Newsflash: Talking To Babies Makes Them Brainy

Parental talk is back in the media. This 'Lexicon Valley' podcast from Slate talks about a 1995 study by researchers at the University of Kansas that studied the home environments of 42 families, ranging from professional, upper-income families to families living on welfare. The findings of the study, carried out over ten years, demonstrated that the upper-income children developed a much wider vocabulary than the lower-income children and that this gap in cognitive skills was set before the age of three.

The researchers noted four key differences between the upper- and lower-income family environments:

1. The upper-class families used better vocabulary with more complex words and usage of those words than the lower-income families

2. Praise and positive reinforcement was common among upper-class parents

3. Upper-class parents were more likely to ask their children questions and give them choices to facilitate decision-making rather than simply ordering them to do something e.g. 'It's cold outside. Do you think you need your jacket?' rather than 'Put your jacket on'.

4. Professional / upper-class families were much more likely to respond to and continue a conversational thread initiated by the child, rather than only speaking to the child on their own terms.

Upper-class parenting talk 'suggested a culture concerned with names, relationships and recall, with symbols and analytic problem-solving' whereas lower-class parenting talk was full of imperatives, prohibitions and parent-initiated talk, 'suggesting a culture concerned with established customs, with obedience, politeness and conformity', according to the study's authors.

So much for that. When I looked into the details of the study (I can't actually read it as it's $70.00 to buy online...), it struck me that the sample size is pretty small and the data does not tell us anything earth-shattering. I'm not sure why the Lexicon Valley guys are surprised that the study didn't get wide coverage at the time. It's a pretty small study from a small university, hardly a nationwide cohort study with vast policy implications.

Of course it makes sense that talking to your baby will improve his / her mind and most of us try to make the effort to do that as much as possible. If you have a lot of children, however, and limited resources  due to your 'lower socio-economic status' aka being broke then you will simply have less energy to do this. Upper-class children will always have an advantage over lower-income children as their parents have far more resources and support. Vocabulary is only a small slice of that story.

Piecemeal projects, like this Providence, RI scheme that I have previously been skeptical of on this blog, will not make a huge difference. The real way to try to improve preschool children's cognitive skills outside of the home is to offer subsidized or government-run childcare that is affordable for lower-income households. Instead of paying lip-service to the stay-at-home mom as a social ideal, politicians should start to offer struggling parents, many of whom are low-income single mothers, the kind of support they and their children need: good-quality childcare. Why not make preschool something that all children can access, not just the children of the rich who probably need it the least?

Does Motherhood Make You Poor?

Stephanie Coontz raises the valid point in this op-ed from the New York Times that, while women have made significant gains in the workplace since the 1960s, there is still an earnings gap and that earnings gap largely falls on the shoulders of mothers. Women without children are almost at earnings parity with men by now. Motherhood imposes significant costs on women.

So what? you might say. Having children is a choice. If you choose to start a family, something has to give. You work more flexible hours. You can't travel as much. You become less committed to your career as children and their concerns take over. Isn't that just obvious?

It's obvious because of the way we understand motherhood. It's assumed in our society that when women become mothers they have to sacrifice something: their earning potential, their time, their bodies, their pelvic floors at the very least. It is not questioned that a man can become a father without much sacrifice on his part. Biology has programmed us to accept that women bear the brunt of the cost of reproduction because that is how Homo Sapiens happens to procreate. We're not plants or bees (more's the pity).

This has created a world where motherhood can mean the end of a woman's career while fatherhood has no effect on a man's career or can in some cases even increase his status and earning potential. We accept that as a fact of life, something 'obvious', caused by the woman's 'choice' to have a baby. 

Biology is destiny then, certainly according to certain male decision-makers like Paul Tudor Jones, who caused offense with his recent comments about women's inability to focus on their careers once they become mothers. There is a grain of truth in his words in that the biological aspects of being pregnant, giving birth and nurturing a highly dependent child for a year or more can be overwhelming. What's questionable is the way he assumes, as many people do, that these few years of intense biological investment somehow determine a woman's path for life. In this view of things, motherhood is a transformative, all-or-nothing state for women whereas fatherhood is just incidental for men.

This is the kind of prejudice that pushes women who become mothers into poverty while their non-parent peers maintain their career trajectories. Motherhood can be all-consuming but it doesn't have to be. It depends on the child, the child's age and the mother. The early intense years don't last forever (thank Christ). The expectation that motherhood will change a woman's priorities and limit her ambitions can in fact be more damaging than motherhood itself.