A Family Affair

Attachment Security: Born or Made?

Jay Belsky, Ph.D. — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:53:54 +0000

John Bowlby's theory of attachment has now influenced generations of psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, therapist, teachers and, of course, parents. One of the central theoretical propositions guiding those who work from an attachment perspective is that security of attachment is made, not born; that is, it is a result of lived experience rather than a byproduct of in-born biological make up.

Something many fail to appreciate today is that Bowlby was very much a radical thinker in his day, emphasizing as he did the role of "lived" experiences in shaping development. The prevailing theoretical tradition of psychoanalysis of the time stipulated that it was the child's fantasy world, not his actual reality that shaped his well being. Radicals like Bowlby were not embraced; they were rejected. Thankfully, history is the final arbiter of these matters and so psychology today is very much steeped in Bowlbian ways of thinking.

Bowlby's colleague, Mary Ainsworth, initiated the scientific study of rearing influences on early attachment security to test his radical premise. And ever since reporting her work in the 1970s, a cottage industry has developed evaluating her hypothesis that it is sensitive mothering--or caregiving--in particular that fosters security in the infant and young child. Infants establish secure attachments when caregivers, be they mothers, fathers, or even child-care workers, recognise the infant's signals (verbal and nonverbal), accurately interpret them and respond in a timely fashion and an appropriate manner. Responding to a 6-month old who is holding his hand out, showing a toy with a smile and appropriate comment ("what have you got there?") could be an instance of sensitive responsiveness, but not if it occurrs so long after the event that the infant is unlikely to link the two together. Hugging, kissing and showing affection to a young child could be sensitive, but not if it abruptly interrupts on-going exploration and play. And, of course, comforting a crying child could be sensitive, but not if it is accompanied with a verbal barrage criticising the baby for being such a pain.

Over the past 40 years, scores of naturalistic field studies, including some of my own, have found that sensitivity experienced during the opening years of life is, as theorized, predictive of security, whereas insensitivity is related to insecurity. And, perhaps even more compelling is intervention research demonstrating that systematic and effective efforts to promote sensitive-responsive parenting increase the likelihood of the infant or young child establishing a secure attachment. This experimental work is especially important because it indisputably documents the causal influence of sensitive parenting in a way that a correlational field study, even a longitudinal one, never can. But no matter how the relevant research has been done, the fact remains that, for the most part, the anticipated and detected effects of sensitivity on attachment security have not proven as large nor as powerful as theory presupposed. Recent work suggests why that may be the case.

It appears that some children are simply born secure, whereas others are made secure or insecure by, as theory would have it, the quality of rearing they experience. Thus, the reason why effects of sensitive-responsive parenting on attachment security may not have proven as large as expected is because studies have (unknowningly) mixed apples and oranges together, the apples being the children who are not affected by their rearing and simply born secure, or so it seems--lucky them; and the oranges being those for whom quality of rearing does matter. Mix the two together and you water down the effect of rearing that would otherwise be detected for the second--orange--group.

What distinguishes those who seem influenced by the care they receive, at least with regard to attachment security, and those who do not? Genetics! In yet another outstanding piece of research, Grazyna Kochanska and her colleagues at the University of Iowa have discovered that infants with one or two short alleles on the serotonin transporter gene(5-HTTLPR) established secure attachments to their mothers when their care was sensitively responsive, but developed insecure attachments when it was not. Those with only long alleles on the same gene were highly likely to establish secure attachments even when they experienced care that was insensitively unresponsive; these were the children whom I claimed were "born secure". (See: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121421420/PDF...)

Why this particular gene? The exact answer to that question is not quite clear. It is known that this gene is related to the expression of negative emotion, so babies with short alleles and thus more prone to negative emotion may need more assistance in developing the capacity to regulate those feelings; and developing the ability to do that, via sensitive care, could be what promotes attachment security. Infants with the long alleles simply don't face this, or as much of a challenge.

Of interest is that short alleles on this gene have been found to make women more likely to become depressed if exposed to many negative life events. Women with long alleles seem very much protected from depression even if they confront the same negative life events.

In other words, and to return to a theme I have championed in earlier blogs, children--and adults--seem to vary in their susceptibility to environmental influences. This raises the prospect that one resolution to the long-standing nature-nurture controversy involves the following: For some who are very intelligent or highly aggressive or lethargic or not particularly verbal, this is because they are born this way. For others, who are exactly the same, this is because they have been made this way.

