Comparison of different childhoods

New Yorker article on “Why Are American Kids So Spoilt?”

Read this article this morning – oy vey. What an eye-opener!

Somewhat relieved that I make Miss 6-y-o, my DD, do chores. It’s expected that she can get herself dressed and that she can pack her schoolbag (granted, with a little nudging some mornings). She feeds the kitten and I clean the kitty litter. Those sorts of things. If she sat back and expected me to pander to every requirement, I would go nuts pretty quickly and doing everything for her would do her no service whatsoever. I want her to grow into a resilient, reliable, thoughtful adult.

 

Older mums – a bit more

I wrote an earlier response here to a WA professor’s declaration that older mothers are selfish for a variety of reasons.

One thing that has come back again and again to me from friends, older mothers and those who have not had the opportunity to become mothers, is that there’s a disconnect in some people’s lives between one person wanting to have children, and their partner not wanting children, or not wanting to settle down.

I was interested to read an article today by Sara Holton, Jane Fisher and Heather Rowe that asserts that women delaying having children for selfish reasons in order to pursue personal ambitions or hedonistic activities such as travel are not supported by the evidence.

The article is based upon To have or not to have? Australian women’s childbearing desires, expectations and outcomes by the above women in JOURNAL OF POPULATION RESEARCH DOI: 10.1007/s12546-011-9072-3. I have the article here on my screen (the joys of access to a university library – thank you).

From the news article:

[T]he selfish, career-focused woman who chooses not to have children or delays childbearing is a myth. Women are not helped by the accusations that have been directed at them in recent weeks.

Women would benefit from public policies that are more sensitive to and address the barriers they face in having children.

In addition to the welcome recent improvements in maternity benefits, such sensitive public policies could include education for men about female fertility and the risks to their partner’s health of postponing childbearing.

Other initiatives could include flexible repayment options to permit suspension of higher-education debts while women provide unpaid care for dependent young children, and maximising housing affordability.

Many women would have more children if they could and if circumstances allowed. Women reported a main barrier was their partner’s reluctance to have a child, or another child.

Given that, I feel it is irresponsible for pundits and researchers to yell at ‘older mothers’ for being ‘selfish’ and having children later in life.

 

School uniform

My latest reading is http://www.nber.org/papers/w17337.pdf.

Dressed for Success? The Effect of School Uniforms on Student Achievement and Behavior
Elisabetta Gentile, Scott A. Imberman
NBER Working Paper No. 17337
Issued in August 2011

Why am I interested in this working paper? As a child I was forced to endure school uniforms every day at school for 10 long years. Kindergarten and secondary college (Years 11 and 12) did not have a uniform.

I heard the usual reasons for uniform compliance: everyone looks the same, you can tell which school a kid is from, it looks neat, it engenders respect, kids behave better, etc. I was never given hard evidence that kids behaved better in uniform.

I remember the horrible scratchy wool-nylon blend fabric used for our unattractive plaid skirts, the Midford school shirts that never sat correctly on the bust, the horrible shoes, and the rebels who would daringly wear sneakers with their uniforms and claim that their parents couldn’t afford school shoes, though they could afford sneakers that were nearly twice the cost of school shoes.

It was interesting to read what the researchers discovered after examining data from a large urban school district in the south-west United States, which historically has a different approach towards school uniform policies. I recommend that you read the full paper yourself.

[W]e found that uniforms have a positive influence on student attendance in secondary grades. Attendance rates in grades
6 through 12 increase by 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points after a school adopts uniforms. On
the other hand, we found little evidence that uniforms have lasting impacts on achievement,
grade retention, or the likelihood of students switching schools or leaving the district for all
genders and grade levels.

In terms of discipline we also found little evidence of uniform effects.

 

Commuting makes mums mad

 

 

 

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505560/description

 

 

 

Jennifer Roberts | Robert Hodgson | Paul Dolan
 It’s driving her mad: gender differences in the effects of commuting on psychological health Journal of Health Economics  

doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2011.07.006

 

 

 

 

Bookmarks on your internet browser – good or not?

I admit that I have a lot of bookmarks for internet browsers, usually methodically filed under various headings (e.g. Education, Journals, Children, Psychology, etc.) I also bookmark things which I come across while doing research for lecturers, not necessarily what they wanted but things I’d found serendipitously.

The drawback is, of course, that I find the bookmarks later when I think “How on earth did I get to that one?” Or worse still, “Why did I take the effort to bookmark that?”

My treat today is from the American Association of Wine Economists, the AAWE Working Paper No. 36, .

After ranking the samples on the basis
of taste, subjects were challenged to identify which of the five was dog food. Although
72% of subjects ranked the dog food as the worst of the five samples in terms of taste
(Newell and MacFarlane multiple comparison, P<0.05), subjects were not better than
random at correctly identifying the dog food.

