www.cartoonbank.com/search/-/search/results?p_p_state=pop_up&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_struts.portlet.action=%2Fview%2FshowDetail&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_pageNumber=1&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_search=feature%3Acncartoons+AND+family+AND+children&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_match=cartoonbank&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_breadCrumb=Children&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_tagId=cncartoons029906">Normal or Natural</a>.” After coding the images, we completed a series of statistical analyses aimed at describing patterns in social attitudes over time. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93961/original/image-20150904-14650-qglh5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93961/original/image-20150904-14650-qglh5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/93961/original/image-20150904-14650-qglh5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93961/original/image-20150904-14650-qglh5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93961/original/image-20150904-14650-qglh5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93961/original/image-20150904-14650-qglh5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93961/original/image-20150904-14650-qglh5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/93961/original/image-20150904-14650-qglh5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some New Yorker cartoons depict children as mischievous.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/x1brett/15253693741/in/photolist-peVaHF-55W96Z-vBKWM-pyNsuT-3ERtWW-air25N-5SDu1L-57wrFo-5NdLft-q7XMRH-3yA9PF-e4jbEo-dCwVAk-9G6Dkm-cVSj8-de3s1R-mhY6F-7vRfpG-ago6Nu-7cEzZe-dybGQo-8UJiA8-aoetKD-oBYHuf-59SEAg-nKfxJt-anQYMZ-8qv64H-9Ci8yy-sJQnMK-dnghr5-7THZ1U-84XYtb-vmwzjh-54Dn4J-8paY8R-nSZmkb-5FB4Cb-9cyP8Y-n7usma-b2bJic-fAiW8h-8f8qKS-anQYKn-Txv4t-n7eU8b-pKmuX1-epFDY1-qp7Y7M-4gdRzj">brett jordan/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Overall, we found that attitudes toward children and childrearing are more complex and more varied than what we might expect from previous research, and 43% of the cartoons in our sample took a critical stance. Those critical cartoons, in turn, did not become less common over time. In fact, our statistical tests revealed a curvilinear pattern, with <a href="https://www.cartoonbank.com/search/-/search/results?p_p_state=pop_up&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_struts.portlet.action=%2Fview%2FshowDetail&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_pageNumber=1&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_search=feature%3Acncartoons+AND+family+AND+children&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_match=cartoonbank&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_breadCrumb=Children&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_tagId=cncartoons030438">critical attitudes</a> toward children and childrearing being most common at the tail ends of our sample – 1925-1940 and 1990-2006. </p>
<p>These patterns are surprising in that they go against previously held assumptions that we are living in the age of the “priceless” child. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cartoonbank.com/search/-/search/results?p_p_state=pop_up&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_struts.portlet.action=%2Fview%2FshowDetail&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_pageNumber=1&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_search=feature%3Acncartoons+AND+family+AND+parents&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_match=cartoonbank&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_breadCrumb=Parents&_listenersearchresults_WAR_searchportlet_tagId=cncartoons030937">Positive portrayals</a> of children and childrearing, on the other hand, were more common in the middle years of our sample, and particularly in the 1950s and 1980s. </p>
<p>So why are these patterns important? We argue that understanding shifting social attitudes toward children and childrearing can help us to better understand other broad social trends. </p>
<p>These include changing fertility rates (which can be tied to family decisions about whether to have children and how many to have) and changing social policies – in other words, societal decisions about who deserves support and why. </p>
<p>During the 2000s, for example, there was an increase in the number of cartoons highlighting the high costs that children pose to parents. This included economic costs, as well as costs in terms of parents’ freedom and flexibility. Then there’s the negative impact they have on society as a whole, either through the “mischievous” – even criminal – tendencies of children. </p>
<p>Such critical attitudes, in turn, may help to explain why <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db175.htm">fertility rates have declined</a> and why so many adults are opting to <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/05/07/childlessness/">forgo parenthood altogether</a>.</p>
<p>So while a New Yorker cartoon might elicit a quick chuckle for a reader taking a break from 20,000 word article, the things we find funny can also tell us a lot about our cultural moment, our attitudes and the collective decisions we make.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46700/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some might say we’re in the age of the ‘priceless’ child, but The New Yorker certainly doesn’t think so.Jessica Calarco, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Indiana UniversityJaclyn Tabor, PhD Candidate in Sociology, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/428882015-06-26T01:27:53Z2015-06-26T01:27:53ZHow happiness becomes a burden of identity as a wife and mother<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86058/original/image-20150623-19368-11o7yy4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Life is naturally sunny for the 'happy mother' of social mythology, which makes it doubly difficult for mums when they are miserable. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-204759562/stock-photo-happy-beautiful-woman-young-mother-playing-with-her-adorable-baby-son-cute-little-boy-enjoying.html?src=eDwzWNZ5IQhgole7yHhjRw-1-113">Shutterstock/FamVeld</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Why are housewives “happy” and feminists “angry”? Why are queens blithely labelled “tragic”, trannies “sad” and spinsters “bitter”? One of the intriguing things about identity stereotypes is how cultural constructions of identity are aligned with emotional regimes. This has long been an issue of contention for feminists, who are, as <a href="http://feministkilljoys.com/about/">Sara Ahmed</a> has eloquently argued, habitually castigated as “killjoys”.</p>
<p>Being labelled bitter, sad or tragic is certainly marginalising, but so too can the expectation of happiness be a burden. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the onslaught of seraphic images that make up the myth of motherhood – celebrity mummies pushing prams on magazine covers, yummy mummies with fashion spreads on Facebook, or the age-old stereotype of mothers in advertising who remain ubiquitously obsessed with cleaning products and “alpine fresh” scents. </p>
<p>Even if you consciously reject the media images, these ideas about what a mother ought to be and ought to feel are there from the minute you wake up until you go to sleep at night.</p>
<p>In an age of increasing workplace demands, so too the ideals of motherhood have become paradoxically more – not less – demanding. The new credos of motherhood – whether they are called <a href="http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=0300066821">“Intensive Mothering”</a> or <a href="http://naturalparentsnetwork.com/what-is-np/">“Natural Parenting”</a> – are wholly taken up with a narrowly prescribed way of doing things.</p>
<p>In the West, 21st-century child rearing is becoming increasingly time-consuming, expert-guided and, above all else, emotionally all-absorbing and incredibly expensive.</p>
<p>It is no longer just a question of whether you should or should not eat strawberries or prawns or soft cheese – or, heaven forbid, junk food – while you are pregnant, or whether you should or should not breastfeed for the required two years. The issue of what you should or should not feel has come under intense scrutiny.</p>
