Today’s Parenting Hindering Brain Development

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

 How could today’s parenting be hindering brain development in children?

What is considered proper, appropriate, and Best Practices for parents has changed over the years.  With our penchant in the U.S. for following fads and believing often unsupported claims, it’s no wonder that we may have gone astray.  Here is what Darcia Narvaez, Notre Dame professor of psychology has to say on this subject.

“Ill-advised practices and beliefs have become commonplace in our culture, such as the use of infant formula, the isolation of infants in their own rooms or the belief that responding too quickly to a fussing baby will ‘spoil’ it,”

“Breast-feeding infants, responsiveness to crying, almost constant touch and having multiple adult caregivers are some of the nurturing ancestral parenting practices that are shown to positively impact the developing brain, which not only shapes personality, but also helps physical health and moral development,” says Narvaez.

We’ve been hindering brain development through misguided practices.

Wait, there’s more.  According to this information it looks as though many of the ills of our modern (U.S) society can be laid at the doorstep of our misguided parenting practices in infant care.  We already knew that our early childhood and teen parenting was lousy but now even our baby care?

Studies show that responding to a baby’s needs (not letting a baby “cry it out”) has been shown to influence the development of conscience; positive touch affects stress reactivity, impulse control and empathy; free play in nature influences social capacities and aggression; and a set of supportive caregivers (beyond the mother alone) predicts IQ and ego resilience as well as empathy.  There is evidence that such lack of care is hindering brain development.

The United States has been on a downward trajectory on all of these care characteristics, according to Narvaez. Instead of being held, infants spend much more time in carriers, car seats and strollers than they did in the past. Only about 15 percent of mothers are breast-feeding at all by 12 months, extended families are broken up and free play allowed by parents has decreased dramatically since 1970.

 Hindering brain development is not the same as destroying brain development.

All is not lost however.  Unlike certain specific “windows” for particular brain development, “the right brain, which governs much of our self-regulation, creativity and empathy, can grow throughout life. The right brain grows though full-body experience like rough-and-tumble play, dancing or freelance artistic creation. So at any point, a parent can take up a creative activity with a child and they can grow together.”

I’m not saying that this researcher is necessarily right, but that it bears some thought.  As the saying goes, “a mind is a terrible thing to waste”.  So too is hindering brain development through ignorance or misguided beliefs.  It’s time that the facts are known and disseminated about whether breastfeeding is the best and up to what age, about how long should a baby be allowed to cry unanswered and at which age, and what size “village” does it take to raise a healthy baby?

University of Notre Dame. “Modern parenting may hinder brain development, research suggests.” ScienceDaily, 7 Jan. 2013. Web. 14 Mar. 2013.

It may be too much to ask that there be well defined answers and consensus on those questions I asked.  As an educator for three decades, I have seen the claims and counterclaims trotted out to support widely divergent practices in teaching.  I hope that nothing I did was hindering brain development in my daughter or my students.

What do you think about current practices being responsible for hindering brain development?  Comment below and Share to get your friend’s views.