How to be a Perfect Parent
EmailIf you have kids, and you care about them, you probably want to give them every break you can.
So what works? Stephen Dubner, who wrote “Freakonomics” with Steve Levitt, has this list of things that make no sense.
Levitt and Dubner went through a giant database called ECLS—the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—compiled by the federal government. ECLS followed 20,000 children, starting in the late 1990s. It asked all sorts of questions; Levitt and Dubner wanted to see what kinds of factors helped kids do well in later life—at least on standardized tests, which, for lack of a better measure, give us a basic idea of how a kid is faring.
Take a deep breath as you read this:
–Mothers who waited until age 30 to have their first child…had children with higher scores.
–Mothers who put their careers on hold to be home for the kids…did not.
What? Come again?
Okay, here are two more:
–Reading a book to your kid every night does not correlate to higher test scores.
–Having a lot of books on your shelves…DOES correlate.
It goes on. If you have a copy of “Freakonomics,” read Chapter 5. (Or take a look at www.freakonomics.com.) You’ll come away as surprised as I was—and, I suspect, as Steve and Stephen were.
“You think, well, are these books just magic somehow?” said Dubner. “Do these books just cause intelligence?”
Of course not. Dubner’s suspicion is that it matters less what you do as a parent than what kind of person you are. “If you’re smart, hardworking, well educated, well paid, and married to someone equally fortunate, then your children are more likely to succeed,” they write.
(Our web folks asked me to write a longer version of the WNT piece that aired tonight; it’s HERE.)
As usual with our Freakonomics adventures, the findings are fascinating, surprising, counterintuitive, and likely to provoke argument. Feel free to join in…though I hope you have a nice, calm weekend instead.
–Ned
Space Station Flies Over Eastern U.S. at Night 
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I saw your well-done report on WNT yesterday evening, and have to admit that none of the findings surprised me, only because I read “Freakonomics” last year and was really surprised then. What you emphasized in your report, and what the book did throughout, was to turn conventional wisdom on its head by analyzing what really happens in our world. Keep up the great reports!
Posted by: chuck | February 18, 2006, 4:51 pm 4:51 pm
Again, again, and again…working mothers are not the ruination of this country. If we could just get that through our heads and concentrate on good parenting, our children would be the happy, successful, and productive members of society we all want!
Posted by: Sylvia | February 20, 2006, 6:45 pm 6:45 pm
OMG. This story, when I saw it on World News Tonight, was one giant moment of AMEN AND ALLELULIA for me! My mom’s always struggled with her decision to continue working after I came along, but I’m so proud of her for doing that, because it taught me from an early age that I should be independent. I’ve known how to make my own meals and snacks, even if a meal = scrambled eggs and toast and a snack = some popcorn, since I was about eight years old, and I’ve always known how to wash my own dishes and pick up after myself. I’ve never had to rely on a parent to provide me with entertainment, and any time I spent with my mother was precious time, for we weren’t in each other’s faces all the time.
And there’s something else I’ve been secretly glad about as far as my mother goes — she was 34 when I was born, and I suppose she’s always felt like she waited too long to become a parent. But I think differently; I feel very much that my mom picked a great age to become a mother, as her older age has afforded her a sort of patience, wisdom, and understanding that a younger mother might not have had. She was in a good place at work (she ended up being the head of her department by the time she retired) and had a level head on her shoulders. Plus, because she wasn’t young, she wasn’t malleable, so I knew I couldn’t get away with any guff. Her mother was also an “older mother”; my grandmother was 35 when my mom was born, ergo she was 69 when I came along. Some might have said that was an unfortunate thing, but I had her for my grandma for fourteen wonderful years and made a lot of memories with her while she was around.
My mom was also a big fan of books. TBH, English was one of my lesser favorites academically, but Mom was an English whiz who used to devour books. She especially loved the works of the Bronte sisters, as well as Jane Austen’s novels. One of the first movies I remember sitting down with my mom to watch was the version of Jane Eyre that starred Laurence Olivier, since that was her favorite adaptation of her favorite novel. When I was little, she didn’t have a lot of time to devote to reading, but she did manage to amass a sizeable collection of Danielle Steele novels and similar soapy reads, which she could fit into her busy schedule.
So this story, you see, validates my mother in a REALLY major way. I am SO glad ABC News ran this story so i could point it out to my mom and go, “See, Mom? You didn’t do a single wrong thing!” I mean, sure, this is about test scores, not overall parenting skills, but I do feel that test scores are directly correlatable to quality of home life, and I would have to say that I had it very good at home with my parents. And I feel like my family was a great example of a regular working class family (we were by no means even regular middle class) that was and is conducive to intellectual activity.
Posted by: Deanna | February 20, 2006, 7:30 pm 7:30 pm