The Timing of Family Instability

Jay Belsky, Ph.D. — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:50:33 +0000

It comes as no news to anyone that family instability has has come to characterize the lives of many children over the past quarter century--and certainly far more so than it did when I was growing up in the 1950s. Most scholars concur that changes in who parents live with--or do not live with--often challenge children and can undermine their well being. Nevertheless, there remains much debate regarding the extent to which the changing make up of adults in the household--dad leaves, boyfriend moves in, bofriend departs--affects children's development in the short and longer term. One of the big issues that remains unresolved concerns the timing of changes in family structure.

The traditional early-experience perspective presumes that stability is more important for children early in life because change often is experienced as disruption, if only because the comings and goings of adults is hard for children to comprehend. Moreover, the departure of a familiar adult can be experienced as loss, with much pain attached to it. At older ages, some assume that children are better able to cope. Not only are they more cognitively sophisticated and thus better able to understand what is going on, but they typically have a larger world of important people in their lives on whom they can rely (e.g., teachers, friends).

Some, of course, reject the early-experience framework, regarding it as outmoded, old fashioned, contending instead that it is what life throws at you at a particular point in time that matters most, not what happened earlier in life. Thus, were one concerned about understanding children's development at the end of the primary- school years, the place to look for insight would be what has been going on during that time, not before the onset of schooling.

This very debate caught the attention of one recent research team who realized they could examine data not originally collected to address the issue of family instability and children's development to illuminate the issue of timing of family changes. Sharon Cavanaugh and Aletha Huston of the University of Texas at Austin decided to analyse longitudinal data collected on more than 1,000 American children and their families followed from the time of the child's birth through fifth grade (~age 10). (see http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121531893/abstract)

Because mothers were interviewed repeatedly across this period and specifically queried about whether they lived with someone in a romantic relationship, it proved possible to measure the number of times there was a change in the mother-partner relationship. By the end of kindergarten, 25% of the children had experienced at least one exit or entrance of a biological parent or a parent's romantic partner and by the end of fourth grade this was true of about one out of every three children, with 13% experiencing just one transition, 10% two, 4% three and 5% four or more.

How did the number of changes relate to children's development in fifth grade once confounding factors had been taken into account (e.g., mother's age, education and depression, child's early day care experience)? First, analysis of fifth-grade teachers reports of children's social behavior revealed that those who experienced more life-time changes in family structure (i.e., comings and goings of partners of mothers in the household) were less competent with peers and engaged in more aggression and disobedience than children who experienced fewer such changes (including none at all). Especially important to appreciate is that these findings emerged after the child's social behavior in first grade had been taken into account. In other words, greater family instability predicted greater deterioration in child well being across the primary-school years. Of note, too is that children who experienced more change also rated themselves as lonelier than others in fifth grade.

But what about the issue of timing? Did family instability early in life seem to be especially important? As it turned out it did; indeed family instability occurring during the primary-school years failed to predict children's well being. What makes these findings especially intriguing is that early family instability was not related to how children functioned early in life--when they were in first grade. In other words, what was ultimately detected in this research was what might be regarded by developmetnal scholars as a "sleeper effect" -- an effect of early family instability that did not manifest itself early in life, but only later in life, by resulting in children developing less well across the primary school years when they experienced more family instability during their early years.

Also of note is that boys seemed to be particularly vulnerable to the effect of family instability. At least at this point in development, girls seemed to be more or less immune to the adverse effects of experiencing family instability early in life. Whether this remains the case as the children develop remains unknown. But as the larger research project on which this one study was based has continued to follow children through the age of 15, it should prove possible to find out. There are some who believe that the effects of divorce and related family structure changes show up--as a sleeper effect--in girls principally after they go through puberty and encounter the heterosexual world. Thus, one might anticipate, given the earlier detected effects on boys, that early family instability may increase the probability of girls, during their teen years, experiencing depression and/or engaging in risk taking behavior (e.g., sex, drugs).

As in other postings, it is importance to not catastrophize the results of the study presented in this blog. Not only is not the case that each and every boy who experienced family instability was adversely affected by it, but the effects under consideration were not so extreme as to represent severe psychological disturbance. This is not to say that they do not matter, however. Just ask a child who feels lonely what that feels like!

Legacy of Childhood Exposure to Divorce: Marital Commitment & Confidence

Jay Belsky, Ph.D. — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:12:40 +0000

It is reasonably well established that divorce is intergenerationally transmitted; that is, that individuals whose parents divorced while they were growing up are at increased risk of experiencing divorce when they themselves get married. Before saying anything more, it is critically important to appreciate that "increased risk" does not mean "inevitable". Both individuals whose parents did and did not get divorced while they were growing up get divorced; "increased risk" simply means that this is more likely--but by no means inevitable--in the case of those who experienced divorce in their own childhoods. Consider as an example of the fact that decreased risk does not mean "never" the fact that I got divorced--yet my now 90-year old parents, married for six decades, never did (though there is still time, mom, if you fancy a younger--80 year old?--guy).