Best bit:

44% (8) of subjects incorrectly chose liverwurst (sample E) as the dog food.

We conclude that, although human beings do not enjoy eating dog food, they are
also not able to distinguish its flavor profile from other meat-based products that are
intended for human consumption.

 

The Job Search

The job search continues.

As I address selection criteria, polish my CV and my best black shoes, and trying to remember to take my best handbag to interviews, I came across this new study from the ANU by Dr Liana Leach and her team, Bad jobs will make you miserable. Please do not dismiss this as Yet Another Case of the Bleedin’ Obvious. What Dr Leach found is that it’s not enough that you have a job. She found that “people who moved from unemployment into poor quality jobs were much more likely to be depressed than those who were still unemployed”. The quality of the job you have makes a profound difference to your wellbeing.

I can’t direct you to a copy of the paper yet but if you follow the link above, the media office should be able to give you a copy.

To all who are job hunting, I wish you all the best.

 

Time-poor single mums

Read more here.

I found it interesting that single mothers are more time poor than those women who are in a partnership and have no children. This is NOT an article to feed into the mummy wars, but rather something for us to think about in terms of discretionary use of time. There is a heap of difference between those who have the option to choose to work more hours, and those who simply must work many hours.

 

Our dads are better than yours

Yup, it’s official.

Go on, read the article. Thoroughly readable and you may or may not agree with the findings.

Here is the researcher talking about Australian fathers:

‘They do less than Australian women but they compare favourably to men in some other countries,” says Lyn Craig, a senior research fellow at the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of NSW.

Australian fathers, her study shows, are run off their feet. Their long hours in paid work combined with their domestic labours means they work harder than Danish, French or Italian fathers and the same as Americans.

Mind you, Australian mums don’t necessarily have it easier just because many dads are more involved. Aussie mums spend more time on housework and children than mothers in all other countries, which sure makes for a looooong, tiring day. (See the blisters on my feet and my fallen arches, not to mention the delicate eau d’oignon behind my ears from frantic cooking.)

‘Intensive parenting seems to be a phenomenon of Anglo countries,” she says. ”Australian men and women -but especially women – spend more time with their children than do parents in the other countries, with only the US coming close.”

I am grateful that Dr Craig points out the reason for the inequality: it is

not because fathers do less childcare than fathers overseas, but because their wives do less paid work, and much more housework and childcare than elsewhere.

 

The Rug Rat Race

Fabulous title, eh? For your delectation and intellectual stimulation, may I direct you to the working paper of that name by Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey from the National Bureau of Economic Research, published in August 2009. (So it’s September and I’m behind in my reading. I’ve been travelling. That’s my excuse.)

This working paper looks closely at childcare usage and trends, linking twelve time use surveys from 1965 to 2007.

We argue that the increase in time spent in childcare,
particularly among the college educated, may be a response to an increase in the perceived return
to attending a good college, coupled with an increase in competition in college admissions.
Importantly, the size of college-bound cohorts rose dramatically beginning in the early 1990s,
coincident with the increase in time spent on childcare.

Increased scarcity of college slots appears to have induced heightened rivalry among
parents, taking the form of more hours spent on college preparatory activities. In other words,
the rise in childcare time resulted from a “rug rat race” for admission to good colleges.

Crikey! Then there’s page 14 which looks at Trends in Overall Time Use of Mothers.

Anyway, read through it all, including the later pages where the authors rebut the usual explanations given, including income effects and selection effects.

 

What price do you put on your children?

No, not on the open market.

For a while now the figure of over $500, 000 (Australian dollars) has been bandied about as the cost to raise two children to the age of 21. Not so, says Michael Dockery, an associate professor in the school of economics and finance at the Curtin University of Technology (see Sydney Morning Herald article here.) He says the actual figure is more likely to be around $1300 a year, when you factor in things like the net wealth of the parents and compare that to those of people without children.

Dr Dockery disputes the logic of seeing children as a cost. The price people were prepared to pay for fertility treatments showed children were regarded as a “very large net benefit”.
He also takes issue with studies that used the amount of money parents spend on children to determine their cost. “There seems little justification for considering expenditure on children to be a measure of their cost, any more than going to a restaurant can be considered a cost to the patrons.” Restaurant-goers saw their night out as a benefit, not a burden.

As well, when couples chose to have children they understood they would have to switch their expenditure from dining out to nappies and child care.

It seems that a net wealth approach gives a better idea of “cost”. Yes, I know that there are those who will claim loudly that “cost” is negligible or indicates a mercenary attitude. I say that it’s better to walk into parenthood with your eyes opened as much as possible. Accept that there will be a financial cost, but that there may be many wonderful and intangible benefits. Opportunity cost was never so hard to work out!

The whole original article is here at the The Centre for Labour Market Research.