About the Children

By BILL KELLER

Published: April 7, 2013

THE defenders of traditional marriage tell us the argument is, first and foremost, about the children. You might not know that from the buzz surrounding the Supreme Court deliberations. The children of gay and lesbian parents got a few splashes of attention, including a powerful endorsement of marriage equality from the 60,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics and one sympathetic-sounding aside from Justice Anthony Kennedy during the hearings. But for the most part, the debate has focused on the rights of grown-ups and the powers of states, not so much on the well-being of children. And when that subject does come up, the discussion is often shallow or misleading.

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So let’s talk about the children.

The stakes for children in this debate fall roughly into two categories. One is legal: A great scaffolding of laws and benefits created to keep children secure and loved is denied to children who grow up with parents of the same gender. Can that be solved without letting same-sex couples marry? The other is social: Researchers have attempted to ascertain whether kids who grow up with two moms or two dads fare differently from kids growing up with one of each. Is there any reason to think same-sex households are bad for children, and if so should policy makers tread carefully?

Take the legal question first.

Nobody knows how the Supreme Court will rule, but the best guess of court-watchers is this: The justices will throw out the federal Defense of Marriage Act, assuring that married same-sex couples will be entitled to approximately the same treatment under federal law as other couples. But they seem likely to leave it up to the states to decide whether gays can get married in the first place.

That means, first of all, that states can continue to deny children of homosexuals many safeguards that protect children of straight couples. The history of this issue is filled with stories of hardship and heartbreak befalling children whose parents are not recognized as — well, as parents. There are the cases of mothers and fathers turned away from a child’s hospital bed because they are not “family.” There are the cases of beloved adults denied visitation rights after a breakup. Many states restrict the ability of a gay parent to adopt or to respond to a child’s medical emergency. Divorce laws were created in large part to assure that children get financial and emotional support when marriages end: no marriage, no divorce, no support.

It is true that a well-crafted civil union law — one that assures gay and lesbian partners the same spousal parenting rights as marriage — can help remedy these cruelties. But many states do not offer civil unions at all. Among those that do, not all civil union laws are so rigorous; some are mere approximations of equality that do not confer full parental rights. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg might refer to them as “skim-milk civil unions.”

And civil unions do not address the stigma attached to being treated as if your family is not a “real” family — a stigma that amounts to an official imprimatur for bullying and humiliation. “Kids understand and internalize the sense that something is wrong with their families and that they should be ashamed,” said Camilla Taylor of Lambda Legal, who has followed many of these cases through the courts.

Which brings us to the social question. Defenders of the status quo (including Justice Antonin Scalia) would have you believe that the research on children growing up with gay parents is deeply ambiguous. If you spend time in the recent archives of such periodicals as Pediatrics, Applied Developmental Science, Social Science Research and the Journal of Marriage and Family, you will learn otherwise.

Taken one by one, the studies are far from perfect. The samples are usually small and not random. Few are “longitudinal” — that is, following subjects over years or decades. Social science rarely delivers conclusive results under the best circumstances, and with same-sex marriage researchers face particular handicaps. The number of children who have been raised entirely by stable, same-sex couples is relatively small. (According to the demographer Gary Gates of U.C.L.A., a majority of children being raised by gay or lesbian parents were born to opposite-sex couples who later broke up.) Homosexuality still encounters bigotry that makes potential study subjects wary. And it is hard to untangle all the variables in the raising of children.

But it is fair to say that the research shows no significant disadvantage associated with being raised by lesbian mothers or gay fathers — not in academic performance, not in psychological health, not in social or sexual development, not in violent behavior or substance abuse. And the research leaves little doubt that stable, two-parent households (of whatever flavor) are likely to be better off financially, more attentive to the upbringing of children and more secure than single-parent households.

(You can find excellent roundups of this work in the March issue of Pediatrics, and in the amicus brief of the American Sociological Association.)

Research Ideas You May Have Missed (part 1)

Research Ideas You May Have Missed (part 1).

Bright Horizons Goes Public

January 31, 2013

When you’re stuck in a spiral, to change all aspects of the spin you need only to change one thing.
-Christina Baldwin

Bright Horizons Family Solutions, the world’s largest provider of employer child care, went public again last week.  And, the market greeted the offering well. According to the Wall Street Journal trading “got off to an auspicious start, as shares … popped in their return to public markets.”

“Bright Horizon’s shares surged $6.32, or 29%, to close at $28.32 Friday on the New York Stock Exchange…. Bright Horizons was listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market… until private-equity fund Bain Capital LLC took it private in 2008. Bain is keeping an 80% stake in the company….”

