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Short and Long-Term Benefits
of At-Home Parenting

While finances often factor into the decision to have a parent at home, many of today's parents are making the careful decision to reduce hours on the job or be at home full-time based on their belief that there are both short- and long-term benefits to spending generous amounts of time with their children.  Many families make the decision to have a parent at home based on factors that cannot be quantified or qualified by the "limited" methods of science; factors such as common sense, conscience and heart.

1.  The Importance of Early Attachment:

Research indicates that children benefit greatly from consistency, stability, continuity and individualized attention in a warm, responsive and loving atmosphere.  Many parents believe they are best suited to provide this care since, in most cases, they have the most motivation, inspiration, passion and long-term vested interest in their children.  Many parents believe their children need them, and that their relationship with their child/ren is irreplaceable.  Mothers tell us they can pay someone to change and feed their child, but they just can't pay someone to love their child as much as they do.

For young children, continuity of care is essential to the formation of secure attachment and is the basis for all future relationships.  The trust and love each child receives serves as the basis for future relationships.  Parents spending generous amounts of time with their children recognize their value as the persons who empower the humanizing dimension of their child's personality, enabling him or her to experience tenderness, grief or shame, and to love and feel deeply.  The value of these abilities in future life is immeasurable and certainly not measured in day-care studies.

Numerous studies conducted in various settings show clearly that the only way to build strong independence in children is to indulge their strong needs for dependence when they are very young.¹²  Indeed, Dr. Jay Belsky, Ph.D., Professor of Human Development, Pennsylvania State University, reported in a 1988 study that his research "clearly reveal[ed] that extensive nonmaternal (and nonparental) care in the first year is a risk factor in the development of insecure infant-parent attachment relationships."¹³

New insights into brain development show that early care has decisive and long-lasting effects on how people develop and learn, how they cope with stress, and how they regulate their emotions.¹⁴  More specifically, this scientific evidence shows:

• Babies thrive when they receive warm, responsive early care;

• Warm and responsive care play a vital role in healthy development;

• Individuals' capacities to control their own emotional states appear to hinge on biological systems shaped by their early experiences and attachments; and

• A strong, secure attachment to a nurturing adult can have a protective biological function, helping a growing child withstand the ordinary stresses of daily life.

"'Human attachment' research has demonstrated that the early relationship between infants and preschoolers and their parents is the 'foundation stone' of all subsequent personality development.  It has also shown that even very marginal parental care is better for young children than institutional care.  As John Bowlby, the only psychiatrist who has twice received the American Psychiatric Association's highest award, warned 'a home must be very bad before it is bettered by a good institution.'"¹⁵

Further, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care¹⁶ found that about half (53%) of the day care provided for the youngest U.S. children could be considered only 'fair' in quality.  The study concluded that fewer than 10% of youngsters ages 3 and under are likely to receive "excellent" care; nearly 30% was ranked "good," and 8% of care was deemed "poor."
 

2.  Emotionally and Intellectually Healthy Children:

Our society often tends to devalue the emotional aspect of the human psyche in favor of the intellectual.  But as Dr. Stanley Greenspan, eminent child psychiatrist and author of many books on child development,¹⁷ explains in his latest work, Building Healthy Minds:  The Six Experiences that Create Intelligence and Emotional Growth in Babies and Young Children,¹⁸ emotional development is a critical foundation for every other aspect of a child's development:

"At each succeeding stage of development, we have found that emotional interactions like a baby's smile leading to a hug enable the child to understand how the world works, and eventually to think, solve problems, and master academic challenges.  Emotions are actually the internal architects, conductors, or organizers of our minds.  They tell us how and what to think, what to say and when to say it, and what to do. We 'know' things through our emotional interactions and then apply that knowledge to the cognitive world."

In his October, 1997 Washington Post article,  "The Reasons Why We Need to Rely Less on Day Care," Dr. Greenspan cautions, "Current patterns of out-of-home child care have significant limitations that endanger the growing minds of future generations ... Intimate ongoing interactions between children and their parents, we're learning, are essential for the proper growth of the brain and mind."

Again, in his latest book, Building Healthy Minds,¹⁹ Dr. Greenspan emphasizes the importance of ongoing, intensive, affectionate interactions for developing young minds: "The more you are able to encourage the integrated growth of your child's mind and brain, the more successful you'll be in laying the groundwork for his becoming an intelligent, logical, socially adept, empathic adult.  These important qualities spring out of the fertile soil of your continuing interactions."

Dr. Greenspan's research has found that the following six experiences²⁰ are provided by families to children who are emotionally and intellectually healthy:

1. Ongoing, loving, intimate relationships in order to develop caring, empathy and trust;
2.  Interactions made up of lengthy, back-and-forth emotional dialogues to foster the beginnings of a sense of self, logical communications and the beginnings of purposefulness;
3. Long problem-solving discussions with gestures to foster early types of thinking and social skills;
4. Stimulation appropriate to the baby's nervous system:  sights, sounds, touches and other sensations in order to foster learning, language, awareness, attention and self-control;
5. Shared use of creative ideas through pretend play in order to foster language and creativity; and
6. Logical use of ideas through eliciting opinions and debates to promote logical thinking, planning and readiness for reading and math.

