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    What makes us human? How minds develop through social interactions

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    Just how social we are as a species is made even more evident by the COVID-19 lockdowns that have restricted our everyday social interactions and affected our physical and mental health. Social engagement influences us at an even more fundamental level because it is crucial to the formation of human thinking and minds. We address this issue in What Makes Us Human? How Minds Develop Through Social Interactions. In the words of a 9-year-old, the question is, “How do you go from a bunch of cells to something that thinks?” How are we as humans able to explore such questions about our own origins and the workings of our minds? Humans are intrigued by the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, but a puzzle unfolding right before our eyes is how intelligence develops in our homes as babies start to communicate and then understand the world in ways that adults simply take for granted. In our book, we develop and justify the idea that the essential aspects of being human arise through our relations with other people. To understand these processes and the way human intellect develops, it is essential to look closely at the nature of communication in infancy and childhood, with which much of our thinking is intricately entwined. To explore the complexities of human language, we begin by describing the rich social and emotional niches in which human babies develop and the forms of interaction on which communication is based emerge. We develop and justify the idea that the essential aspects of being human arise through our relations with other people. Have you ever considered why human infants are born so helpless that they must be cared for over many years, yet they develop such powerful ways of thinking? Our answer to this question follows a historical tradition that suggests that this helplessness is an important factor in the development of human thinking. This is because the need for constant care in the early years necessarily produces a social context in which complex human skills develop. Although the infant is unable to fend for herself, she is born with a host of evolved biological characteristics that draw her into engagement with others. For example, typically developing babies are interested in looking at human eyes, which are particularly striking compared to the eyes of other primates because the dark center is surrounded by contrasting white sclera. Such attentiveness to eyes may be interpreted as indicating babies’ apparent interest in other people, and this interest is typically reciprocated by parents, who love to engage with their infants. This bidirectional process of attentiveness promotes the infant’s development. Initially, this consists of staring into the eyes of a caregiver, or cuddling into the caregiver for comfort, but these early and simple skills soon develop into more complex abilities like smiling or cooing. These new forms of interaction elicit even more positive experiences because they are so rewarding for parents. This repeated daily social interaction between infants and their parents becomes increasingly coordinated, which reflects early forms of communication. For instance, when a baby reaches her arms toward her parent, the meaning of this action — a desire to be held — is clear to the parent, who typically picks up the baby. Through experiencing this response to her reaching, the baby learns to anticipate this outcome of her reaching action. That is, she comes to grasp the meaning that her action has for others and then she gradually learns to communicate this desire intentionally. This is a crucial change in ways of interacting, not seen to such an extent in other species that lack an extended period of helplessness: The baby becomes aware of the meaning in the interaction and can then anticipate the response and communicate intentionally. Later, she can learn to add words such as up or uppy to these sorts of shared social routines. Other acts, such as mutually sharing a toy with a caregiver or gesturing in a specific way, develop in a similar fashion as their meaning emerges within shared patterns of interaction. Beginning at about 10 to 12 months, babies typically start to point, but not in a sophisticated way. It takes a lot of experience to realize that successful pointing involves the pointer gesturing to the object and checking that the receiver is following the line of the point. It also requires the receiver to identify what is being pointed to and why their attention is being drawn to it. The hard-won reading of these sorts of gestures reveals the origins and nature of children’s understanding of other people. It shows how a grasp of simple experiences like reaching to be picked up facilitates further interaction in which children develop yet more complex communicative and social skills. These are concrete examples of how increasingly sophisticated human thinking and minds emerge as communication develops in everyday interaction, a fact that makes their significance easy to overlook. They are instances of the sort of mundane interactions on which human ways of being and thinking are based. The use of words is an extension of earlier communication with gestures. Language gradually becomes part of the way thinking can take place. Initially, the baby’s words refer to objects and actions in the here and now, but gradually they can be applied to experiences not directly perceptible – for example, toddlers can relate what happened at preschool or make up a story about an imaginary character. More sophisticated forms of social understanding emerge when children gradually master the language skills needed to talk about human activity in psychological terms. Most toddlers articulate what they want with words by age two, and soon afterwards use words like think and know to show that they are aware that they and the people around them are influenced by their own thoughts and motivations. By acquiring the ability to talk about the psychological world, children can begin to reflect on themselves and others in these ways. From the perspective we have developed here, morality emerges at the level of interaction as children learn to coordinate their daily activities with others in relationships of mutual affection and respect. These interactions based on equality are well suited for reaching mutual understanding because they require children to listen to others and explain themselves. This allows them to coordinate conflicts and develop a practical morality in their interaction with equals. A further step is to begin to articulate what was first implicit in their activity, which then makes reflection possible. In this way, children become able to articulate and reflect on their initially practical ways of interacting with others. Moral notions such as fairness and justice do not have their source in biology alone, nor are they pre-existing and passed on from a previous generation to be imposed on children. Instead, they arise through particular forms of cooperative interaction among equals based on mutual affection and respect. To understand the way human intellect develops it is essential to look closely at the nature of communication in infancy and childhood, with which much of our thinking is intricately entwined. Of course, explaining the origins of human thinking is controversial and not everyone will agree with our account. In our book, we compare our developmental account, which is grounded in the processes of social interaction, with two competing explanations for human thinking: that it is either simply determined by biology or that the computer makes a good metaphor for the human mind. First, we show that although biological factors are crucial in structuring the developmental system in which human skills emerge, the claim that thinking is determined by genes is incompatible with work in biology over the last 50 years. Research in genetics and developmental neurobiology highlights that we must consider the complex developmental system in which multiple levels of biology and environment interact with each other to drive the individual’s development. Key aspects of human thinking, although based on neural activity, emerge only at the level of the person interacting with others. Second, the claim that thinking can be likened to computation is based on a flawed assumption that meaning is fixed, as it is in a computer. Instead, as we illustrate, human communication is rooted in shared ways of interacting. This is also why current approaches to artificial intelligence that attempt to model human intelligence are based on the wrong foundation. Revealing the flaws in these two general approaches to human psychological development supports our argument that human communication and thinking emerges within interaction with others in a developmental system in which biological and social levels are thoroughly interwoven. We trace this development by beginning as gestures emerge in early interaction, leading to language and then to human forms of thinking. Header photo: Gigin Krishnan. Creative Commons.  More

