Monday, August 01, 2011

The Child Care Billy Club.

Traditionalist conceptions of motherhood when questioned, are frequently justified on the basis that the natural mother child care giving relationship is the best one possible for the child, all other forms of care being inferior and possibly harmful.  It's a staple cultural meme of the modern Anglosphere.

As a consequence, women who aren't naturally suited to staying at home caring for the children are torn between suffering themselves at home or making the child suffer by "neglecting"  the child's care. Traditionalists of all types are fond of citing childcare studies which prove that child care is "harmful" to children.

The traditionalist brigade don't realise just how powerful this meme is, and just how accurately it strikes at the heart of working woman's anxieties. The meme is used as sort of cultural billy club to women who work, regardless if they want to or are forced by economic circumstances.  It also has the benefit of shoring up the traditionalist position, the stay at home mother deriving her moral superiority from being a "better mother" than her working peer. Then, of course, there is always the moral superiority of martyrdom, women who "sacrifice" themselves for their families (just try getting some of them to work for money after their children have left the home) earning near universal admiration for their choice.

This assumption, that with regard to child care, mother at home is the best, seems intuitively obvious and is rarely challenged. It's a defacto assumption.

It's this assumption that is the cause of endless anxiety with regard to long term effects of child care. Scientific studies( of which there are numerous and which are frequently very poorly done) looking into the matter seem to provide conflicting evidence with regard to the long term effects of child care. One way of interpreting this is that more evidence is needed, the other way of interpreting this is that there isn't any effect at all. This paper, by the University of Budapest, is a good review of the research.

Now one are of research that the Traditionalists never seem to mention is with regard to child development is with regard to maternal stress.  Here the research is pretty much settled, in that a stressed and unhappy mother is likely to have children with bonding and developmental issues. (I'm not providing any references, just enter the appropriate search terms in Google scholar.) It would appear that a mother's mood is more important than outsourced childcare with a regard to a child's development.

This, of course, poses a problem to the "suck it up" Traditionalist brigade. Unhappy martyr mothers make for unhappy children. It would appear that their stay at home imperative "for the sake of the children" is fundamentally flawed from the point of view of the children. If you want happy and well adjusted children, you've got to have happy mothers. Suffering for the cause, as in really suffering, not just being inconvenienced, is counterproductive.

Maternal happiness seems to be the key of good child development. Buried in the linked review is a rather brilliant study by Barling, Fullagear and Marchl-Dingle.
In a 1988 paper, Barling, Fullagear and Marchl-Dingle go further and describe significant association between mothers’ interrole conflict and children’s behavioural problems. They suggest that both employed mothers uncommitted to their work, and homemaker mothers with blocked employment role commitment are in a stressful situation. Without controlling for intervening factors they suggest that this can affect their parenting behaviour negatively,which in turn leads to behavioural problems of their children.
On a sample of 185 5th and 6th grade children from an elementary school they show that children, whose mothers’ employment and employment commitment were not congruent (i.e. either a homemaker mother with high commitment to work, or a working mother with low work-commitment), were rated significantly less attentive and more immature than those children whose mothers employment status and commitment were congruent.
In other words,  when women, who were temperamentally suited to be carers were made to work they became stressed,  as did women who were temperamentally suited to work when forced to stay at home. Not only did they suffer, but their children suffered as well.

If we as a society want to raise happy and healthy kids what we need to do is let women find their own mix of work life balance. For most women it will be in a homemaker role, but for some it will be in some form of employment. Both Traditionalists and Feminists need to get off their backs.

The whole point of my blathering about motherhood roles in society,  is that it very accurately illustrates the problem between the traditionalist and modern conceptions of it. Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation put a lot of women back into the home, where they became miserable and resentful. The traditionalist response to this new phenomenon was to tell the malcontents to suck it up and do nothing. The inability to innovate within the conservative tradition meant that built up social pressures could not be relieved constructively, rather, in the absence of good thought  bad thought took it's place. Conservative stupidity was the midwife of Feminism.

Which, in a nutshell, was the problem of the 20th Century. Because Conservatives couldn't solve problems the Leftists did.  And they did it badly.

7 comments:

Ulysses said...