“The company provides its child-care services to companies, hospitals, universities, and government agencies… in the U.S., Britain, the Netherlands, Irelan d, Canada, and India. It signs companies to long-term contracts that allow Bright Horizons to operate centers at or near their work sites. The employers generally fund the development and maintenance of the centers and subsidize the services in order to lower costs for employees.

“‘We’ve long believed that employers would continue to stake an interest in the life issues that affect how productive people can be at work [and] help them navigate work-life obligations,’ Bright Horizons’ CEO David Lissy said. He said part of the attraction for investors is a long-term demographic shift toward more families with two working parents, plus a greater number of working mothers with young children.”

Child-Initiated vs Adult-Directed

July 27, 2012

Children make you want to start life over.
-Muhammad Ali
In her article in the Beginnings Workshop article collection, “The Intentional Teacher,” Ann Epstein observes that the intentional teacher needs to balance both child-initiated and adult-directed activities.

Intentional teachers support child-guided learning when children:

Investigate how things work by actively ­exploring materials, actions, and ideas
Establish relationships on their own
Turn to one another for assistance
Are motivated to solve problems on their own
Are so focused that adult intervention would interrupt them
Challenge themselves and one another to ­master new skills
Apply and extend existing knowledge in new ways

Intentional teachers use adult-guided learning when children:

Are unaware their actions may be unsafe or hurtful
Have not encountered materials or experiences elsewhere Cannot create systems of knowledge (e.g., letter names)
Are not aware of something likely to interest them (e.g., the smell of flowers)
Do not engage with something they need for further learning (e.g., shape names in ­geometry)
Ask for information or help, especially after ­trying several unsuccessful solutions on their own

Acknowledging Learning Biases

I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man.
-Charlie Chaplin

In her article, “Taking Responsibility for Your Own Learning: Maximizing Training Opportunities,” in the new Exchange Essential, Training Teachers: Strategies, Carmen Rivers talks about the impact of biases in professional development:

“We all want to believe that we are without bias — that we see everyone and everything objectively and individually. However, we are human. Prior experiences create bias. Try to figure out what your biases related to the learning topic are. You may not be able to eliminate your personal biases, but you can discover them and find ways to manage them.

“I have facilitated several trainings related to nature-based learning and environments. Often, participants come wanting to learn but become stuck behind their fears of the outdoo rs (icky bugs, dirt, and other known dangers). These are the biases that their lack of experience, or negative experiences, has left behind. Before they can help children love and appreciate nature, they need to move beyond their own fears and biases. Acknowledging our biases is the first step. Actively seeking opportunities to move beyond them is the next; perhaps a camping trip is in order.”

Where Children Sleep Update

Yesterday the site to view the Where Children Sleep photos apparently crashed and is not yet back up. So here is another place to view these photos:

A Good Language Foundation

Since fear is mostly about ignorance, the best part is that it’s as temporary as you choose.
-Christine Comaford

Rebeca Barrera, writing in the Beginnings Workshop Book, Literacy, talks about the importance of a home language as the base for learning a second language:

“My mother was born in Laredo, Texas, as a U.S. citizen. After the untimely death of her mother, she and her three siblings, all under six years old, were sent to Mexico for a few years to be raised by their aunts. When their father remarried and they returned to the United States, the children were immersed in primarily English classrooms, with a generous sprinkling of Spanish to help them along. All four learned English almost immediately, and the two oldest were valedictorian and salutatorian of their classes.

“This is not so unusual. We have countless examples of Vietnamese youths who came to the United States in the 1960s, not knowing a word of English, only to graduate from school at the top of their class a few years later.

“Learning a second language is not that difficult, especially if there is a strong foundation in a home language. The process is much the same as with the first language: listening, speaking, then reading, and finally writing the language. Once you understand the meaning of a word or concept in your home language, learning a new word for the same thing is easy.”