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      in Children

      Ten ways to protect your child against bad experiences

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      Adversity, such as abuse, neglect, and poverty, damages children. But protective experiences can build resilience against adversity and promote positive development.
      We identified 10 relationships and resources proven to counter the impact of adverse experiences. They have hidden magic that can transform an otherwise miserable childhood. Perhaps a child has been abused and has an alcoholic or depressed parent – or both. Down the street lives a grandmother who provides safe harbor. Maybe a caring teacher or an athletics coach takes the child under her wing. These are just a few of many protective antidotes that can diminish the toxicity of adverse experiences. They mean that a child’s outcomes may turn out to be much better than expected in the face of difficult circumstances.
      This list of PACEs – Protective and Compensatory Experiences – is based on more than common sense. The impact of such experiences is often identifiable through changes to the brain and in behaviors. For example, experiments with mice graphically demonstrate what can happen when a PACE repairs some of the damage caused by bad early experiences.
      PACEs and genetic changes
       A new mother mouse placed after the she gives birth in an unfamiliar environment with inadequate bedding typically becomes abusive to her pups. She may step on her young, and stop licking or grooming them because she is stressed. These pups grow up and act in a depressed manner, and are more likely to be harsh and fail to nurture their own pups. However, when the pups are fostered by non-stressed, nurturing mothers, over time, the epigenetic change driving their abusive behaviors can be reversed.

      “When children experience multiple forms of adversity, the impacts are magnified. Multiple protective experiences may also have a cumulative effect.”

      We do not yet have data for humans on the epigenetic impact of switching from an adverse to a protective experience. However, infants raised initially in Romanian orphanages who were later fostered in nurturing homes showed developmental benefits that likely mirrored the neurobiological improvements observed in mice.
      Our colleague, David Bard, professor of pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, has demonstrated how positive parenting practices in thousands of U.S. families have buffered children against the impacts of adversity. Activities such as reading to children; ensuring they have routines; and taking them to shops, museums, and playgrounds were associated with better learning in preschool and fewer behavioral problems at school than would otherwise have been expected.
      Top 10 protective and compensatory experiences
      From research evidence, we have assembled a list of the top 10 types of relationships and resources that provide the PACEs that bolster children against adversity. These are detailed more extensively in our new book, Adverse and Protective Childhood Experiences: A Developmental Perspective.