A basic question that family scientists have continued to address over the years is "what accounts for the intergenerational transmission process?" That is, why is there this increased risk of divorce in the case of children of divorce. There is undoubtedly no single answer to this question. To begin with, there is actually evidence that divorce is heritable, thus implicating genetics in some still unspecified manner in the process. One could imagine, for instance, that individuals genetically disposed to be disagreeable are more likely to get divorced than those who are not and that the reason divorce occurs across generations is because both parents and children inherit the same genes that contribute--in some unspecified way--to being disagreeable and, thereby, being prone to relationship difficulties, including divorce.

But even if genetics plays a role and disagreeableness is part of the process through which such heritable influence is exerted, this does not mean at there are not other factors and processes that might contribute to the intergenerational transmission of divorce. One proposition that has long been entertained by family scholars is that by observing their parents separate and divorce, children learn that that marriage is impermanent. As a result, these children of divorce end up being less committed to marriage and feeling less confident that their marriage will last when they get married than adults whose parents did not divorce when they were growing up. A recent study provides some support for this hypothesis.

Sarah Whitton of Boston University and her colleagues from the University of Denver queried 265 engaged couples on the matters at hand just before they took a relationship education class. Participants in the research were 17-46 years of age and had been dating, on average, for 3 years, with almost two thirds cohabiting at the time of the study. This was the first marriage for all involved.
(see http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/fam/22/5/789/)

As it turned out, a history of divorce in one's own childhood did prove predictive of relationship commitment and confidence, though, intriguingly, only in the case of women: Those whose parents had divorced while they were growing up scored lower on commitment to their partner and had less confidence that their impending marriage would last. "Daughters of divorced parents appear to be more ambivalent about committing to a particular partner, not merely to the notion that marriage, in general, should be forever...and perceived less confidence in being able to make their own upcoming marriage last", the authors concluded.

Of importance was that the legacy of divorce detected in this study was small to moderate, by no means large. Clearly, then, the findings should not be generalized to all daughters of divorce; nor should it be inferred that all individuals whose parents did not divorce are fully committed to their impending partners or are completely confident that their relationships will endure.

The fact that the findings summarized apply only to women turns out to be consistent with other evidence indicating that the intergenerational transmission of divorce applies more to daughters than to sons. Why should this be the case? Whitton and her colleagues speculate that "because women are socialized to be more relationship oriented than men, they may be more attuned to their parents' marital dissolution and its lessons regarding the (im)permanence of marriage." As this is just after-the-fact speculation, it is clear that these new findings raise new questions about why and how exposure to marital dissolution in childhood increases the risk of divorce in one's own adulthood, at least in the case of women.

Legacy of Childhood on Attachment Security in Aging Adults

Jay Belsky, Ph.D. — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:45:03 +0000

As I have noted before, a fundamental development question which motivates so much research on child development and advocacy on behalf of children stems from the belief that what happens early in life matters to how children turn out, not just in early childhood, or middle childhood, or even adolescence but well beyond. Needless to say, it is a challenge for scientists to stick around long enough to follow children from a young age well into adulthood to address this issue of the legacy of early experience. Sometimes scholars come up with short cuts toward this end.

Recently, a pair of academics at my university, Birkbeck University of London, did just that in order to see whether a particular developmental experience left a lasting legacy many, many years later on those exposed to it. The experience was unique to Britain and took place during the second world war: In September, 1939, some three million children were evacuated from urban and industrial areas of the country to more rural regions in a Government initiative to reduce the risk of injury and death of aerial attack-the German Blitz. The children were individually fostered in private homes-so each child lived in a separate place apart from the other children he or she might have left home with and apart from the familiar teacher who accompanied them.

How did this experience affect the children involved? Did their age at time of evacuation matter, the foster care received, the length of period away...or other factors for that matter? These were the developmental questions that motivated James Rusby and Fiona Tasker to tack down 1,467 adults between the ages of 62 and 72 who had been evacuated from their childhood homes in the county of Kent in southeast England (near London), travelling by train to South Wales and the counties of Devon and Cornwall in the south west of England, as well as some agemates who had never been evacuated. Some 869 usable questionnaires were received and available for examination. (For more infomration, see: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a902161602~db=al...)

Results showed that only males seemed to have been affected by their experience-in terms of their security of attachment-as least as evident using a questionnaire measure completed some half century after WorldWar II. Whereas some 64% of those men who had not been evacuated as children qualified as secure, this was true of only 39% of those who had been evacuated; the contrasting figures for women were 44% vs. 38%. The men who were evacuated were more likely to qualify as dismissing in their attachments, that is, of not regarding being close to others as important and as not being inclined to share their feelings with others.