<p>The construction of new emotional disorders for mothers is something of a pop-psychology pastime. The old list of mental disorders is expanding from pre-natal anxiety, post-natal depression, post-partum psychosis and the baby blues, to include postnatal stress disorder, maternal anxiety and mood imbalance, and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/explaining-tokophobia-the-phobia-of-pregnancy-and-childbirth-9726809.html">tokophobia</a> — the latter being coined at the start of the millennium to designate an unreasonable fear of giving birth.</p>
<p>In all of this, the message is clear. A good mother is a happy mother. A sad mother is a bad mother. A sad mother is not only unnatural but certifiably insane.</p>
<h2>The rise of Parenting Hate</h2>
<p>Little wonder such miserable standards of perfection triggered a backlash. The decades of the seeming triumph of the ideologies of Intensive Mothering and Natural Parenting also led to the rise of the <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/12/parenting_trend_stories_the_new_york_times_knows_we_love_to_hate_read_them.html">“Parenting Hate Read”</a>, an outpouring of books and blogs written by mothers who frankly confessed that they were depressed about having children for no reason other than the fact that it is frequently exhausting and occasionally dreadful.</p>
<p>The first in the genre was Heather Armstrong’s <a href="http://dooce.com/about/">Dooce</a> blog. This went on to make Armstrong the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/14/most-influential-women-in-media-forbes-woman-power-women-oprah-winfrey.html">26th-most-influential</a> woman in the American media, according to Forbes Magazine. This was followed by blogs like <a href="http://www.scarymommy.com/home/19">Scary Mommy</a> and <a href="http://www.rantsfrommommyland.com/">Rants from Mommyland</a>, or books by writers such as <a href="http://alicebradley.net/about/">Alice Bradley</a> who <a href="http://www.blogher.com/node/5563">declared</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Mommy blogging is a radical act.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In marked contrast to the yummy mummies featured in the media, what these parenting blogs tend to give their readers is the messy lived experience in between. Parenting Hate is an ironic misnomer because almost every posting ends with a ritualistic endorsement of children and family life.</p>
<p>The mainstream media has been quick to cash in on the trend. Coca-Cola <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRqUTA6AegA">ran an ad</a> for “Coke Life” in Argentina in which a toddler relentlessly destroys his parents’ home, if not their lives, piling up the kiddie trash, the green goo and dirty nappies on the living room floor. </p>
<p>Fiat ran the “Welcome to the Motherhood” ad for its 500L car, which features a fashionable albeit dishevelled mother rapping amidst the toys and cornflakes on the living room floor. She may not “have it all” but clearly “does it all”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eNVde5HPhYo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Fiat tapped into the ‘Parenting Hate’ trend with its ‘Welcome to Motherhood’ ad.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Parenting Hate trend was accompanied by the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/03/health/03mood.html?_r=0">startling findings</a> of Nobel Prize-winning behavioural economist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Daniel_Kahneman">Daniel Kahneman</a> that American women ranked child care <a href="http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/blogs/what-are-parents-really-juggling">among the least pleasurable activities</a> of their entire life, on a par with housework – a finding replicated by a range of social scientists.</p>
<h2>Motherhood as misery contest</h2>
<p>The Parenting Hate phenomenon might have gone some way to shattering the myth of maternal bliss, but it also runs the risk of turning motherhood into a kind of misery competition.</p>
<p>It should come as no surprise that in America, which has no government support for childcare, no statutory right to maternity leave and few social services, that women should be more miserable than – for example – their Scandinavian counterparts.</p>
<p>Another problem may well be that Western ideas about happiness have grown impoverished. Happiness, as it is commonly construed in the English-speaking world, is made up of continuous moments of pleasure and the absence of pain. </p>
<p>These popular assumptions about happiness are quite culturally specific. They are also comparatively recent historically. Their origins can be found in the works of liberal philosophers such as <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/bentham/">Jeremy Bentham</a> and <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james-mill/">James Mill</a> (father to John Stuart) who argued that people act purely out of self-interest and the goal to which self-interest aspires is happiness.</p>
<p>Bentham and Mill were political progressives in their day. Their ambition to ameliorate the existence of their fellow human beings perhaps disguised — for a time, at least — the fact that utility and self-interest might not be all there is to goodness or, indeed, to happiness.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, popular Western assumptions about happiness have remained broadly utilitarian and self-interested. This has readily transformed into an endless string of television commercials showing families becoming happier with every purchase, or sad people being transformed by motivational coaches selling the idea that self-belief can overcome all odds.</p>
<h2>Key is to recast relationships</h2>
<p>There may be uncomfortable realities to be faced. Unless you are Mother Teresa, you probably spent your life in a naively self-involved way until you had children. You went out to parties and came home drunk. You worked hard through the day and slept in on the weekend.</p>
<p>Babies have other ideas. They stick forks in electric sockets, go berserk with their mashed bananas and throw up on your work clothes. They want to be carried around through the day and wake up in the night.</p>
<p>Babies challenge the central tenets of our liberal individualistic society and its endless privileging of “me, me, me”.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/general-books/current-affairs-politics/Motherhood-Anne-Manne-9781741143799">Anne Manne</a> has bravely talked about the ways in which mothering entails relationships and responsibilities that do not sit well with the individualistic language of late capitalism or, indeed, certain strands of feminism. However, there is something deeply uncomfortable in some of the political lessons that Manne extrapolates from the supposedly transformative social power of a mother’s love, even when it goes under the safe-sounding catchphrase, an ethic of care.</p>
<p>It excludes women who do not have children. It excludes men. It excludes teenagers and the elderly. In many ways it excludes children, too. </p>
<p>It may be a fallacy to understand children as resilient, fully independent creatures, as Manne argues. But it is equally false not to recognise the activity of children — to understand them only as passive recipients of “mothering”. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Winnicott">Donald Winnicott</a>, author of the theory of the <a href="http://blogs.psychcentral.com/mindful-parenting/2013/09/the-gift-of-the-good-enough-mother/">Good Enough Mother</a>, would surely have questioned the idea that endless amounts of mothering would help children grow into autonomous, flourishing human beings.</p>
<p>Mothers, as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/fashion/06Culture.html">Elisabeth Badinter</a> has <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/spiegel-interview-with-french-feminist-elisabeth-badinter-women-aren-t-chimpanzees-a-713890.html">argued</a>, are not chimpanzees. Yet questions of motherhood are too often structured around deeply flawed arguments about what is “natural”. Of course there is biology. But lives are also constructed through culture. </p>
<p>If society can solve its social problems, then maybe motherhood will cease to be a misery competition — mothers might not be happy in a utilitarian or hedonistic sense, but will lead rich and satisfying lives. And then maybe a stay-at-home dad can change a nappy without a choir of angels descending from heaven, singing Hallelujah.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is based on an essay in the collection <a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/on-happiness-new-ideas-for-the-twenty-first-century">On Happiness</a>: New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century (UWA Publishing, June 2015).</em></p>
