We’ve learned a lot about parenting in the last few decades. And with so many parenting choices these days, it’s nice to be aware of research, outcomes, and best practices when raising our children.
But with that being said, it’s also important not to take studies as absolute truth. Correlation doesn’t equal causation, many studies don’t account for neurodiversity, and no outcome is ever guaranteed (even if we do everything perfectly, which we all know is impossible).
So read the research, make informed parenting decisions, account for the unique needs of your child, and don’t fall into the trap that you’re ever in complete control. Take advantage of the information available, do your very best, and pray fervently for your family.
So without further ado, here are some research studies worth noting:
1. Harsh verbal discipline with teens leads to increased depressive and behavioral problems. Even when accounting for “parental warmth” between punitive episodes, it did not lessen the negative outcomes. This isn’t an argument for no discipline when teens misbehave, but is a warning and harsh verbal punishments are not an effective discipline technique.
2. Stepping in when your child doesn’t need it can negatively affect their overall functioning. From the article: “The children of parents who more often stepped in to provide instructions, corrections or suggestions or to ask questions – despite the children being appropriately on task – displayed more difficulty regulating their behavior and emotions at other times. These children also performed worse on tasks that measured delayed gratification and other executive functions, skills associated with impulse control and the ability to shift between competing demands for their attention.”
3. Let your children see you experiencing negative emotions (and processing them in a healthy way). From the study: “Parents often try to hide their negative emotions from their kids, hoping to protect them from experiencing adverse responses. However, suppression has been linked with poor social interactions.” Interestingly, the negative effects on children when the mother was the one who suppressed emotion was more profound than when the father suppressed emotion.
4. Multiple factors influence a child’s decision to delay or abstain from consensual sexual activity. These are too complex to summarize here, but this article is worth a read if you want to influence your child’s views of sexual activity.
5. Early specialization in youth sports frequently leads to burnout and/or serious injury. Several studies were cited in this article, but the general consensus is that we need to let our kids enjoy multiple sports and stop putting so much pressure on them. This little tidbit stood out to me: “Children who grow up in the northern United States are more likely to become major league baseball players than kids from the South because they can’t play their sport year-round and are less likely to be injured.” Team sports are linked to positive mental health outcomes, but we still need to be aware of how hard we’re pushing our kids to perform.
6. Stop stressing over your child’s schooling. This long-term study of students attending both private and public schools concluded, “while private school students may be outperforming public school students, the difference is eliminated completely when you control for family income and parents’ level of educational achievement. Children birth through age 5 from high-income homes have educational resources that other children don’t get – conditions that are presumed to carry on through the child’s school years. [R]esearchers…found no evidence to suggest that students from low-income families and children enrolled in urban schools benefited more from private than from public school education.”
7. Should your teen get a job in high school? It depends. This article helps parents understand the benefits and risks and “concludes with a discussion of what parents, counselors, and others can do to help children make sound employment-related decisions during adolescence so as to assure effective career exploration and a successful school-to-work transition.”
8. Teen friendships matter. From the article: “Research suggests that peer influence is one of the primary contextual factors contributing to adolescent risky behavior. Peer presence alone — even being observed from a separate room by an anonymous peer — predicts higher levels of risk taking. From another study on the same topic, “The relationship with parents did not demonstrate the expected mediation effect. The negative influence of the peer group is more connected to the involvement in risk behaviours, whilst the positive influence is more connected with protective behaviours.”
9. Screen time for younger kids can have negative developmental outcomes. From the article: “Children with more than one hour of daily screen time were more likely to be vulnerable in all five developmental health domains: physical health and wellbeing, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, and communication skills compared to children reporting up to one hour of screen time/day. An interaction effect between income and screen time on developmental health outcomes was non-significant. Results were adjusted for child demographics, family income, and other health behaviors.”
10. Picky eating doesn’t inhibit long-term health or growth patterns. Parents of picky eaters, rejoice! Here’s a reassuring study to take the weight off your mind of whether or not your child is going to be malnourished.