Of even more interest perhaps than these overall differences between males who were and were not evacuated, were findings pertaining to the conditions that either attenuated or exacerbated the apparent effects of evacuation. I say "apparent" because in a retrospective study such as this, one can never be certain that there were not important confounding factors that made those evacuated and those not evacuated different in the first place.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the most important factor accounting for why some men and women among those evacuated were found to be secure whereas others were not was age at time of evacuation: Evacuation in early childhood-age 4 to 6 years--increased the likelihood of an aging man or woman not being secure in late adulthood. Intriguingly, though, females evacuated around the time of puberty-10 to 12 years of age-were also likely not to be secure. This finding seems not unrelated to other work by the same investigatory team showing that girls who were 10-12 at time of evacuation were, so much later in life, at increased risk of manifesting clinical levels of anxiety.

It was also the case that, among the evacuees, those recalling poor care in their foster homes rather than good care were less likely to be secure. We need to be aware, though, of the possibility that being insecure could color one's recollection of childhood experience as much as being the result of it.

The great, late British psychiatrist, John Bowlby, who gave birth to attachment theory anticipated these results back in 1939 when he and his colleagues raised concerns about those age 4 to 6 years of age being parted from their parents and families, even in an effort to save their lives and limbs. It is sad that he is not alive to read about them. He would have been fascinated.

Rewards are Better than Punishment: Here’s Why

Jay Belsky, Ph.D. — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:00:39 +0000

Many a child developmental professional will advise parents to try to ignore children's bad behavior and reward their good behavior. As most parent's know, this is sometimes easier said than done. After all, bad behavior can be so irritating that it is difficult not to respond to, that is, to ignore. It takes real discipline.

Some parents might object to ignoring bad behavior because they see it, understandably perhaps, as their responsibility to correct the child's misbehavior. Ignoring it may seem like tolerating if not rewarding it and thus failing to do one's duty as a parent.

Despite how reasonable this sounds, it turns out that most experts, including of the Super Nanny variety, are correct. Rewards are more effective than punishment. And some Dutch neuroscientists have just found out why that seems to be the case. See http://esciencenews.com/articles/2008/09/25/from.12.years.onward....

Their work involved 8/9- and 11/12-year olds who were given the opportunity to learn some basic tasks by means of positive, rewarding feedback or negative, "punishing" feedback. Specifically, all children were given a computer task which required them to discover rules and when they correctly inferred a rule, as revealed by choices they made in the task, a check--positive reward--appeared on the screen; but if their choice indicated that they had not correctly figured out the rule of the task, then a cross--punishment--appeared on the screen. Repeated running of the task showed that performance improved substantially more when the feedback was positive in the case of the younger children, telling them they did well when they did, rather than negative, telling them that they did poorly when they did. Just the opposite proved true in the case of older children, who functioned just like young adults aged 18-25 who were also tested. That is, negative feedback improved performance more for these individuals than did positive feedback.

Because the cognitive tasks central to this research were administered while the children and young adults were in a brain scanning machine, brain imaging revealed that brain areas responsible for cognitive control and located in the cerebral cortex seemed to play a role in why younger and older children learned so differently. That is, these brain control centers were more strongly activated in the face of negative feedback in the case of older children and adults, but more strongly activated when receiving positive feedback in the case of younger children. It is almost as if for the younger children positive feedback registered more strongly, whereas for the older children, just the opposite proved true.

Why might this be so? If you think about it for a moment, as the investigators did, it becomes apparent that information which stipulates that you did something wrong is more complicated than information stipulating that you did something well. So younger children may simply have an easier time processing simpler, positive, rewarding information than negative feedback. As the authors noted, "Learning from mistakes is more complex than carrying on in the same way as before. You have to ask yourself what precisely went wrong and how it was possible." That is, it takes more analysis to figure out that what was done is mistaken than that it is correct.

What still remains unknown is exactly what accounts for the change in brain functioning and how it occurs. Do new connections within or between brain regions emerge during the transition to adolescence? Do hormones associated with puberty play a role? Like all good research, this elegant work raises new questions at the same time it reveals new things.

But the bottom line seems to be that we now have a better idea why rewards work better than punishment with pre-adolescent children. So if it is an explanation you need for why you should reward good behavior more than punish bad behavior, at least with pre-adolescent children, now you have one. The task that still remains, of course, is regulating one's own irritability, frustration and thus behavior in the face of annoying child behavior so that we can ignore it.