<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilla Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Women are supposed to be happy about motherhood – if they’re not their parenting is open to question. We have seen a ‘Parenting Hate’ backlash against this, but what’s needed most is better social support.Camilla Nelson, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/413282015-05-08T09:53:54Z2015-05-08T09:53:54ZDual-earner couples share the housework equally – until the first baby comes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80564/original/image-20150505-931-iaob7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Even for couples who work full time, the burden of less fun forms of parenting, like changing diapers, often falls on the mother.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-261523241/stock-photo-mother-changing-a-diaper-to-little-baby-girl.html?src=csl_recent_image-1">'Diaper' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a tenured professor and mother of four young sons, I am constantly asked, “How do you do it?” What people mean is: “How can you have a full-time job and still manage child care and housework?”</p>
<p>I usually respond, “High-quality husband and high-quality child care, in that order.” From the outset, my husband, a full-time, clinical pharmacist, has been a committed partner in caring for our house and raising our children. </p>
<p>But I’ve learned that, with our equal division of housework and child care, he’s an outlier. There may be some like him, but our research group at The Ohio State University recently discovered that such husbands in dual-earner households are, indeed, rare. </p>
<h2>Unequal workloads</h2>
<p>In our new <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.12189/full">study</a> of 182 dual-earner couples who became parents for the first time, we found that fathers generally did less work around the home after their baby was born, and also became less involved in childcare than mothers. This was surprising given that both parents worked at their jobs about the same amount of hours. </p>
<p>Before their baby arrived, men and women in our study were both working roughly the same number of hours inside and outside the home. And after having a baby, they still worked the same number of hours at their jobs. </p>
<p>However, during the first weeks of parenthood, men cut back their housework by five hours per week, while women dropped theirs by only one hour. For men, their extra five hours did go towards child care, about 15 hours a week. This included around 10 hours per week of physical child care (the less “fun” work of caring for a child that includes changing diapers and bathing the baby), and about four hours per week of engagement (more enjoyable child care that includes playing with the baby). Thus, men added about 10 hours a week to their total workload after their child was born.</p>
<p>In contrast, we found that parenthood added about 21 hours per week to women’s workload. Because women maintained their 40-hour work weeks and their time in housework across the transition to parenthood, most of their additional work came from child care. Women spent about 15 hours in physical child care and about six hours in engagement. </p>
<p>Altogether, after becoming parents, women averaged more than an additional hour of work each day compared to their husbands. And it wasn’t the “fun” kind, either – it was primarily in the form of physical childcare.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80729/original/image-20150506-10927-1cl3eg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80729/original/image-20150506-10927-1cl3eg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80729/original/image-20150506-10927-1cl3eg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80729/original/image-20150506-10927-1cl3eg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80729/original/image-20150506-10927-1cl3eg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80729/original/image-20150506-10927-1cl3eg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=281&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80729/original/image-20150506-10927-1cl3eg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=281&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80729/original/image-20150506-10927-1cl3eg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=281&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After having a child, working women take on more housework and childcare duties than their husbands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Deeply rooted parental roles</h2>
<p>How could one tiny baby cause so much havoc for these couples who were previously enjoying equal divisions of labor? </p>
<p>When families experience big transitions or changes, family members have to create new roles and routines to accommodate the change. Thus, the transition to parenthood is a critical juncture in families whereby men and women create <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.psych.48.1.243">new routines and roles</a> as mothers and fathers that may persist for years. </p>
<p>It is at this point that dual-career, college-educated couples stop sharing the work of the family equally and, we believe, fall back on what they observed in their own homes as children. They are also more likely to adopt societal norms that dictate what mothers and fathers should do: housework and child care as the domain of moms, with dads acting as supportive partners.</p>
<p>Interestingly, new fathers don’t seem to realize that they aren’t keeping up with their partners’ growing workload. When we asked, both men and women perceived that they increased their total work by more than 30 hours a week each after they became parents. But our more accurate time diaries told a different story – one where parenthood added much more work for women than men.</p>
<p>What should couples do? First, men need to take the initiative to be full partners in housework and child care. This means doing just as much housework after becoming a parent and taking equal part in the mundane work of parenting, such as changing diapers, in addition to the more fun work of parenting, like playing peek-a-boo or “airplane.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80568/original/image-20150505-936-1k965rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80568/original/image-20150505-936-1k965rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80568/original/image-20150505-936-1k965rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80568/original/image-20150505-936-1k965rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80568/original/image-20150505-936-1k965rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80568/original/image-20150505-936-1k965rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80568/original/image-20150505-936-1k965rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Why is it more fun and games for dads?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=caPv4AGSzQEEmIb5PtUy4g&searchterm=dad%20playing%20with%20baby&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=193271435">'dad' via www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unfortunately, women have been taught to believe that they are primarily responsible for housework and child care. Therefore, some will <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/fam/22/3/389/">micromanage</a> their partner’s parenting. </p>
<p>They might ask the father, “Will you get the baby dressed?” – but then tell him what the baby should wear. Or they might criticize the father if the baby’s diaper falls off. Some of these parenting duties take time to learn, and women should let men learn for themselves and make mistakes. Nonetheless, men ought to learn how to take on roles and duties as dads that they never engaged in growing up.</p>
<p>You might wonder how my husband answers the question “How do you do it?” </p>