      Receiving unconditional love: Not only do children need to be nurtured and loved, that love should feel unconditional. This does not mean that children never get in trouble or parents never get mad. The crucial point is that whatever a child does, the parent stays on the child’s side. As an infant, it means that when you cry, you get a response; your parents make eye contact with you and cherish you; and they sing, play, and talk with you. As a child, you can count on your parent’s eyes lighting up when you walk into the room; mom or dad always has your back. And when you grow older, it means that your parent sets limits and explains how things are done. There are many ways to express unconditional love.
      Having a best friend: Close friendship offers protection from peer rejection, bullying, and victimization. This happens not just because a child has someone to talk to, but because it helps the child learn how to deal with conflict and grow a relationship over time. Children have a sense of being important and they have someone to go to.
      Volunteering in the community: Volunteering helps children learn about the needs of others and gives them the opportunity to see a world outside their own. When they understand that helping is not done out of pity, it allows them to accept help from others when they need it.
      Being part of a group: Being in a group gives children a sense of belonging outside the family. It allows children and teenagers to learn about themselves in different contexts, and provides opportunities for friendship and leadership. Taking part in school clubs and sports is linked to academic success, psychological well-being, and lower rates of substance abuse.
      Having a mentor: Having an adult other than a parent who can be trusted and counted on for help and advice helps protect against psychological distress and academic difficulties, and reduces the incidence of high-risk activities. Even if children have exemplary parents, an adult outside the home can be an alternative role model to whom children can aspire and is a reminder that someone else loves them.
      Living in a clean, safe home with enough food: These primary needs are crucial. Good, regular nutrition is important for brain development and protects against health problems; eating dinner regularly with your family reduces the risk of weight problems. Chaotic, unpredictable home environments are associated with harsh and inconsistent parenting. Children who live in unclean, cluttered homes have worse outcomes than those living in clean, organized homes.
      Getting an education: Just like living in a clean, safe home, the opportunity to learn and be educated in an environment with boundaries and rules also protects children from risk. High-quality early childhood programs make a lasting difference to outcomes for children from low-income families.
      Having a hobby: Whether it is playing an instrument, dancing, doing judo, reading, or playing chess, any recreational activity helps teach self-discipline and self-regulation, and can provide children and youth with a routine and a sense of mastery, competence, and self-esteem.
      Engaging in physical activity: Being physically active helps children handle the physiological effects of stress on the body, and improves mood and mental health. In so doing, it reduces the likelihood that children will grab a bag of chips or lash out to relieve stress.
      Having rules and routines: Security comes when children know what to expect and when caregivers enforce clear rules and limits. Children cannot parent themselves; they need high expectations, consistency, and parents’ involvement. In early childhood, this means that parents should establish and enforce bedtime and other routines, redirect children when they misbehave, and as children grow up, explain the effects of their behavior on others.

      Photo: Anna Earl. Unsplash.
      We know that when children experience multiple forms of adversity, the impacts are magnified. Likewise, multiple protective experiences may have a cumulative effect for children, though the power of this accumulation requires further study.
      PACEs matter for all children
      Adverse experiences can happen anywhere to anyone — the rich as well as the poor. All children should have access to experiences that bolster and protect them. Children from more well-to-do families who face adverse experiences, such as family break-up, mental illness, and substance abuse, are more likely to have compensatory experiences. These might be opportunities to participate in clubs, have tutors, go to drama classes, choose to play an instrument, and have teachers and coaches who really care about them.

      “Down the street lives a grandmother who provides safe harbor. Maybe a caring teacher or athletics coach takes the child under her wing. These are just a few of many protective antidotes that can diminish the toxicity of adverse experiences.”

      In contrast, children in families living in high-crime and high-poverty neighborhoods might lack access to protective experiences because their families have insufficient money or time. These children face a double jeopardy – more adversity and less compensatory protection. Their difficulties have increased in recent decades as many PACE resources, such as youth sports and activities, have become increasingly expensive.
      The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized how alone many parents are as they try to help their children gain access to PACEs. Parents have struggled to support their children’s learning at home, grappling with isolation; lack of routines; inadequate opportunities for exercise and hobbies; and in some cases, lack of enough food to keep children healthy.
      The pandemic reminds us that promoting childhood development is about much more than preventing adversity. We need to think more about how to ensure that children have the good things in life so they are less likely to be hindered by what can go wrong.
      Header photo: Anna Samoylova. Unsplash.  More