Parent to Child: I am NOT your friend (nor should I be)

Jay Belsky, Ph.D. — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 08:51:42 +0000

The famous, charismatic and now retired basketball player, Charles Barkley, once hit the nail on the head when he contended that being a star athlete did not qualify him to be a child's role model; that was the parent's job, he astutely observed. I am reminded of this remark about appropriate parental roles upon reading new research on "emotional parentification" in adolescence.* This piece of psychological jargon refers to a child being expected "to meet a parent's emotional need for support or companionship", such as serving as a confidante, dispute mediator when mom and dad have a conflict or family decision maker.

What the investigators found in their research on intact--not divorced--families, was that the more parents practiced parentification, the less teenagers regarded them as warm, supportive and autonomy granting; that is, encouraging of the adolescent's age-appropriate quest to do take on reasonable levels of responsibility in managing their own young lives. In addition, highly parentified children felt more sad, lonely and depressed than did agemates not so treated, while engaging in more aggressive, disobedient and delinquent behavior. It would be a mistake to exaggerate what was found and make it seem like the sky is falling, that horrific damage is being done which will last forever. But there is evidence from other studies that even when parentified youths grow up to become high achieving and socially skilled adults, they tend to feel unsure of themselves and experience frequent feelings of sadness. In sum, placing a child, even a teenager, in the age-inappropriate role of confidante and support provider to a parent is not in the child's best interest, no matter how much it may (seem to) benefit the (selfish?) parent.

But what about the other, perhaps more positive side of the friendship coin, being your child's buddy--or mate, as they say here in Britain where I write from? What I am about to say, I should make clear, is not based on any scientific evidence or even clinical experience, as I am not a clinician (probably more of a patient!). So in the interests of full disclosure, let me be clear that what follows is my opinion as a citizen, parent and professional. I know of no research evidence to substantiate it. Feel free to disagree.

Although I certainly see nothing whatsoever problematic about parents and children enjoying their time together, be it playing games, engaging in sport or participating in thoughtful conversations, I strongly believe that the word "friend" is not and should not be included in the job description of parent, at least not during the tender years, or even the adolescent ones. There should--and hopefully will--be plenty of time for that once children grow up and become responsible for their own lives. In fact, to my way of thinking, parents should be proud to sound like Charles Barkley, either when just thinking about their role in the family or when speaking directly to their children: "I am not your friend; other children, perhaps even other adults, should be and hopefully are. I am your parent."

The role of parent comes with certain responsibilities and obligations and being a friend can make exercising these more difficult than can be anyway. It can also make life more challenging for the child. What risks being compromised most notably when parents see themselves their child's friend is the placement of reasonable, age-appropriate demands on children--in a consistent and persistent manner-and the holding them accountable when they fail to live up to them. A parent who desires to be a friend to their child is going to have a much harder time holding a child accountable, while simultaneously and inadvertently making it more difficult for the child to behave in a cooperative, responsible and respectful manner. Most of us, after all, have been on the receiving end of someone saying, or acting as if they were saying, "then I am not going to be your friend anymore" when we have refused a demand or failed to fulfil a request that we did not find appropriate or sensible.

In thinking back over my time parenting my two, now 20-something sons, I now realize why I never engaged in the common practice of exchanging "high fives" with them when something good happened that pleased us. To my perhaps old-fashioned way of thinking, this was implicitly the kind of behavior that friends or mates engaged in, not two people for whom power dynamics were of fundamental importance, with one of the parties, me the parent, being more powerful than and responsible for the other. This was the kind of thing, I felt, friends, buddies and teammates did--like Barack and Michelle Obama knocking their knuckles together.
------

*Despite the following scholarly article appearing in print, it has not yet been posted on the web:
Peris, T.S., Goeke-Morey, M.C., Cummings, E.M., Emery, R.E. (2008). Marital conflict and support seeking by parentings in adolescence: Empirical support for the parentification construct. Journal of Family Psychology, 22, 633-642.

EARLY Parenting (Matters)

Jay Belsky, Ph.D. — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:06:40 +0000

How does the nature and quality of parenting that a child experiences early in life affect how she functions later in life? That is a central issue when trying to understanding the role of early experience in psychological and behavioral development. As it turns out, investigating the topic of whether experiences had early in life exert an enduring influence on how a child functions later in life is not just fundamentally important and interesting but rather challenging.

In an ideal world, at least an ideal scientific--even if ethically horrible--one, the task would be rather straightfoward: Simply decide, on a random basis, that some children will be parented, for instance, in a warm, sensitive, emotionally supportive and intellectually stimulating manner and that others will be cared for in just the opposite way. Then follow the children up at a later age and make comparisons between them. Any differences would be attributable to effects of early rearing.