<p>He doesn’t, actually – because he’s never asked the question. Strangers, upon learning that he has four sons, assume that I am a stay-at-home mother. No one expects that a dual-career couple can be happily married and have four children. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, in America, a husband who does half of all housework and child care continues to remain a rare, semi-mythical creature, who no one believes exists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The data collection for this project were funded by the National Science Foundation, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with support from The Ohio State University's Institute for Population Research and the Department of Human Sciences.</span></em></p>It’s one thing if you’re a stay-at-home mom. But why aren’t working dads equally sharing household duties with working moms?Claire Kamp Dush, Associate Professor of Human Sciences and Sociology, The Ohio State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/383882015-03-05T00:39:54Z2015-03-05T00:39:54ZStarting with feeding and ending with weaning – everyone has an opinion.<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73786/original/image-20150304-15267-6po631.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ready for porridge!! Approaching six months baby Joe loves his mushed up food.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Olivia Carter</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With a chuckle an old school friend of mine confessed that when he was a teenager he would try to destroy his best mate’s chances with the chicks by casually slipping this statement into conversation as soon as his friend was out of earshot.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Um … you know he was breast fed until he was eight? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Unsurprisingly, there weren’t too many girls that hung around long enough to determine the sincerity (or not) of this helpful little factoid.</p>
<p>As I begin to think about weaning baby Joe I continue to be amazed at the diversity of opinions, emotions and physical barriers associated with breastfeeding.</p>
<p>I am not talking about the <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-breastfeeding-in-public-laws-are-not-enough-22344">issue of baring a boob in public</a>. I am talking about the anguish, the inconceivable amount of time and even the agony that can be attributed to a woman’s attempt to feed their baby.</p>
<p>I think it is fair to say that most expecting parents have a general appreciation that a natural birth (as opposed to a cesarean delivery under anaesthesia) is going hurt. Many mothers experience anxiety about this while others see it as an important right of passage.</p>
<p>In contrast the physical, emotional and logistical difficulties associated with breastfeeding are rarely mentioned. </p>
<h2>What they don’t tell you</h2>
<p>Against the epic pain of childbirth, the moment when a mother breastfeeds her baby for the first time is generally portrayed as a blissful serene moment of love and bonding between mother and child.</p>
<p>What nobody tells you is that this moment will likely involve a nurse you have never met before grabbing your boob in one hand and the baby’s head in the other while outlining what you must -– or must not –- do when breast feeding your baby.</p>
<p>A few hours later it all happens again with a new nurse and a new and often directly contradictory set of instructions. By day two or three the entire process can be extremely painful.</p>
<p>If you happen to mention the pain you are told that if it hurts you are doing it wrong. Which is the last thing any sleep deprived new mother wants to hear.</p>
<p>Of course, then there are those that have such difficulties either producing enough milk or getting the baby “to latch on” with sufficient strength that the baby is unable to drink the necessary volume of milk.</p>
<p>I have endless sympathy for the many women in this position who have to make the decision about whether or not to “top-up” or switch over entirely to formula.</p>
<p>If things aren’t hard enough, you are provided with a reminder on every related advertisement or container of formula that <em>“breastfeeding is best”</em>. I feel like this statement should be accompanied by the disclaimer <em>“unless your child is starving due to zero or insufficient access to breast milk”</em>.</p>
<p>As a mother it makes me sad that breastfeeding leaves so many women dealing with varying degrees of confusion and inadequacy. As a scientist I just cant get my head around how evolution got us to this point.</p>
<p>Beyond, conception and delivery, it’s hard to think of an activity more critical to the survival of our species. Despite such acute selection pressure it seems to me that the most common experience among my own friends is that it is hard for both mum and bub to get the hang of – with many never able to satisfy their baby exclusively by breastfeeding.</p>
<p>As an aside, I have also always been a little bemused that contrasting the endless promotion of all things natural in the food, clothes and toys of children, mothers appear to value the opposite when selecting formula. I guess if mothers aren’t breastfeeding then they want to be reassured that they are getting the best that science can offer if names like “S-26” and “Aptimal Gold” are any indication. </p>
<h2>To wean or not to wean</h2>
<p>Now that little Joe is approaching six months I am nearing the minimum age that you are generally <a href="http://www.health.gov.au/breastfeeding">recommended to continue breastfeeding</a>. Outside this six month guideline, public opinion seems to take over.</p>
<p>On the one hand you are commended for every additional month of breastfeeding you are able to “achieve” yet at the same time there is clearly a point at which a child is viewed as too old to continue breastfeeding.</p>
<p>The problem is that there is variability in both the individual circumstances of the mother and the opinions held by everyone from health care providers to total strangers. So in the end it is hard to avoid the message that whatever you are doing is NOT the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-science-of-raising-a-perfect-child-7199">best thing for your baby</a>. </p>
<p>Of course if you are attempting to return to work, you can feel like you need a degree in logistics to cope with the endless cycle of expressing, storing, freezing and dumping required to ensure that there is always enough milk available for the baby. For me there definitely reaches a point when it simply becomes unmanageable.</p>
<p>So while I am happy that I was able to breastfeed all of my kids, I am not too disappointed that it is coming to an end.</p>
<p>Bring on the solids!!!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38388/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
With a chuckle an old school friend of mine confessed that when he was a teenager he would try to destroy his best mate’s chances with the chicks by casually slipping this statement into conversation as…Olivia Carter, Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/286132014-07-25T04:29:47Z2014-07-25T04:29:47ZWant to raise a gold medallist? Six tips for sporting success<p>Australia has kicked off the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/glasgow-2014">Commonwealth Games</a> with a bang, winning 17 medals in the first day of competition, including five gold medals.</p>
<p>The women’s 4 x 100m freestyle relay had a particularly successful race, smashing a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-25/gold-silver-in-pool-for-australian-mckeon-siblings/5622828">five-year World Record</a>.</p>
<p>Now picture your young son or daughter watching the race, then turning to you and saying: “I want to do that.” </p>
<p>Let’s imagine you’re not a complete novice to sport, and you’re fully aware that substantial sacrifices, early-mornings (or late nights), and an array of upsetting defeats and injury setbacks lie ahead of the child choosing such a path (with no guarantee whatsoever of becoming world champion). </p>
<p>There are certainly stories of parents who have deliberately raised their children to become world-beaters in sport: the <a href="http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/books-does-venus-and-serena-williams-dad-know-best-30401909.html">Williams sisters</a>, <a href="http://golf.about.com/od/tigerwoods/f/tiger-woods-parents.htm">Tiger Woods</a> and <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/in-sit-down-interview-andre-agassi-opens-up-on-his-father-bernard-tomic-and-lifelong-hatred-of-tennis/story-e6frfkp9-1226565482938">Andre Agassi</a>. </p>
<p>What cost a few early mornings, a few extra coaching lessons, or a summer camp every year, compared to the returns on your investment? </p>
<h2>The cons of turning pro</h2>
