NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children
By Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
As a parent educator, I could easily fill all of my time reading the piles and piles of parenting books published each year. Admittedly, I do spend an inordinate amount of time reading, researching and keeping current on parenting trends and family resources.
With that said, it is rare when a book strikes a chord with me like NurtureShock did. This particular chord was not struck because I was reading a book filled with new and revolutionary information, chocked full of on-point parenting techniques and advice. Quite the contrary, in fact. I was struck by the clever way Bronson and Merryman produced a highly-polished and brilliantly packaged volume of what I call "parenting pop-psychology". Like a great wine, perfectly balanced with just enough scientific research and social psychology to appeal to parenting connoisseurs as well as parenting beginners.
In ten chapters, Bronson and Merryman survey the newest findings about the heavy-hitting topics child development such as self-esteem, obesity, racial sensitivity and education. Although little in this book is actually shocking, humans (and especially parents) tend to have a need to turn tentative child research into settled policy, and therefore, the studies that the authors discuss are of more than a passing interest.
One of the topics Bronson and Merryman bring into light, is the paradox of praise and its effect on children's self-esteem. They educate their readers by highlighting the findings in Nathaniel Brandon's published 1969 paper called, "The Psychology of Self-Esteem" in which he argued that feelings of self-worth were a key to success in life. They adroitly summarize the decades of literature on this topic, with a "sad-but-true" conclusion that praise does not increase a person's self-esteem, desire to learn, motivation or position in life. Gratefully, they do speak a bit about how to effectively praise children so parents are not left feeling like the rug has been completely pulled out from under them;maybe only yanked just a bit.
The benefits of teaching tolerance and promoting diversity have been vehemently promoted in most American societies, including tolerance programs in schools, work places, and even in politics. However, according to the authors, these benefits look equally unimpressive in the current research. This bucks the traditional belief that teaching tolerance would increase racial sensitivity in children, and adults for that matter. The authors are quick to point out that the well-meaning adult and parent nostrums, "we're all friends," "we're all equal", may lead to unintended consequences for our kids. Bronson and Merryman report that one researcher found that "more diversity translates into more divisions between students," in terms of self-segregation, and another researcher proposed that "too much discussion of past discrimination can make minority children over-reactive to perceived future slights."
Bronson and Merryman leave no stone unturned, and parents are not the only ones who may feel shaken while reading NurtureShock. Educational policy makers are put under the spot light when Bronson and Merryman explore the efficacy of drop-out programs, anti-drug programs and testing for advanced student achievement. For many years, school districts have used forms of IQ tests to determine giftedness in young children. According to the research, early IQ tests predict later achievement less than half the time. Between ages 3 and 10, about two-thirds of children will experience a rise or drop of 15 points or more. They assert that early testing produces unreliable results, and suggest later IQ testing be performed to assess a student's true ability.
Bronson and Merryman address research aimed at babies as well as teenagers. In a famous 1994 study described by the authors, researchers discovered that babies of professional parents were exposed to almost three times the number of words as the babies of welfare parents. When this research went public, motivated parents went as far as to purchase $699 "verbal pedometers," to count and monitor the number of words their baby is hearing per hour. After all, empirical research was telling them that babies who know more words early on, went on to do more advanced work later in their young lives. True to form, researchers are now modifying their earlier findings. As it turns out, it is not so much the number of words kids hear that matters, but the level of responsiveness of adults to a child's words and explorations. Is this a case of good old- fashioned presence and responsiveness trumping empirical social science research? Or is it merely a case of nature and nurture cooperating once again? The reader gets to draw the conclusions here.
One of the pieces of NurtureShock I appreciated most was the author's comprehensive inclusion of recent studies on all topics they broach. This saves all of us weary adults from having to pour over reams of research results just to find the present trends in social science. However, given how often last year's science becomes this year's boondoggle, Bronson and Merryman's representation of the research would have benefited from a healthy dose of skepticism. Agreeably, social science has become increasingly more empirical in the past 20 years, and perhaps many of the results in NurtureShock might even be true. That doesn't mean, however, that we, the readers. a.k.a. the general public, have the slightest idea how to translate these findings into constructive parental behavior or effective public policy.
Your parenting book of choice whether it is Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care or NurtureShock, ends up not mattering so much in the end. What does ultimately matter, is the time, presence and love parents dedicate to their children. Scientific evidence supports this across the board and has never wavered. Shocking? Not really.
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