The+Best+Enviironment+for+Children

Starting Strong II: Early Childhood Education and Care
By Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Published by Oecd Publishing, SourceOECD (Online service)

The Verbal Environment of Children and Its Impact on the Development of a Sense of Self: A Comparison of Well and Depressed Mothers. **Authors:** __[|Howard, Julie A.]__ **Descriptors:** __[|Depression (Psychology)]__ ; __[|Individual Development]__ ; __[|Infants]__ ; __[|Mothers]__ ; __[|Parent Child Relationship]__ ; __[|Parent Influence]__ ; __[|Self Concept]__ ; __[|Toddlers]__ **Source:**N/A **Peer-Reviewed:**N/A **Publisher:**N/A **Publication Date:**2000-05-00 **Pages:**94 **Pub Types:**Dissertations/Theses - Doctoral Dissertations; Information Analyses


 * Abstract:**This review of the literature regarding the impact of maternal speech on the formation of a child's sense of self compares the speech of well mothers to that of depressed mothers. The review finds that maternal speech has a strong influence on the formation of symbolic self-representations during the toddler period. However, depressed mothers' speech is significantly different from that of normal mothers in terms of both content and process, and these differences have been shown to affect the way that children come to view themselves. Although no study specifically addressed the effect of depressed mothers' speech on the development of presymbolic self-representations, it is highly likely to have some effect via the mother's difficulty in maintaining interactions. Depressed mothers speak less to their infants, exaggerate their intonations less, and take longer to respond to infants, suggesting that interactions may be awkward at best or nonreinforcing at worst. Depressed mothers' speech to infants also appears to be critical and negative. These structural and content differences in depressed maternal speech carry over to the toddler period. The studies suggest that depressed mothers may be assisting their children in developing symbolic-self-representations that are highly negative in nature. However, the picture is more dynamic and complicated than is presented due to the impact of other individuals in the child's environment. How a father, siblings, peers, teachers, and grandparents respond will affect the process of forming an integrated sense of self. In addition, qualities within the child, such as temperament, will also affect the process. (Contains 70 references.) (HTH) **Abstractor:**N/A

Idiocracy http://www.slate.com everyday economics: How the dismal science applies to your life. =Be Fruitful and Multiply= =Do the world a favor: Have more children.= By Steven E. Landsburg

Updated Sunday, April 13, 1997, at 3:30 AM ET The day you were born, you brought both costs and benefits into this world. The costs include the demands you made (and continue to make) on the world's resources. The benefits include your ongoing contributions to the world's stock of ideas, love, friendship, and diversity. Do the costs outweigh the benefits, or vice versa? In other words: Should the rest of us consider your birth (or any child's birth) a blessing or a curse?

Let's //not// try to settle this by listing all the costs and benefits of sharing the world with other people. After an evening stuck in summer traffic, you'll remember that the driver in front of you imposed a cost, but you might forget that the guy who invented your car's air conditioner conferred a benefit. New Yorkers remember to complain about the crowds, but sometimes forget that without the crowds, New York would be Cedar Rapids. Instead of making a list, let's think about the decision your parents faced when they were considering whether to conceive a child. Is it more likely that they undercounted costs or that they undercounted benefits? I'll start with benefits. The clearest benefit of your birth is that it gave your parents a child to love; they certainly counted that one. But the other benefits are spread far and wide. If you build a better mousetrap, millions will be in your debt. If all you do is smile, you'll still brighten thousands of days. We don't know how to list those benefits, but we do know that many of them fall on total strangers. That makes it unlikely that your parents took them fully into account. Now let's look at costs. The costs of your existence fall into two categories. First, you consume privately owned resources like food and land. Second, you might consume resources to which you have no clear property right--for example, you might open a factory that pollutes the air I breathe, or you might become a burglar who steals my stereo system. (You might imagine that there are also costs associated with your competing in the marketplace, bidding some prices up and others down, applying for the job I wanted, and so forth. But each of those costs has an offsetting benefit. If you bid up the price of cars, sellers will gain as much as buyers lose. If you prove a stronger job candidate than I do, my loss is the employer's gain.)

Stealing and polluting clearly impose costs on strangers. But if you're at all typical, your consumption of staples like food and land will far exceed your consumption of other people's air and other people's property. In other words, for most people, the first category of costs is the big one. So let's concentrate on that. Where do you get all those resources you own and consume? Some you create; those don't cost anybody anything. Some you trade for; again, those don't cost anybody anything. The rest you inherit; and those come from your siblings' share. That means your siblings--not strangers--bear most of the costs of your birth. That's a point that's often missed. When people think about overcrowding or overpopulation, they typically imagine that if, for example, I had not been born, everyone else would have a slightly bigger share of the pie. But that's not right. If I had not been born, both my sisters would have substantially bigger shares of the pie, and everybody else's share would be exactly what it is now. So when parents are deciding whether to have a third, fourth, or fifth child, they are generally more conscious of the costs than of the benefits. Most of the costs are imposed on their other beloved children, while many of the benefits are dispersed among strangers. When a decision-maker is more conscious of costs than of benefits, he tends to make decisions that are overly conservative. That almost surely means that parents have fewer children than is socially desirable, and that therefore, the population grows too slowly. My daughter is an only child, which makes me part of the problem. Somewhere there is a young lady whose life has been impoverished by my failure to sire the son who would someday sweep her off her feet. If I cared as much about that young lady as I do about my own daughter, I'd have produced that son. But because I selfishly acted as if other people's children are less important than my own, I stopped reproducing too soon. Population growth is like pollution in reverse. The owner of a polluting steel mill weighs all its benefits (that is, his profits) against only a portion of its costs (he counts his expenses, but not the neighbors' health). Therefore, he overproduces. Parents weigh all--or at least most--of the costs of an additional child (resources diverted from their other children) against only a portion of the benefits (they count their own love for their children, but not others' love for their children). Therefore, they //under//produce. This argument seems to suggest that I should have had more children for the sake of strangers. A second, completely separate argument says I should have had more children for the sake of those children themselves. Presumably they'd have been grateful for the gift of life. I'm not sure how far to push that argument. There's obviously nothing close to a consensus on how to assign rights to the unborn, so we can hardly hope for a consensus on how to assign rights to the unconceived. But the second argument does tend to buttress the first. Personally, I ignored both arguments when I selfishly limited the size of my family. I understand selfishness. But I can't understand encouraging //others// to be selfish, which is the entire purpose of organizations like Zero Population Growth. Instead, we should look for ways to subsidize reproduction. A world with many people offers more potential friends who share our interests, more small acts of kindness between strangers, and a better chance of finding love. That's the kind of world we owe our children. http://www.arabnews.com How Happy Are Our Children?