For this research to yield truly compelling answers to questions about enduring influences of parenting early in life on development later in life, the skilled scientist would not even rely on biological parents to rear their own children--in the manner the scientist dictates--but have other, unrelated adults do the job. This kind of investigatory freedom is engaged in all the time when animals are the focus of investigation. Some such work, for example, takes rats or monkeys away from their biological mothers and hands them over to another adult (of the same species) who is known, on the basis of prior study of their parenting skills, to care for offspring very well or very poorly. An alternative strategy is to induce the adult who provides foster care to the young animal to care for their pseudo-progeny in a sensitive or insensitive manner by modifying the conditions under which parent and child live--by, for example, creating crowded or comfortable conditions, by providing sufficient food or doing the opposite, and so on and so forth. Once again, comparisons between animals cared for well or poorly early in life allow one to discern enduring effects of early care when the animals are studied later in life.

Because this kind of experimentation is not permitted on humans, scientists studying child development have two choices as to how to proceed. One is to seek out "natural experiments", though sometimes these seem anything but natural. Consider in this regard research on early experience effects focused upon the long-term development of children who had the misfortune of being dumped into terribly deprived Romanian orphanages when the Communists were in power and compared with children who either were not so "cared" for or simply spent less time in such places. By comparing those who had more and less exposure to these conditions of deprivation early in life, one can discern whether there are long term effects of such early experiences.

However elegant such studies can be, such research, like much early experience work involving animals, often leaves one wondering about the effects of mainstream family life--in which experimenters are not free to manipulate parenting practices and parenting experiences do not qualify as inhumane.

One way to proceed in this situation as a developmental scientist is to follow for many years children and families, studying carefully what goes on in their lives. If one wants to know how parenting in, say, the infant, toddler and preschool years might influence children when they are, say, 11 and 12, it is essential to do several things. The first is to take into account--that is, statistically control for--effects of family factors that might be related to parenting and even account for putative effects of parenting. A second important thing to do, if possible, is to take into account parenting experienced subsequent to the early years to insure that apparent effects of early parenting are not simply a function of later parenting which ends up being related to early parenting.

I have been heavily involved in one study that has followed this practice, with a sample of over 1300 Amereican children followed from birth to age 12. We discovered that the quality of parenting experienced across the first 4 ½ years of life consistently predicted many aspects of children's functioning even after we had taken into consideration a laundry list of alternative sources of influence, including family economic and educational resources early and later in the child's life, whether the mother was a single parent early and later in the child's life, mother's tendency to be depressed early and later in the child's life, the quality, quantity and type of child care the child experienced during the infant, toddler and preschool years, and the quality of instruction and the emotional support the child experienced at school in 1st, 3rd and 5th grade. Even with all these (and more) alternative sources of potential influence accounted for, many will not be surprised to learn what we found: When children experienced parenting that was warm, sensitive, cognitively stimulating and not intrusive or over controlling early in life, children showed better cognitive functioning, academic achievement and social adjustment when in 5th and 6th grade. The opposite was true when children experienced care that could not be characterized this way. (see: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/117957245/abstract)

Will these apparently beneficial effects of parenting in the early years extend into adolescence? That is a question we are presently addressing and should be reporting on in the not too distant future. Of interest perhaps is that these findings underscoring the enduring influence of parenting during the early years emerged from a major study whose core purpose was to investigate the effects of early (non-maternal) child care on child development, a subject that will have to wait for a future blog.

Middle Age Begins Before Birth

Jay Belsky, Ph.D. — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:12:54 +0000

In my previous blog entry I floated the argument that for some it is commonsensical that what happens early in life is of little importance to how individuals turn out later in life. Without embracing this view, I pointed out that some psychologists argue, seemingly convincingly, that "it would make no sense for life-span development to be shaped by what happens to a baby, a toddler or even an older preschool child. Life is long and adulthood is far away in time from the early years, so evolution would never craft an organism whose future functioning was influenced in important ways by experiences had at the hand of his parents--or others--very early in life."

It appears to be indisputably the case that, at least in some respects, this claim is fundamentally false. Indeed, one of the remarkable discoveries of recent years, which warms the cockles of the heart of this developmentalist who has long embraced the view that experiences early in life are of consequence to later development, is that experiences in the womb prior to birth shape physical health in middle age! More specifically, medical research reveals that poor growth in the womb, often leading to low birth weight and frequently a result of poor or limited maternal and, thereby, fetal nutrition, results in increased probability of obesity, diabetes and heart disease in middle age. Before saying anything more, let me make clear that it is most certainly not the case that each and every one of us who was under-nourished as a fetus and/or who was born prematurely (like myself), will succumb to one or more of these "metabolic diseases" by the time they are 40 or 50, if not before. Nevertheless, the empirical link between experience in the womb and health in middle age has now been chronicled with sufficient frequency that the skepticism that this association met when first documented has given way to advances in scientific theory, health research and medical treatment. For those interested in learning more about the whys and wherefores of this relatively new set of early-experience findings, let me recommend the eminently readable volume by Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson entitled The Fetal Matrix, published in 2004 by Oxford University Press (http://www.cambridge.org/aus/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521...).

