There’s no single right way to parent
All families are unique, with their own priorities and values
Authors
The pressure on parents to get parenting ‘right’ is immense. Many people offer parenting advice that is not backed up by evidence, or that may not suit all families. Study findings are sometimes distorted, as when attachment research is misused to claim that parents need to be with their infants constantly, or to allege that gradual sleep training will sever a secure attachment. There is no evidence that sleep training negatively affects attachment, but there is evidence that it helps protect a sleep-deprived mother’s mental health.
Parenting has become a marketised industry. Books and classes promise that a specific approach to parenting can optimise children’s outcomes. With a dearth of scientific evidence aimed at parents, many understandably seek advice and reassurance elsewhere. The idea that there is one correct approach to parenting is relatively new. Only in the last century has the word ‘parenting’ been used as a noun, and it was not until the past few decades that ‘parenting’ has been conceptualised as a skill. For generations before us, parents were primarily concerned with making sure their children were clean, fed, and physically healthy.
“We are aware that families have individual needs, and that an approach that meets the needs of one family may not be right for another.”
In our developmental psychology lab, we know that many claims about the best approach to parenting are misguided. Our research focuses on understanding children’s learning and cognition, as well as the influence of the family and wider environment. Parents often ask what approach we recommend for fostering a child’s cognitive development. As scientists, we feel a responsibility to share our knowledge, which may include findings about approaches that may shape certain skills or aptitudes. At the same time, however, we are aware that families have individual needs, and that an approach that meets the needs of one family may not be right for another.
All families and circumstances are unique
Families have their own values, priorities, resources, challenges, and constraints. Pushing one approach could cause parents to stop doing things that are important to them and that come naturally. That approach may not work with the constraints and resources of all families. What’s more, children have different temperaments and abilities that may require specific types of nurture.
“Pushing one approach could cause parents to stop doing things that are important to them and that come naturally.”
Different environments interact with children’s natural dispositions to foster different skills, which may be valuable in different contexts. Socioemotional skills, for example, may not be highly valued in formal education but they are important for building relationships in and outside of school.
Studies that look at how the environment shapes children’s outcomes are situated in a specific context, so their findings may not be universally applicable. To illustrate, children learn more words when their parents talk directly to them, using a rich vocabulary. Yet while the advice to frequently talk directly to children and to use a variety of words may help some parents, it may not align with every parent’s approach or circumstances. In some cultures, children hear very little speech directed at them, but still learn words through speech they overhear.
Families experiencing adversity can have strengths that can sometimes be hidden due to the research approach in this area. Research often focuses, for instance, on how much formal learning families do, or how many books are in the home. However, when we broaden our approach, we can see that children living in lower socioeconomic environments often have stronger connections with their parents, or spend more time with extended family and engaging in play. While we are by no means suggesting that adversity is good, we know that families can show resilience and agency in setting their family priorities in a wide range of circumstances.
Parenting styles differ not only by place, but also with each new generation. Barring extremes such as abuse or neglect, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to parent.
Real life is messy
Researchers often look at how one factor, like engaging in learning activities at home, relates to another factor, such as children’s academic attainment scores. In the ‘real world’, though, it can be difficult to determine from these studies whether more home learning activities directly improve attainment. It may also be that children with high levels of learning ability elicit more learning interactions from their parents.
Even when scientific studies are designed to identify direct causes, they do so in a controlled context and are rarely designed to extract general parenting principles. We must be cautious when generalising to real life, which is more complex and messier.
Research can be subject to biases, including class and cultural biases. For instance, some studies suggest that crowded and chaotic households are detrimental to children’s cognitive skills, but when researchers look at the ratio of children to adults rather than the total number of people in the home, they find that intergenerational living often has advantages, as parents in these environments are less burnt out. The same factor, measured differently, leads to different conclusions.
Researchers like to study skills that are easily and reliably measured with standardised tasks, and they may also focus on skills that are highly valued in formal education, such as a child’s memory, academic attainment, and vocabulary size. As a result, they often miss important qualities like creativity, problem solving, a sense of humour, or the ability to relate to others, factors that also set children up for success but are harder to measure. Researchers are beginning to broaden their lens to capture these wider skills, but this will take time.
“Given the unique needs and circumstances of every family, parents should be sceptical of suggestions that there is a single correct way to parent.”
Parents need to know that they have agency
Given the unique needs and circumstances of every family, parents should be sceptical of suggestions that there is a single correct way to parent. Of course, it is important to show parents that they have agency and that they play an important role in their child’s life. But they also need to be aware that factors beyond our control shape parenting and children.
With all of these caveats in mind, what advice do we have for parents? Most importantly, there is room for a multitude of approaches. Parents cannot be perfect and do everything right all the time.
“My children are 3 and 5, and my goal for now has been creating a consistent foundation of love and positive regard for my children. We probably do less formal learning than some families, but they are still quite young. I have three main priorities at this current time: a good night’s sleep, time with extended family, and moments in the day for play for authentic connection and conversation. But other families, with different values or circumstances, may have different priorities.”
Emma Blakey
A few decades ago, sociologist Annette Lareau closely observed families from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds in the United States. She found that families typically took one of two distinct approaches to parenting: Those in higher social classes tended to actively organize their children’s lives, planning structured activities designed to foster skills and talent, and they encouraged their children to negotiate with adults and trust institutions. In contrast, families from working class backgrounds were more likely to view their children’s development as a natural process needing less input. Those families provided a loving and safe environment with more autonomy and self-direction for the children, setting aside time for unstructured activities and interactions with family. Neither approach is better or worse; they are just different. They reflect families’ values, life histories, and circumstances.
Parents are subject to more time constraints than ever before, often parenting in isolation from their community and family networks. Effective social policies to address structural challenges are needed if children are to achieve the best possible outcomes. While we wait and hope for those improvements, perhaps it is sufficient simply to be a ‘good enough’ parent rather than striving for perfection, as British Paediatrician Donald Winnicott pointed out in the 1950s. This approach also gives parents room to focus on their own health and wellbeing.
Footnotes
Emma Blakey is a member of the Communicating and Expanding Research on Adversity (CERA) network, supported by the Jacobs Foundation. The CERA network aims to improve science communication about people who experience adversity. Members come from diverse backgrounds and hold unique identities so do not necessarily agree with the viewpoints in this article.
Authors