Kenya: The pressure to spend so much quality time with children stresses mothers out so much it may actually make them worse parents than if they just focused on making more money, according to a recent study. The study by the University of Maryland found that mothers need less on frontal-lobe development and deep connection with our children.
The “How Does the Amount of Time Mothers Spend with Children Matter?” authors found that the pressure to spend quality time with children means all parents — working and stay-at-home — schedule both professional and housework around the children’s activities to maximise this presumed critical time together, at the detriment to all parties’ emotional well-being.
The researchers found that for young children, not much. In fact, the number of hours a mother spends with her kids aged three to 11 has little to no impact on their academic or psychological success. This is stunning in and of itself (though more juicy data are to come). This finding completely confronts and contradicts the prevalent parenting message of our time: The stay-at-home mother is the better mother. If you work outside the home, your children will suffer.
In fact, a couple years ago a Pew survey found a stunning 40 per cent of Americans believe that when a mother (not parent — mother) works outside the home it actually harms her children. If you are like me and the majority of mothers in the United States, and you work outside the home, it is very hard to avoid feeling guilty and stressed as a result.
We dutifully spend more time with our kids. Wrote the researchers: For three-to-11-year-olds, mothers spend an average of 11 to 30 hours each week either fully engaged in activities with their kids, or nearby and accessible when needed.
STAY HOME MOMS
For kids in early teens, mothers are there between 11 and 20 hours each week. On average, in 1975 mothers spent just over seven hours per week with their kids The more-time-is-more parenting paradigm has given rise and supported the stay-at-home-mother trend, which puts women, children and families in financial peril and threatens marriages. Studies find that divorce rates plummet when both partners in a marriage are happily employed.
The University of Maryland researchers found that all this kid-time can result in parents, mothers in particular, being stressed, sleep-deprived, guilty and anxious — which, as any parent knows, trickles down to the kids. I am a single mother and like most American parents, have zero choice but to earn a living. Yet, I, too, I find this pressure to spend so many hours with my children to be both stressful and poor economics.
As a freelance writer, I am very fortunate to have a career that allows me to work from home and mostly control my schedule a gift that I maximise by picking my kids up from school every day, and spending most afternoons engaged with them. I do this because I believe that makes me a better mother, and therefore benefits my kids.
Recently, I’ve come to resent these afternoons. My kids are now aged five and seven, and they want to play after they get home. I live in a city in an apartment with no outdoor space, so playing usually means a trip to the park or playground. I don’t particularly enjoy the playground, and at their ages, my kids are happy to play independently or with friends.
But guilt based on this notion I should be intimately engaged in their every free moment, paired with the general paranoia about child safety that pressures me not to cave to my instincts to leave them play alone at the playground, means I usually hover at the edge of the park. -Forbes
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