But what has this all got to do with psychology? Perhaps most obviously, health psychology is a major arena of the ever expanding field of psychological science, so it is now clear that those interested in physical health and its psychological repercussions would benefit from thinking developmentally--all the way back to the womb. But of more importance to this blog is that the dramatic and surprising discovery linking diseases of middle age with experiences had before birth severely undermines the confidence that can be placed in the putative common-sense logic with which I introduced this blog entry. Simply put, if the claim that natural selection would not shape development so that functioning in later life would be influenced by what happens much earlier in life does not apply to physical health, why should it apply to psychological and behavioral development? Only if one retains an untenable and outdated distinction between mind (i.e., psychology) and body (i.e., physical health) can one hold on to the "it-does-not-make-sense" argument. In other words, either it doesn't make sense for early experience to matter--at all--or it remains possible, even if not certain, that it does when it comes to psychological and behavioral fucntioning. Thus, evidence that very early experience--as a fetus--makes a difference to later life in major ways pertaining to life and death implies that other early experiences could also make a difference to later life.

Does how a young child is reared really matter?

Jay Belsky, Ph.D. — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:51:50 +0000

The answer to the question posed in the title is commonsensical to many, whether they be professionally trained child developmentalists or not. "Of course how a baby is cared for matters to his later development", many will claim. "In fact, it is crucial and critical for his later psychological well being. Sensitive, loving, supportive rearing results in a person feeling secure, being able to love and co-operate with others and even succeed occupationally." Freud, after all, linked the early mother-infant relationship to the capacity to love and to work in adulthood.

One thing that fascinates me is that what is common sense to some is more or less idiocy--I am being purposefully hyperbolic here--to others. "Any fool knows", these (professional and lay) naysayers will claim, "that how a child is treated across the first year or two (or more) of life matters little to the kind of person he ultimately turns out to be--so long as we are not talking about truly abusive care." In fact, some of them will argue, again on a common-sense basis, that "it would make no sense for life-span development to be shaped by what happens to a baby, a toddler or even an older preschool child." Life is long and adulthood is far away in time from the early years, so evolution would never craft an organism whose future functioning was influenced in important ways by experiences had at the hand of his parents--or others--very early in life. "It is what happens much later in life that determines the kind of people we become", these critics of what might be called "early experience fanaticism" often argue. Of course, there are those who contend that even such later life experiences don't matter a wit, as who we are and who we become is coded in our genes. It is nature, not nurture that shapes us.

I have long been intrigued by the "early experience question", most likely because it was my belief that what happens to you early in life shapes, at least in part, the kind of person you become that got me into the field of child development in the first place. This belief , though, was somewhat late in coming to me. After declining admission to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, having desperately desired to attend this institution from at least the age of 7, and subsequently concluding that I did not want to study international affairs at Georgetown University where I enrolled as a freshman in the School of Foreign Service, I became intrigued with the issue of the effects of early experience almost by accident.

It is an interesting story so I will tell it, not as an exercise in navel gazing, but to make a point I am going to challenge in future blogs. The point to be challenged is that it is later life experiences, not early ones, that matter most to who we become. In my case, I was sitting under a tree at Georgetown, depressingly pondering my existence, having lost interest in the study of international affairs, suffering from what I subsequently came to appreciate was a classic "identity crisis" as defined by the famous child psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. Bottom line: I was lost, existentially that is. I simply did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up and did therefore not know who I was or what I wanted in life.

But fortuitously--though some of my academic colleagues may differ!--a fellow player on the university soccer team walked by in the manner of the Pied Piper. He had, as I recall, about a dozen 4-year olds in tow. "Where did you get them?", I remember asking as he walked by. Over his shoulder he called back, "From the University Hospital day care center; they are always looking for volunteers." And so began what was to turn first into a passionate interest in children and childhood, then a scientific interest in how early experience shapes later development, and thereby a career in developmental psychology.

But is the lesson of this personal tale that early experience does not matter? This is a question to be taken up in greater depth in future blogs. While randomness certainly played a role in my life--after all, where would I be today had this teammate not walked by?--one should not lose sight of the following facts: (a) I was in the midst of an identity crisis; (b) I asked my teammate where the children came from; (c) I followed up on his reply by becoming a volunteer at the day care center; and (d) I thereafter decided to transfer to anther college so that I could study child development.