<p>First of all, we need to remember the odds of the bet. While the rewards are enormous, the numbers wouldn’t appeal to many investors. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54837/original/p8tvvrfb-1406250049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54837/original/p8tvvrfb-1406250049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54837/original/p8tvvrfb-1406250049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54837/original/p8tvvrfb-1406250049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54837/original/p8tvvrfb-1406250049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54837/original/p8tvvrfb-1406250049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54837/original/p8tvvrfb-1406250049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54837/original/p8tvvrfb-1406250049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/56192190@N05/5203686930">martha_chapa95/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The American National Collegiate Athletic Association (<a href="http://www.ncaa.org/">NCAA</a>) examined the <a href="http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/probability-competing-beyond-high-school">raw numbers</a> and found of athletes still competing at age 14 (which is many fewer than first started):</p>
<ul>
<li>only 0.03% (1 in 3,300) will turn pro at basketball</li>
<li>0.09% (one per 100 full competitive teams) for soccer</li>
<li>0.08% (1 in 1,300) in gridiron. </li>
</ul>
<p>And turning pro is still a long way short of becoming world champion. There are much better ways of making money. </p>
<p>There is also a significant bias in relying on the stories of celebrities (known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias">survivors fallacy</a>). We don’t hear from the numerous athletes who were pushed by their parents but who never made it. What costs and damage might they report if we offered them the platform of celebrity? </p>
<p>To exclusively seek global success grossly underestimates the value of what sport can teach us: </p>
<ul>
<li>winning and losing gracefully</li>
<li>self-organisation</li>
<li>goal-setting skills</li>
<li>dealing with criticism</li>
<li>communication </li>
<li>moral awareness. </li>
</ul>
<p>In addition, children who participate in regular physical activity are the same ones who tend to be <a href="http://t.co/Mhk5IuOqKQ">active later in life</a>, with all the health benefit that brings.</p>
<h2>Six main messages</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/53080/original/8r3jg654-1404562522.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/53080/original/8r3jg654-1404562522.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/53080/original/8r3jg654-1404562522.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53080/original/8r3jg654-1404562522.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53080/original/8r3jg654-1404562522.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53080/original/8r3jg654-1404562522.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53080/original/8r3jg654-1404562522.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53080/original/8r3jg654-1404562522.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://kingstondna.vic.netball.com.au/pageitem.aspx?id=80797&id2=1&eID=39491&entityID=">Kingston and Districts National Association</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Reflecting on my research over the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2159676X.2013.857710#.U2de4sdByeY">past few years</a>, here are a few hints and tips offered by interviewees: some of whom were <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1469029208001295">children</a> and <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10413200903421267">adolescents</a>, and some of whom were the <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1469029213001143">elite athletes</a> who had, indeed, made it. </p>
<p><strong>1. Don’t force it</strong>: many athletes report a key moment where they realised they didn’t want to compete any more, and in many cases their parents pushed, guilt-tripped and cajoled them into continuing.</p>
<p>External inducement like this can be termed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Intrinsic_and_extrinsic_motivation">extrinsic motivation</a>. </p>
<p>Consider this quote from an elite athlete, talking about a world champion friend of hers: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Like when [he] was younger he went through a phase of not really liking [his main sport] and I think [his mum] was obviously aware of the knock on consequences, but she didn’t want to like force him to do it. He was actually quite into [another sport] and he got offered a contract in that […] and I didn’t see him for a while, like a couple of years […] but then he just got back into this which is obviously in his favour.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Remember, this boy went on to become world champion. </p>
<p>Contrast that, however, against the story of Jonny Wilkinson, who at the age of nine wrote an <a href="https://twitter.com/rugbytoulon_/status/459345313417797632/photo/1">essay</a> explaining his plans to play rugby for England. </p>
<p>At 12, he announced to his teacher: “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/1447507/Everythings-golden-for-Wilkinson-the-winner.html">I want to play for England, that’s all I want</a>.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oNEKxdW_J5I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">… and a Jonny Wilkinson drop goal won the 2003 Rugby World Cup for England.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If this is the attitude you’re faced with, your child is probably intrinsically motivated, and all you have to do is facilitate and stay out of the way!</p>
<p><strong>2. Just help, no strings attached</strong>: a key idea that comes from athletes, young and old, is the “conditionality” of parental support. The less parents attach strings to their support (and affection), the more kids just feel free to play, learn and improve. </p>
<p>This quote from an international female footballer sums it up: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even like, less than a year ago when I wanted to go out and do something on the field, that involved like crossing a ball. My dad is like, as unfit as anything, but he came down and fetched the ball for me […] They don’t have to do it with you but they’re there just helping […] If I asked him tomorrow, to go down and like throw the ball for, like, 50 headers, he’d be there without a shadow of a doubt.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54724/original/pctvb75m-1406167583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54724/original/pctvb75m-1406167583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54724/original/pctvb75m-1406167583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54724/original/pctvb75m-1406167583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54724/original/pctvb75m-1406167583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54724/original/pctvb75m-1406167583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54724/original/pctvb75m-1406167583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54724/original/pctvb75m-1406167583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewmalone/6965555396">Andrew Malone/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>3. Don’t be a coach, be a parent</strong>: athletes across the spectrum reported frustrations when parents tried to coach them, and offered the advice that at best: “just reinforce what the coach has told me to work on.” </p>
<p>But actually parents don’t need to do the coaching – they need to provide emotional and material support along a journey that is, by definition, challenging. As noted by a European archery champion: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My mum hasn’t got the first clue about archery. I could turn round to her and […] with a big beaming smile, and tell her I shot an impossible score and she might turn round and say: “never mind you’ll do better next time!” And you know […] she is my number one fan, she gives me the emotional support.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Likewise, this nine-year-old who plays football and cricket expressed himself well: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>They do want you to win. But if you like try too hard, and then make a terrible mistake, and like cost the game, your friends will be like: “What did you do that for?” Whereas your dad knows why you did that, and he’s done it loads and loads of times before, and he’s not really bothered. He knows what it feels like when everyone’s putting pressure on you.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54726/original/fhs4my27-1406167825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54726/original/fhs4my27-1406167825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54726/original/fhs4my27-1406167825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54726/original/fhs4my27-1406167825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54726/original/fhs4my27-1406167825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54726/original/fhs4my27-1406167825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54726/original/fhs4my27-1406167825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54726/original/fhs4my27-1406167825.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/clogsilk/3742902392">clogsilk/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>4. Leave it all at the oval (or court or pool or track)</strong>: in the same way that we often want to leave work at the office, our kids often want to leave their sport behind once it’s done. But in interviews, I heard stories of parents offering feedback on the car ride home, over dinner and even at bed time.</p>