3.  Morals and Values -- Parents Have the Greatest Influence:

Since 1984, we have heard from thousands of mothers across the country.  Their messages consistently include their beliefs that:

Parents who spend generous amounts of time with their children have the greatest opportunity to influence and shape their children's lives:  to teach them right from wrong, to discipline them in the manner they feel best, and to do what they believe is important in challenging their children to grow mentally, emotionally and physically.

Children learn and internalize the morals and values of those people with whom they spend their time.  Many parents choosing to devote generous amounts of time to their children do so because they want to transmit their own values, beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions to their children.  Many parents believe that, in sharing their days with their children, they are building the foundation of an intimate, secure and irreplaceable relationship.

Many parents value the quantity and continuity of the time spent with their children. When do children need us?  Parents have found that it is impossible to schedule quality moments or moments in which a child is in greatest need of mom.  When mom is in close proximity on a regular basis, children can share what is on their mind when it comes to mind.  What do children need?  Often more than material things that a second income may be able to buy, our children need and want our "being there," providing a sense of security and intimacy.  Children benefit from knowing that someone fully devoted to them is consistently there.  Many mothers agree that what children need most is time, attention and unconditional love.

Diane Fisher, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and mother of three, noted in her recent congressional testimony on the policy implications of child brain development²¹ that while she has respect for studies that attempt to grapple with the issues of children's growth and their response to varying environments, we must not forget those qualities that are not measured.  She noted, "Science cannot quantify important social qualities such as compassion, courage, character and moral vision.  These traits are inextricably linked with attachment and emotional development."

Spending time with children is critical, regardless of a child's age.  The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a survey of 90,000 7th through 12th graders released in 1997, revealed that adolescents with strong emotional attachments to their parents and teachers are much less likely to use drugs and alcohol, attempt suicide, engage in violence or become sexually active at an early age.

Linda Burton, one of the founders of Mothers At Home, simply notes:  "A mother's job is making memories.  As we begin to clarify which activities ought to have priority on a day-to-day basis in our lives, we come to realize that whether we spend long hours reading to our children or creating savory meals...we are contributing to the concept our children will have of home.  We are stockpiling memories for them to use in the years ahead.  We are filling the corners of their minds with sights and sounds and smells that will re-emerge just when they need to remember that somewhere they are loved, whether they falter or whether they flourish."²²
 

4.  Parents are the real experts on their children:

Mothers often point out the benefits of being with their children throughout the day, such as being able to read their actions quickly and accurately, meeting their needs along the way.  Children experience many small events each day that have an impact on them. Parents spending generous amounts of time with their children are best able to understand and address a child's fears, hesitations and actions. "It's very hard to become a sensitively responsive mother if you're away from your child 10 hours a day," says distinguished child developmentalist Mary Ainsworth.

Dr. Isabelle Fox, author of Being There:  The Benefits of a Stay-at-Home Parent, notes that parenting is difficult "because one must be responsible not only to each child as an individual, but also to the constant shifts and changes in a child's development and behavior.  Parents need to appreciate their child's growth, acknowledging that each stage and each developmental task has value."

Many parents tell us they consider their bond with their children irreplaceable and consider time with their children an important "investment," reaping both short and long-term benefits primarily for the child, but also for the family and society as a whole.

Footnotes:

¹²  "The Importance of Early Attachment," The American Enterprise Magazine, May/June 1998, p. 30.
¹³  "The Realities of Day Care," The Public Interest, Fall 1996, p. 96.
¹⁴  Rethinking the Brain: New Insights into Early Development, Families and Work Institute, 1997.
¹⁵  "The Importance of Early Attachment," The American Enterprise Magazine, May/June 1998, p. 30.
¹⁶  The NICHD is a subdivision of the National Institutes of Health.  Statistics reported in The Washington Post/Health, February 23, 1999.
¹⁷  Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D. is recently retired from George Washington University Medical School and the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute and is the author of a number of books on child development.
¹⁸  Building Healthy Minds:  The Six Experiences that Create Intelligence and Emotional Growth in Babies and Young Children by Stanley Greenspan, M.D. with Nancy Breslau Lewis (1999), page 9.
¹⁹  Building Healthy Minds:  The Six Experiences that Create Intelligence and Emotional Growth in Babies and Young Children by Stanley Greenspan, M.D. with Nancy Breslau Lewis (1999), page 9.
²⁰  This list is from Dr. Greenspan's article, "The Reasons Why We Need to Rely Less on Day Care," published in The Washington Post, 10/19/97.
²¹  Testimony by Diane Fisher, Ph.D., U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Children and Families, Hearings on "Pre to Three: Policy Implications of Child Brain Development," June 5, 1997.
²²   Linda Burton, "A Mother's Job is Making Memories," What's A Smart Woman Like You Doing at Home?, Mothers at Home, 1992, p. 76).