Were these actions by me affected by my early developmental experiences? If they were, then saying that my life has been mostly shaped by experience in young adulthood would misrepresent the complex forces at work in it and the lives of so many of us (who are fortunate to live in a world where life choices really exist). But my purpose is not to turn this blog into an analysis of me, so you will not be hearing much more about my developmental experiences in future postings. I have simply used my own life to both illustrate a point that is common sense for some today--that what matters is not early but later life experiences--in order to begin a discussion of exactly the opposite and what others regard as common sense: early experience matters!

Co-parenting POORLY (in intact families)

Jay Belsky, Ph.D. — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:45:53 +0000

Like many other things in life, when it comes to co-parenting poorly, there are many ways to get the job done. There are acts of commission and of omission; that is, what a co-parent does and what she or he fails to do in the co-parenting role. Let me take the latter first, particularly because I made a point of noting in my previous post entitled "Co-parenting WELL" (http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/a-family-affair/200806/co-p...) that one co-parenting act of commission--simply reiterating to a child a point made by one's partner in parenting--does not qualify as highly skilful co-parenting.

Even though reiterating to a child what one's parenting partner has already said does not represent the most skilled manner of co-parenting, there is most certainly a time and place for doing so. As a result, failing to do so--an act of omission--is one way to co-parent poorly. When a child fails to listen and heed one's partner and you just sit there and say nothing, that can be regarded by the child as a license to ignore the first parent. This is one reason why many a mother or father when faced with this situation turns to their parenting partner and says, typically in frustration, something like "Don't you have anything to say? Are you just going to sit there?"

The challenge, of course, is in selecting whether and when to re-state what one's partner has told the child already. Doing so all the time or when it is probably not necessary risks inadvertently undermining the first parent by, as I indicated in my previous blog, making it seem that the child only has to comply with the first parent's request because the second parent has now weighed in on the subject. But failing to repeat what one's partner has said when the child is not listening to, or ignoring or purposefully defying the first parent represents a co-parenting failure.

Even if failing to reiterate what one parent has said to a child can qualify as poor co-parenting, it is in acts of commission, rather than of omission, that serious co-parenting crimes get committed. It may help to recall the game of curling that I used in my previous blog as a metaphor for co-parenting, especially how the "sweeper" uses the broom to brush the ice in a way that speeds up or slows down the weight thrown by a teammate in order to increase its chances of hitting the target. Essentially, behaviors that serve to slow down the weight when it needs speeding up or speed up the weight when it really needs slowing down is at the heart of co-parenting poorly.

Imagine the common parenting situation discussed in my previous blog in which say a mother is trying to get her child to get undressed and take a bath, but the child is not cooperating. What does a supposed partner in parenting do in this situation that actively serves to undermine the first parent? Besides doing nothing when, if you would, the cavalry is called for, the co-parent can act as if the first parent has not made any request at all, distracting the child's attention from the first parent. So if one parent is with the child and their partner is the one trying to get the child to the bath, the first simply goes on dealing with the child as if the partner did not even exist. This is a form of passive aggression.

Even worse, though, is behaving in ways that not so much passively undermine one's parenting partner--saying nothing when something is called for or continuing what one was doing with the child when the partner made a request of or gave a directive to the child--but actively working against the partner's wishes. Consider in this regard a scene that I have witnessed on more than one occasion during home observations of families: Dad is both watching television and reading the paper while the 3-year old is on the floor playing with some toy characters. Mom, after (wisely) alerting the child earlier that in a short time she would be taking him up to the bath, returns to do just that "Time to go", she says, "the bath is waiting for you." And how does Mr. Poor Co-parenter behave? He says to the child, "Hey, look at this picture here in the paper." And so the boy jumps up and into dad's lap so they can both look at the photo together.

Now anyone witnessing only the father-child exchange just described might consider this a nice, caring dad, one who understands his son's curiosities and is prepared to teach him things when opportune moments arrive. But that is not what is really going on here, is it? This is another small skirmish in a co-parenting war that perhaps goes on at a low--or even high--level all the time in many families. By choosing to invite the child to do something interesting and attractive to the child at just the moment when it is not called for, dad subtlety sends a most-corrupting message to his child about his partner in parenting: "You really don't have to pay attention to what mom says."

But please do not jump to the conclusion that this is just a dad thing; mothers behave this way, too. In neither case is it developmentally beneficial to the child, admirable, or even grown up! To repeat something I--and others--have said before, no child wants to find him or herself in the middle, being used by one parent as a tool against the other. Doing so is one way the poor co-parenting operates.