<p>A nine-year-old boy told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When you’re playing a match, like if you missed it, if you did like a terrible shot and it went miles wide, they’d remember it, and then at the dinner table they’d say “remember that shot that you kicked miles wide?” And you’re like “I thought you’d forgotten about that”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>5. They <em>will</em> remember it</strong>: one pleasant message in our research was that while children may not appreciate it at the time, once they grew into adults they invariably valued the support their parents provided. </p>
<p>An elite football player told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You wanna repay them, ‘cause of all those nights they probably wanted be at home sat down and chilling out […] they came out in the car, in the cold in the winter, and in the dark and waited for you to finish […] you just wanna repay them back for what they’ve done for you.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54720/original/v32kkjww-1406167292.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54720/original/v32kkjww-1406167292.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54720/original/v32kkjww-1406167292.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54720/original/v32kkjww-1406167292.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54720/original/v32kkjww-1406167292.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54720/original/v32kkjww-1406167292.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54720/original/v32kkjww-1406167292.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54720/original/v32kkjww-1406167292.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/44603071@N00/410725965">kathy/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>6. Go and watch</strong>: in a yet to be published study, we analysed which key themes linked together in people’s narratives. Parents being physically present at training and competition was a root cause of many of the motivational influences parents exerted (positive and negative!). </p>
<p>Time together (such as travelling), a shared experience, working towards shared goals – all things that build a strong relationship and allow you to be a bigger part of your child’s life as they grow up. </p>
<p>As noted above, “winning” at sport can be taken to mean a lot of things. If we want our child to get the most out of participation in sport (including the health benefits), then the most important message we need to send to our kids is: they’ll always be winners in our eyes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28613/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Keegan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australia has kicked off the Commonwealth Games with a bang, winning 17 medals in the first day of competition, including five gold medals. The women’s 4 x 100m freestyle relay had a particularly successful…Richard Keegan, Assistant Professor in Sport and Exercise Psychology, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/49532012-01-23T03:26:06Z2012-01-23T03:26:06ZMonday’s medical myth: play Mozart to boost your baby’s IQ<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7037/original/3vz33ywz-1326948832.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Children should be taught to play music themselves rather than just listening to it.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Naruco</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What parent can pass up the chance to boost their child’s intelligence by putting on some nice classical music?</p>
<p>The popular idea that IQ scores can be raised by listening to Mozart is a case study in how a cultural meme can be created almost overnight, if the right societal and economic factors are in place. </p>
<p>This particular juggernaut started rolling in 1993 with a <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v365/n6447/abs/365611a0.html">fascinating piece of speculative research by Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw and Katherine Ky</a>. The researchers had a small group of university students listen to the first 10 minutes of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckGIvr6WVw4">Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major</a> (better known to musicians and scholars by its technical handle K448) and then asked them to complete tasks involving judgement of time and space (known as spatiotemporal reasoning).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J8acnfeL_pU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p></p><figure><p></p>
<p>The researchers wanted to test the idea that by priming particular networks of nerve cells in the brain with the music, they could temporarily improve the functioning of that area. And to their surprise, they found the students scored better on the tests after listening to K448. The benefits lasted for around 10 minutes after the music had stopped. </p>
<p>There are many <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15141902">limitations to the study</a> but it was a thought-provoking and original finding, especially given the researchers’ attempt to describe the strength of the effect. Rauscher and her colleagues compared the increase in performance to a gain of several points in one of the sub-scales of a popular IQ test.</p>
<p>The researchers chose K448 for very specific reasons to do with the way they were modelling brain function. It appears they were on to something, as follow-up <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21689988">studies</a> have confirmed that in some children with severe epilepsy, listening to K448 every day can reduce the rhythmic firing of some of the affected brain cells, reducing the chances of a seizure over the long term.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11680506">More recent studies</a> with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans have also supported the idea that there may be something specific to this piece of music in its ability to activate the brain. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7038/original/h8kgfgtj-1326948993.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7038/original/h8kgfgtj-1326948993.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7038/original/h8kgfgtj-1326948993.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7038/original/h8kgfgtj-1326948993.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7038/original/h8kgfgtj-1326948993.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7038/original/h8kgfgtj-1326948993.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7038/original/h8kgfgtj-1326948993.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Short-term lab results in adults don’t translate to long-term changes in children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nosha</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the basis of the original 1993 research, there has never been any reason to believe that short-term results of a laboratory test in adults would translate to accelerating the development of a child’s brain. But the phenomenal public over-reaction to this interesting but highly technical paper gave birth to the belief that just listening to classical music makes children smarter.</p>
<p>A detailed but readable account of what happened next is given <a href="http://xenon.stanford.edu/%7Elswartz/mozarteffect.pdf">here</a> but, in short, scientific researchers have been reluctant to make conclusions about the effect of K448 on the brains of listeners while others identified a juicy business opportunity. </p>
<p>Promoting the idea of a “Mozart effect” makes good business sense because royalties don’t have to be paid to long-dead composers if you sell recordings of their music. There are many orchestras happy to license their performances of well-known pieces for minimal fees. </p>