Iman Kurdi, ikurdi@bridgethegulf.com This week saw the publication of a UNICEF report comparing child well-being in the richer countries of the globe. It makes interesting reading. The results are both predictable and surprising. What has surprised many is how appallingly Britain and the US have fared. Of the 21 countries compared and over the six dimensions measured, the UK is ranked bottom and the US gets the next place up. It seems that Messrs Bush and Blair match their failures in the Middle East with failures back home, where it matters, in creating the best environment for nurturing future generations. If you were to create the perfect environment for bringing up a child, first you would seek the basics: A certain threshold of wealth to ensure adequate living conditions. You'd add good healthcare and the best schooling. You'd also want a stable, secure and loving home life, with parents who not only love their children but spend time with them. You'd want your children to feel happy, to have the confidence and freedom to be all that they can be. You'd probably also want them to live somewhere safe and relatively quiet, free from the stress and hectic demands of modern life. It's hardly surprising then that the countries who come top are relatively wealthy, small and egalitarian. The Netherlands ranks top, closely followed by the Nordic countries. In almost every dimension measured, it is Northern European countries who set the standard and Anglo-Saxons who bring up the rear. The findings of the report suggest that GDP does not appear to be related to well-being. The wealthiest countries do not have the happiest children and the poorer countries - among the industrialized nations - do not have the least well-off children. Relative poverty seems to be a much better indicator of dissatisfaction with life. Why do the UK and the US score so badly? Inequality is a large part of the answer. They are both rich countries with large discrepancies between rich and poor. Children born to middle-class parents living in affluent suburbs do very well, but those born to relative poverty get left behind. The UK and the US are also more competitive cultures. Social comparison plays a significant role in making children dissatisfied with their lot. The greater the discrepancies, the greater the dissatisfaction. There is more pressure on children to perform, to catch up, to go one better than their neighbors, to be top of the class. Just like adults feel the strain, so do their children. One of the most interesting findings of the report concerns Japan. Though not one of the 21 countries compared, some data was provided on social exclusion. Children were asked three questions gauging feelings of loneliness and exclusion. On the whole, children did not feel exceptionally lonely or excluded, in most countries between 5 and 10 percent of respondents reported feeling lonely, except Japan where the figure was 30 percent. The report's authors point to the possibility of this being an anomaly due to differences in translation. Nevertheless it is a fascinating finding. And why did the Netherlands rank first? I would have predicted to see Sweden up there, but I confess to being a little surprised to see the Netherlands pip it to the post. Where Dutch children seem to outshine children elsewhere is in subjective well-being. This dimension measured children's own perceptions of their well-being. How satisfied were they with their own lives? Very satisfied, they answered. This points to the importance of culture in nurturing children. The Netherlands did not score particularly high on material well-being. Children in the Netherlands do not have better access to material resources than say children in neighboring Belgium. Nor do they have better scores on educational well-being; in fact Belgium comes top when it comes to education. And yet Dutch children not only report being more satisfied with their lives, but they also score better on family and peer relationships and on health and safety. What can we learn from the Dutch to make our children happier? Speaking to Dutch friends what I am struck with is how they manage to combine being relaxed with being interested. They encourage children without putting too much pressure on them. They encourage communication above judgment. They avoid being authoritarian yet manage to provide children with secure boundaries. They go for the practical, stable and steady approach to life. Perhaps it is a little dull, but it is a good environment for bringing up children. And what of the Arab world? How happy are our children? Would Arab children have answered very satisfied about their lives? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly Arab culture is family-friendly. It sometimes feels like children are the center of our universe. We cherish them and pamper them. There is no shortage of love, but are we providing the best environment for them to grow? My guess is that we would encounter huge inequalities both between countries and within countries. We would also encounter large disparities between different dimensions. For instance, you'd expect Arab children to score relatively highly on the dimension tapping family and peer relationships. This dimension measures factors such as whether children live with one or both parents or whether they eat meals with their parents. On the face of it, they should do well, but even here I have my doubts. Given the growing reliance on hired help to look after children, can we really expect children to report that they spend quality time talking to their parents? I also have a hunch that we would find large gaps between the well-being of young children and that of adolescents, a consequence of the demographic challenges facing the Arab world today. It is relatively easy to make young children happy, but teenagers are a different matter. Unless we can provide a better future for our young adults, we will continue to see more and more adolescents chasing fewer and fewer opportunities and the pressure is bound to take its toll.