Respecting the Learner

“One of the essential attributes of a good teacher — from preschool through graduate school — is the disposition to respect learners,” observes Lilian Katz in her book sold by Exchange, Intellectual Emergencies: Some Reflections on Mothering and Teaching. She explains…

“I suggest that to respect the learner means, among other things, attributing to the learner positive qualities, intentions, and expectations, even when the available evidence may cast doubts on the learner’s possession of these attributes. A respectful relationship between the teacher and the learner is marked also by treating learners with dignity, listening closely and attentively to what the learners say, as well as looking for what they seem reluctant to say. Respect also includes treating the learners as sensible persons, even tho ugh that assumption sometimes requires a stretch of the teacher’s imagination. When it comes to young children this element of respect implies that we should resist the temptation to talk to young children in silly sweet voices, heaping empty praise on them, and giving them certificates indicating that smiling bear believes they are special. This disrespectful strategy makes a mockery of teaching. After all, teaching is about helping learners to make better, deeper, and fuller sense of their experience and to derive deep satisfaction from the processes of doing so. Education, after all, is not about amusement, excitement, or entertainment.”

Young Children and Screen Time

A wide variety of organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and the White House Let’s Move Initiative, have developed position papers on the extent to which children should be exposed to and engaged in watching television and computer screens . Long time friend of Exchange, John Surr, has written and excellent summary of these reports recommendations, “Too Many Channels? Sifting through the Recommendations on Screen Media and Technology.” Surr concludes:

“It is clear that today’s young children are being raised in a media-saturated environment, dramatically more so than in their parents’ generation. Although many parents and early childhood educators grew up after Presiden t Reagan de-regulated television in 1984, they need to be aware of the effects of that saturation for today’s young children, even though scientists are still learning about the full scope of those effects.

“It is also clear that young children’s intense involvement in screen media has adverse effects on their growth and health. We in early care and education have a responsibility, in the best interests of the child, to wean them from excessive dependence on screen media, especially while they are with us and in our care. We also need to be able and willing to work with parents to help them to make informed media choices for their families.

“All of the authorities cited in this article are agreed that children under two should be exposed to screen media as little as possible, and that child care is a place for their relationships and concrete explorations of the world around them, not for the children&r squo;s or caregivers’ screen media experiences. Passive screen media in child care should be very limited, based partly on the likelihood of the children’s excessive exposure at home and the danger that a sedentary media habit can lead to obesity, sleep problems, and other health difficulties. Although some authorities are more enchanted with interactive screen media than others, there is a widespread feeling that there should be limits on total daily media exposure, and much stronger limits on exposure while in child care, for children between 2 and 5 years of age.

“Violence, sex, and commercials on screen media available to young children should be discouraged, according to the health authorities. Others recommend that children need time away from media to develop more fully their own imagination and capacity to play.

“We in child care have a responsibility to reach out to parents and community leaders, to convince them to make their lives more child-friendly and less media-saturated. We all need to go outside and play.”

Child Care as a Weapon

Child Care as a Weapon
February 17, 2012

Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.
-Aldous Huxley
“Free child care will be a potent weapon,” was a provocative headline in a thinkpiece on world employment in The Economist’s “World in 2012”. The article observed:

“Unemployment will remain high in 2012 in many countries, but for companies everywhere a shortage of workers with skills they need will become a severe problem…. Companies will need to become more inventive if they are to recruit and motivate the people they need…. And the fight for talent will be as fierce in emerging economies, where locals with the ability to thrive in global markets will be targeted by both foreign multinationals and domestic firms with ambitions abroad.

“Pay will remain the heavy artillery in the corporate armory, and firms will need to make an ever-bigger bang with their bucks…. Firms will al so fight with new recruitment ‘smart bombs.’ Google has long been famous for free gourmet food and massages on its campuses…. Providing free child care will be a potent weapon; so will letting employees bring their pets to work.”

Big Body Play

We have been visiting early childhood programs around the world for 30 years and one element that seems to always be in short supply is rough and tumble play. In the newest addition to the Exchange Store, Big Body Play, Francis Carlson outlines the value of rough and tumble play and provides detailed approaches for implementing and controlling it in early childhood settings. In explaining why big body play is essential, Carlson observes…

“We know that play such as socio-dramatic play, board games, play to explore objects and learn shapes and textures, finger plays and chants to improve self-regulation, and play that involves building things has myriad benefits for children. But the fleeing, tagging, climbing, tumbling, and wrestling that most young children seem to crave is also play and is equally beneficial.

&qu ot;As we might assume, there are also abundant positive effects for physical development when children are active in their play. We know, for example, that when teachers involve children in physical exercise with intentional planning, children can practice and develop a variety of physical skills and gain optimum health benefits.

“But big body play is not just physical activity with physical benefits. During such play, children also use increasingly sophisticated communication skills — both verbal and nonverbal — and social skills. It is also one of the best ways for children (especially boys) to develop empathy and self-regulation. And creativity and thinking skills are enhanced as children determine and solve problems as they arise in the course of this active play.”