<p>All that is left is to trick out the music CD with a <a href="http://mozarteffect.com">catchy name</a> such as <a href="http://www.babyeinstein.com/worldwide/au/products/product_list/category/DVDs.aspx">Baby Mozart</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/LovelyBabyMusic?feature=watch">Lovely Baby Music</a> or, simply, <a href="http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/1206974/a/Happy+Baby+Series%3A+Mozart+For+Babies.htm">Mozart For Babies</a>, combined with a winning marketing strategy. Conscientious parents have lapped it up and truckloads of CDs have walked out of warehouses around the world. An entire industry of music-related mental enhancement has been born. </p>
<p>Gordon Shaw, co-author of the original paper, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Mozart-Mind-Gordon-Shaw/dp/0126392900">wrote a book</a> to try to correct the record but the promotional hype has intensified anyway.</p>
<p>Much stronger and more convincing evidence suggests children should be taught to play music instead of just listening to it. Early musical training has been clearly associated with <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22125541">improved speech and language development</a> in children and can improve performance in <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18832336">non-musical tasks</a>. </p>
<p>So if you want to boost your child’s IQ, don’t just play your child classical music while you go off and do something else. Get her singing, practising and performing music herself if you really want to help her shine.</p></figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/4953/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Vagg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What parent can pass up the chance to boost their child’s intelligence by putting on some nice classical music? The popular idea that IQ scores can be raised by listening to Mozart is a case study in how…Michael Vagg, Clinical Senior Lecturer at Deakin University School of Medicine & Pain Specialist, Barwon HealthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/44522011-12-15T19:33:44Z2011-12-15T19:33:44ZThinking about giving birth at home? Look at the evidence on safety<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/6452/original/zqv23wns-1323837892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The frequently cited Netherlands study doesn't show it's safe to give birth at home in Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Assy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We’re fortunate to live in a society where robust evidence forms the basis of the information health-care professionals provide to patients – and home birth should be no exception. But the evidence about the risks of home births and the relative safety of hospital-based births is too often <a href="https://theconversation.com/comfortable-safe-and-in-control-why-women-should-have-the-option-to-give-birth-at-home-4065">ignored by home birth advocates</a>. </p>
<p>Women need clear and accurate information about the risks of different birthing environments. As an obstetrician of 30 years, I have these discussions with pregnant women and their partners every week. And many are surprised to learn that giving birth at home is far more risky for their baby than a planned hospital birth.</p>
<h2>Stark reality</h2>
<p>A <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20078406">2010 study</a> by Kennare and colleagues confirmed <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/317/7155/384.full">previously published Australian evidence</a> that giving birth at home increases the risk of a baby dying during childbirth. </p>
<p>The authors reviewed the outcomes of 1,141 planned home births in South Australia from 1991 to 2006 and found they were associated with a seven-fold increase in the child or fetus dying compared with a planned hospital birth. The risk of fetal death due to asphyxiation was 27 times higher. </p>
<p>The same study noted that in the period 1991 to 2006, the incidence of fetal death in labour due to asphyxia halved in South Australian hospital births compared with the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2246989">outcomes recorded for 1976 to 1987</a>. But there was virtually no improvement for planned home births over the same study period.</p>
<p>Rates of interventions such as caesarean section and instrumental delivery were lower in the planned home birth group. But this isn’t surprising, given that women who are higher risk of complications are more likely to require interventions and will therefore have a planned hospital birth. This wasn’t accounted for in the study. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/6466/original/d2vyqzs2-1323920983.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/6466/original/d2vyqzs2-1323920983.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6466/original/d2vyqzs2-1323920983.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6466/original/d2vyqzs2-1323920983.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6466/original/d2vyqzs2-1323920983.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6466/original/d2vyqzs2-1323920983.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6466/original/d2vyqzs2-1323920983.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">cindalee</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Safety claims</h2>
<p>Despite the evidence of the risks of home birth, advocates continue to cite international evidence of its comparative safety.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19624439">2009 Netherlands study</a> led by de Jonge, examined 321,307 women who planned to give birth at home and 163,261 who intended to give birth in hospital. The study concluded there were no significant differences to perinatal mortality (the risk of the child dying) between either group – and this is the message promulgated by home birth advocates. </p>
<p>But when you closely examine the study you see that in the self-selected home-birth group, more of the women were: 25 years and older, of Dutch origin, of medium to high socioeconomic status, more likely to have had two or more children previously and more likely to give birth at 41 weeks gestation. Given these factors put the women in this group at low risk of complications, you’d expect this group to have better outcomes than the hospital birth group, who were at higher risk. </p>
<p>The authors reported that the number of babies who died or were admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit was the same in both groups: seven for every 1,000 births. The equivalent <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7639843">Australian statistics</a> for low-risk women delivering in hospital is between 2.2 and five for every 1,000 births – this is quite a contrast and hardly an endorsement of obstetric practice in the Netherlands.</p>
<p>It must also be noted that maternity services in the Netherlands are set up to meet the demands for home births. Transport is good and distances are short if women need an emergency transfer to hospital. The same advantages are not available in all places in Australia. And if local services aren’t available for quick transfer, the risks of home birth increase. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/6469/original/pz63wp7j-1323922583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/6469/original/pz63wp7j-1323922583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6469/original/pz63wp7j-1323922583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6469/original/pz63wp7j-1323922583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6469/original/pz63wp7j-1323922583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6469/original/pz63wp7j-1323922583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/6469/original/pz63wp7j-1323922583.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Almost half of first time UK mothers planning to give birth at home were transferred to an obstetric unit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Comparing risk</h2>
<p>Last month, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists released the long-awaited findings of the <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d7400">National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit’s Birthplace in England</a> cohort study.</p>
<p>This study compared the safety of birth planned for healthy women with straightforward pregnancies in four settings: home, freestanding midwifery units, “alongside midwifery units” (midwife-led units on a hospital site with an obstetric unit) and obstetric hospital units. All the women were classified as having a <a href="http://www.nice.org.uk/CG055">low risk</a> for complications.</p>
