You all know I love podcasts. They are awesome. I even wrote this post about it.
I was listening to Freakonomics Radio the other day on my Stitcher Radio App on my iphone. (No, this is not a sponsored post, I just like to tell you about cool things) It’s title: “An Economists Guide to Parenting“.
Awesome. Just the idea of applying cold, statistical, logical thinking to the irrational, illogical world of parenting? Sign me up. Then I listened to the introduction to the podcast….
“So you’re having a baby! Congratulations! That’s great. Welcome to the wonderful world of parenthood! It’s exhilarating, challenging — and probably more than anything, perplexing. Why? One word: experts. So many experts and so much advice.” (Stephen Dubner)
Right there they had me hooked.
A podcast talking about the exact issue that I am probably most passionate about in the world of parenting– the challenge for parents of being faced with an overwhelming number of ‘experts’ with an overwhelming diversity of ideas on ‘THE’ way to parent your child. More then just that, it also touches on the theme of one of my favourite books about parenting and society, “Under Pressure” by Carl Honore. The theme of ‘over parenting;’ also something I am deeply fascinated with. And trust me, this podcast did not disappoint. In fact, I am officially declaring it ‘must read’ for any parent. So let me give you the links and then let’s chat about it.
Full Transcript Written Version (if you want to read rather then listen, or verify that I did not mis-quote)
The Freakonomics podcast is hosted by Stephen Dubner, one of the two authors of the Freakonomics books, which if you haven’t read, you must. The other author of Freakonomics, Steve Levitt is also almost always contributing to the podcast, but he seems to not be the narrator. Anyway, long story short, they are both in this podcast, a long with a whole bunch of “economist” parents.
One of my favourite quotes from the podcast is from Steven Levitt. He says, “Obsessive parenting has few rewards.” Furthermore, he says, “What matters most is who parents are, not what parents do.”
Think about that for a minute.
“What matters most is who parents are, not what parents do.”
What he means by this is that children who are successful are successful not because their parents read every parenting book out there, teach them baby sign language and put them in early art lessons. They are successful because they are being raised by parents who are the type of parents (deeply engaged, loving, financial able to provide, intelligent, driven and likely possessing high social capital) who would put their kid in early art lessons. A bit of a mind twister right? Essentially though, the success of our children is not about checking off boxes to complete a full enrichment regiment- it is a complex system of inherited genes and experiences which is not so easily manipulated.
One of the experts they interviewed-Valerie Ramey- explains the dramatic increase in the amount of time young college educated mothers (presumably these are US statistics) are spending with their children. Between 1980 and now, the increase in time spent per week with their children has increase over 70%, from 13 hours a week in 1980 to 22 hours per week. What Valery also explains is that, “Now, what’s interesting is over this same time period, the wages of college-educated women have really increased. So, the opportunity cost of time has increased at the same time they’ve decided to spend more time taking care of their children.” What Valery found was that this change was largely due to the increase competition to get ones children into college- because extra circulars could help a college application. So its not really about these things we do really helping our children to be any more intelligent or capable, it about having good things to say on a college application. There seems something deeply wrong with that if you ask me!
The podcast then explores a number of areas where studies have shown that many of the things we do as parents to try and get our kids ‘ahead’ really don’t work.
What was also interesting though, was that they talked about where parents do have a big impact on our children. Essentially, the areas where we have the most impact is in modeling how to treat others. (This was talked about by Bruce Sacerdote in the podcast.) Which, when you think about it, makes sense. It is also something we don’t focus on a lot as parents. We talk about setting a good example, in a vague sort of sense. But do we really consider the parenting impact of our child seeing us treat a sales person in an unkind way? Or get frustrated with other drivers on the road? Or behave in a way that lacks consideration for others? Perhaps, more then anything else, this is what we should focus on in order to be “good parents”… showing our children how to treat everyone we encounter with respect, kindness, acceptance and understanding. Instead of snapping at the waiter when we’ve had a bad day. (Don’t worry, we’ve all done it, myself included.)
The other thing I thought was absolutely fascinating (and completely amusing) in this podcast was the discussion about how even though, these Economist parents knew their actions had little to no impact, they still engage in ‘over parenting’. When asked about this, many of them explained that despite the knowledge they have, the social pressures there. It’s what they felt they ‘should’ do, even though they recognize they don’t have to. It’s so funny that as parents we just can’t help ourselves. If something may have an impact, even if all conventional wisdom and academic study says it doesn’t, if the neighbour is doing it….
The next part of this podcast I really loved. It hearken back to one of my favourite topics of hot debate on this blog… Risk.
Betsy Stevenson says: “I think the hardest thing as a parent is to admit that you are going to take risks with your childs’ life. To actually admit out loud “I take risks with my childs’ life”, I mean, if you said that at a cocktail party people would look at you like you are a monster. But of course we take risks with our lives everyday.” Like going outside, crossing the street, take transit, riding in a car. As Dubner says, “human beings are terrible risk assessors in general, and that no one is worse than a parent.”
The whole point being that risk is everywhere and a lot of the things we worry about as parents are not things we can prevent, nor are they things that actually present a reasonably large risk. So this whole obsession with risk and the prevention of risk for the safety of our children does us little to no good.
Sure it does us good if we take tangible steps to prevent reasonable risk. Like putting a gate around a swimming pool and not leaving our infants alone in the bath tub. But worrying about our children being kidnapped? Well that just makes us stressed out and anxious, which is not conducive with being a confident, caring and fun parent.
So what do you think? Did you listen to the podcast? Agree? Disagree? What struck you as the most fascinating? Tell me all about it!
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