Good post. As you wrote, the liberals solved problems poorly and many are paying for those solutions. The traditionalists also often strike too flippant a stance toward differing situations. My wife's parents, for example, told her they'd pay for college, divorced and battled over who would actually pay once the bills started arriving, and ended up pushing the debt on us. That, coupled with a few other factors, means we're either dual income or we're not eating, but the hardcore traditionalists love to frame our choice in terms of "you could get rid of a car and cable TV" as though we're just too beholden to stuff to even go without a few hundred bucks of stuff for ourselves. Then they congratulate themselves for not ruining their children as we are. My kids are okay. Would they and the wife prefer to be at home? Yes, but humans are resilient and adaptable. We make do as we always have.

Red said...

The Traditionalists approach is really just imitation of the upper class of Americans. Once the middle class became rich enough for women to do minimal work it became a status symbol for mom just to do house hold chores.

A better "Traditional" model would be the middle ages system where women where always producing something that brought outside economic value while still being close to their children.

I don't buy that liberals where trying to solve a problem by creating ball crushing careers for women. There's lots of evidence they where trying to put enough pressure on the family to destroy it and to empower single mothers through forced government subsidies.

mdavid said...

I would put a different slant on it. IMO, the reason working mothers (and deadbeat dads) feel the powerful meme of maximum parental investment even though it oft "goes against the biological grain" for many, even most people...they also know instinctively it delivers superior children when done right. So even if they are personally ill-equipped to provide the maximum benefit, and, as you point out, may in fact even harm children by trying to reach for it, the desire is still there. And, most importantly, evolution seems to be slowly weeding out the "it takes a village" parent, even in places like Africa where the survival of children depends so much on this investment. To me, the trajectory seems pretty clear, even though there are local variations. Female intuition senses where the future survival is, which is in high-investment strategies (as long as these strategies don't lessen the number of offspring).

The Social Pathologist said...

I don't buy that liberals where trying to solve a problem by creating ball crushing careers for women.

The liberals didn't create "ball crushing careers" the "fulfilled life as a high powered career" meme did not surface to well into the 60's. Where the liberals gained brownie points is in being the only champions of women's domestic emancipation. This legitimised them and the rest of their hair brained ideas.

To quote Churchill,

"I'd put a good word in for the Devil if he helped me fight Hitler". It's human nature to be sympathetic to those who help you.

The Traditionalists approach is really just imitation of the upper class of Americans. Once the middle class became rich enough for women to do minimal work it became a status symbol for mom just to do house hold chores.

It may be. But a lot of middle class women like working, stay at home duties just don't provide the intellectual and social stimulation they need. The thing is, being affluent middle class gives you choice, something you don't have if you are poor or if you are trapped in a hyper-rigid social structure.

It is true however, that many women would prefer to stay at home and look after the kids instead of working, it's just the economic pressures, self or externally imposed compel them to work.

The Social Pathologist said...

MDavid

IMO, the reason working mothers (and deadbeat dads) feel the powerful meme of maximum parental investment even though it oft "goes against the biological grain" for many, even most people...they also know instinctively it delivers superior children when done right.

I'd agree that its the dominant idea and I imagine there is a lot of truth to it. Still as intelligent beings we must override feeling in pursuit of the good. A good parent works towards the best interest of the child, not what intuitively feels good. Our feelings and objective good are not always congruent.

As for female intuition, their investment in "bad boys" is a refutation of its biological utility.

The Social Pathologist said...

Ulysses.

That, coupled with a few other factors, means we're either dual income or we're not eating, but the hardcore traditionalists love to frame our choice in terms of "you could get rid of a car and cable TV"

Hard core traditionalists don't know how to frame the choice any other way. That's the problem with traditionalism.

mdavid said...

A good parent works towards the best interest of the child, not what intuitively feels good. Our feelings and objective good are not always congruent.

My main point was that women see the truth of parental investment, and it's gonna be a tough sell that by investing less they are actually helping their offspring. Your point may be true, that some, even most, women have this disorder, but they intuitively know it's a biological dead end that will soon work itself out in the evolutionary marketplace and thus should be suppressed.

As for female intuition, their investment in "bad boys" is a refutation of its biological utility.

This is exactly my point. The "bad boy" attraction is probably a holdover from when male physical strength = potential procreative success (you know, the football player attraction). Today, however, it's more accurate that high IQ / parental investment = potential procreative success. So just because our instinct tells us something sure enough doesn't make it right as it might be yesterday's evolutionary fashion trend.