<p>The overall incidence of adverse outcomes during childbirth was 4.3 for every 1,000 births. For first-time mothers planning to give birth at home, there were 9.3 adverse events for every 1,000 births and a 45% transfer rate to an obstetric unit.</p>
<p>For women having their second baby there was no significant difference in adverse outcomes between all sites but of the women planning to have home births, 10% to 12% were transferred to other sites. </p>
<p>So my advice to women planning to give birth is – look at the evidence. Even if you fall within the low-risk category, home births pose an increased risk to your baby, particularly in your first pregnancy. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/4452/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I am a Fellow of The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists which does not endorse home birth</span></em></p>We’re fortunate to live in a society where robust evidence forms the basis of the information health-care professionals provide to patients – and home birth should be no exception. But the evidence about…John Svigos, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist & Associate Professor , University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/28302011-08-24T20:35:36Z2011-08-24T20:35:36ZMisquoted: how an innocent interview about raising babies led to hate mail<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/3137/original/422441141_4a950fa3ff_b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Inward-facing prams allow for more interaction with infants but parents shouldn't feel guilty about what equipment they have. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">skeddy in NYC/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A seemingly harmless interview with a journalist in the lead-up to a public lecture has unleashed a torrent of abuse about my view of one aspect of raising infants. </p>
<p>I take some responsibility as my use of language may not have been as guarded as it should’ve been – an outcome of believing that the majority of journalists mean no harm.</p>
<p>It all started a couple of months ago when I was asked to participate in the <a href="http://www.uts.edu.au/new/speaks/">UTS Speaks</a> program and talk about raising babies. </p>
<p>I’ve always been a committed parent-educator because I believe parents want factual information about how best to raise their children. </p>
<p>My <a href="http://www.uts.edu.au/new/speaks/2011/August/2308.html">lecture on Tuesday night</a> focused on the importance of the development of self-regulation, parents’ important role in this crucial task in early childhood and the importance of understanding infant experience. </p>
<p>During the lecture, I showed a 90-second video as an example of what an infant in an outward facing pouch might experience in a shopping mall. It was not a very pleasant experience. </p>
<p>The lecture also explored infant states of consciousness, infant cues and early brain development. </p>
<p>There is a wealth of rich and trustworthy research from neuroscience about early brain development, the impact of stress on the developing brain and infant-parent attachment. </p>
<p>There was also some interesting <a href="http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/assets/0000/2531/Buggy_research.pdf">relevant research</a> completed in the United Kingdom by a researcher at the University of Dundee. </p>
<p>All this work formed the foundation of my discussion.</p>
<h2>Research on prams</h2>
<p>In 2008, Dr Susan Zeedyk and her assistants completed 2722 infant observations in 54 UK sites.</p>
<p>This study and another involving 20 extended observations showed – not surprisingly – that using outward-facing prams led to reduced talking to the infant by the parent.</p>
<p>The researchers also found that infants in parent-facing prams were more likely to fall asleep, which was interpreted as a tentative measure of lowered stress levels. </p>
<p>What’s more, babies and their parents in parent-facing prams were more likely to laugh. </p>
<p>And babies were found to be unable to effectively seek their parent’s attention if they were facing away from them. </p>
<p>This research suggests that it’s more isolating for babies to face outwards than parents or researchers had previously realized. </p>
<p>In the smaller study, mothers with prams that had infants facing away were given the opportunity to use parent-facing prams. </p>
<p>The majority felt it greatly improved their interaction with their infant and was much more enjoyable and fun.</p>
<p>The lecture was very well received with overwhelmingly positive feedback and a discussion about why this information is not readily available to parents. </p>
<p>One of the suggestions was that the media should ensure this rich, evidence-based and interesting information about parenting and infants is featured in reports. </p>
<h2>The role of the media</h2>
<p>In the lead-up to the lecture, I was interviewed by a journalist from the Sunday Telegraph, who I thought was interested in the content of my lecture. </p>
<p>I spoke to her about the importance of parents understanding the infant experience, told her about my video, as an illustration, and discussed why we should rethink the use of some baby equipment. </p>
<p>I also emphasised the need to be sensitive with the story as my intent was not to make parents feel guilty. I think I was far too trusting in assuming that everyone had the best interest of infants at heart.</p>
<p>So I was disappointed and concerned when the <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/big-pram-face-off-academic-says-outward-facing-prams-are-cruel/story-e6freuzr-1226118853402">article was published last Sunday</a> because it focused only on the example I had given, failed to provide all the facts and was written in extremely emotive language. </p>
<p>Much of what I had said was taken out of context.</p>
<p>The article included counter views and one of the researchers quoted has since rung and given me her support as she was equally appalled about the focus of the story and the lack of facts. </p>
<p>I felt that I’d been set-up by the journalist.</p>
<h2>The aftermath</h2>
<p>In the days since the article was published, I have received hate emails, had unpleasant notices placed on cars around my workplace and had a flurry of media contacts. </p>
<p>Some of the media interviews ended with, “of course that makes sense”. Some journalists even cancelled the interview because they thought it was a non-story.</p>
<p>I decided not to ignore the emails and am pleased I responded by laying out research findings. I have received numerous apologies from these people. </p>
<p>The wonderful thing about this experience has been the emails and phone calls of support I have received from my colleagues and the general public who understand that the health of our infants is paramount.</p>
<h2>Clearing the air</h2>
<p>Please understand that I’ve never suggested parents rush out to buy a new pram. What they could do instead is to become more aware of their infants, regularly talk to them and touch them. </p>
<p>And, in all honesty, I would love to see baby equipment producers become more sensitive to infant developmental needs.</p>
<p>The most disturbing thing for me is that a suggestion that infants like to and need to see their parents and interact with them has caused so much anger. </p>
<p>My intention has never been to make parents feel guilty – I am a parent myself and know how difficult it can be to make decisions about parenting. </p>
<p>Sadly, other health professionals have allowed themselves to be caught up in this on-going attack on my integrity and I question their motives.</p>
<p>But I know now why many of my colleagues are reluctant to talk to the media. </p>
<p>This is a loss for the whole community and the call at the end of my lecture about the media taking up the role of linking people with evidence-based and interesting information about parenting remains unheeded.</p>
<p>The most positive thing about this experience is that a conversation about infant care has started. </p>
<p>Rather than attacking me, maybe we can, as a community, start to focus on our most precious and vulnerable citizens, our infants.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/2830/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cathrine Fowler receives funding from the ARC.</span></em></p>A seemingly harmless interview with a journalist in the lead-up to a public lecture has unleashed a torrent of abuse about my view of one aspect of raising infants. I take some responsibility as my use…Cathrine Fowler, Professor & Tresillian Chair in Child & Family Health, Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Health, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.