Recently I read this little gem on the Internet. It was an
article reviewing a study that had been conducted by a German social science
group on a sampling of approximately 1,400 children in Western Australia over a
number of years, asking for parent-directed feedback on their behavior at ages
5,8, and 10. Of this sampling, there was a significant correlation between increased
negative and/or aggressive behavior among boys who have fathers working on
average more than 55 hours per week. Similar statistical patterns did not
follow among fathers who on average worked less hours, and among the girls in
the same statistical group.[1]
This of course made me think of that tasty little Pew study
that came out not too many months ago equally skewering female breadwinners. In
Pew’s survey on the increasing role of female breadwinners, they offered up an
awesome little public opinion component where they sampled approximately 1,000
people who indicated that women’s increased presence in the workforce makes it
harder to raise children.[2]
So you see if you’ve got a hardworking father figure in your family or a smart
ambitious mom, you can bet you’ll have a hell of a time raising those rowdy, aggressive
kids.
Of course if you are a woman who chooses to circumvent these
problems by “opting out” of your career, you and your family might also be
in trouble as this widely circulated article suggests.[3]
You ladies are truncating your career trajectories just as you start to step on
the most important rungs of the ladder. You’ll never get back what you were
professionally. You will never be able to command what you once did in salary.
And of course going from a two income household to one income might just strain
your marriage enough that you just might end up penniless and divorced with
little or no future income prospects. Imagine just how aggressive your kids are
going to feel then.
So let me just sum this up for you. If you live in a home
where your husband works long hours, this seems to be bad. If you live in a
house where the woman is the breadwinner, this too is bad. And if you choose to
stay home with your children and not work, this also can be very bad. In
summary, all of us, regardless of what we choose, are doing a horrible job!
And frankly, this national non-discussion where we berate ourselves and our families and our neighbors for things which we
may or may not have within our control is really becoming quite tiresome. Work!
Don’t work! Work sort of – but not too much. Lean! But don’t fall over. We aren’t
raising a generation of aggressive kids. We are raising a generation of passive
aggressive and thoroughly confused adults.
We are all doing the
best we can do, for ourselves, and for our kids. To argue that any of these
studies and articles which are being conducted and widely disseminated and then
exhaustively dissected over social media ultimately benefit working (or not
working as it may be) parents by creating a discussion about work alternatives
is a complete fallacy. There are no substantive policy discussions being
generated here about how to create more flexible work options for families.
There is just a lot of judging and making people feel bad about stuff that they
probably can’t choose anyway.
Many hardworking people I know who work long hours are doing
it because they have to. It s a first
world problem to think we all have the luxury of choosing by design how and
when and for how long we do or don’t want to work. The majority of us are
driven by some combination of financial incentives and needs as well as (and
equally important) some combination of personal ambition and drive. That
doesn’t negate the fact that we love the crap out of our kids. And making
people feel badly about stuff they have to do or choose to do (even under the guise of social science and public opinion) doesn’t necessarily make it more useful.
I do not know what it will take to advance the national dialogue beyond this loop, putting an end to the
painful circular process of punishing everyone I possibly know for
everything they do or don’t do when all they’ve ever really wanted to is to be
productive members of society who love their kids a whole hell of a lot. But when we finally do it will perhaps be because we have finally recognized that happy kids and happy companies need the same things:
parents who have the support they need to get up every day knowing they will once
again try to be everything to everyone and probably fail, but in the struggle
find enough opportunity and joy to make it all worthwhile.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/28/aggressive-behavior-in-boys-dads_n_3830591.html?utm_source=concierge&utm_medium=onsite&utm_campaign=sailthru%2Bslider%2B
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/single-moms-pew-research-_n_3349525.html
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/magazine/the-opt-out-generation-wants-back-in.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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