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      in Children

      Care for children by caring for parents, says neuroscience

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      Early emotional experiences leave children with much more than memories. Neuroscience suggests how these experiences can literally shape the ways in which children – and the adults they become – think. These early experiences contribute to the development of the biological mechanisms that process and interpret past and future experiences. They can influence brain circuitry that makes meaning from what has happened and predictions for what happens next, sometimes throughout children’s lives.
      These insights from neuroscience place parents – not only their actions but also their well-being — at the heart of children’s brain development for two reasons.
      First, parents are usually the source of their children’s earliest experiences and those who are likely to influence brain development. The nature of this relationship highlights the importance of understanding these experiences.
      Second, parents also provide a buffer between the world and young children’s brain development. If parents can manage the stresses the world throws at them, then children may learn how to manage challenges better. Children are also more likely to be protected from biological responses to adverse events. In contrast, when parents are overtaxed and have difficulty regulating themselves, children may be more vulnerable to external stressors.
      This understanding of how moms and dads influence children’s brain development makes a fresh and compelling case for supporting parenting. It also demands action to help ensure that parents are supported and buffered. It means that, if we care about children, then we as a society should care a lot for their parents.

      “A parent is an extension of a child’s developing neurobiology – like an interpersonal scaffolding that affords a long childhood.”

      This understanding of children’s neural development springs from observing how the brain functions. My colleagues and I have looked at a key communication inside a particular part of the brain — between the subcortical brain regions and the medial prefrontal cortex. These areas support and link emotional learning with subsequent emotional behaviors.
      Subcortical brain regions learn at a deep level about positive and negative events, and they create emotional memories. Meanwhile, the medial prefrontal cortex is involved in managing behaviors, as well as in planning and decision making. These two areas are connected and therefore, communicate with each other. The patterns individuals establish in making meaning seem to influence how they interpret what happens and how they make decisions.
      We have observed how these regions of the brain are influenced by early experiences. We can also see how they are then used in later life. This helps us understand how childhood experiences may play out and influence subsequent adult behaviors.
      Forming the neurobiology of the childhood brain
      What happens in the early building of these brain regions? They develop rapidly during early childhood so they are very vulnerable to environmental influences, whether nurturing or maltreating. These areas of the brain learn about security and threat, create emotional memories, and are involved in managing behavior and decision making. Intriguingly, we have also found that these areas are very sensitive to parents and to the messages or cues parents send to children.
      Photo: NeONBRAND. Unsplash.

      Why does it serve human welfare to be so heavily influenced by these early experiences? Because, as a species, humans have evolved to learn from our early environments so we are ready for what we encounter once we reach maturity. The human brain develops very slowly compared with other species – it’s on a “slow cook” setting. This is a great adaptation that gives us a lot of time to learn from our environments.
      Some have said that childhood is a dress rehearsal for the performance of adulthood. The longer the dress rehearsal, the longer we get to stay immature, and the more efficient and powerful the adult brain becomes to help us tackle the drama on life’s stage.
      A child’s brain is primed to learn from its closest environment, especially early in life. That makes family and parents a big influence on emotional development. Human children spend a very long time with their parents, compared with other species. This time affords them a lengthy period of brain plasticity — the first two decades of life — during which they can do the massive amount of learning required for the sophisticated set of behaviors human adults need.
      The role of parents’ neurobiology
      Although parents are not the sole source of input, they provide the bulk of that learning. Part of that learning, especially early in life, springs from the way parents regulate their children’s stress biology (consciously or not). The neurobiology involved in social and emotional behavior is enriched with stress hormone receptors that prompt the body to respond biologically to what is happening. However, the mere physical presence of a parent can reduce the release of these stress hormones in a child.
      Mom or dad can also decrease the firing of a child’s amygdala, one of the brain’s subcortical structures that is involved in learning about fear. A parent is an extension of a child’s developing neurobiology –like an interpersonal scaffolding that affords a long childhood. However, this scaffolding can also create a perilous situation when it is difficult for a caregiving environment to be an effective buffer of threat or may even be a source of threat, rather than security, to the child.

      “[We must] ensure that parents are supported and buffered. It means that, if we care about children, then we as a society should care a lot for their parents.”

      The power of parents as buffers has been demonstrated in studies with rodents. In an experiment that associated a meaningless stimulus – such as peppermint odor – with a mild shock to the foot, young rats learned to dislike the odor (as you and I would) and their amygdala responded to that learning. However, when the rat’s parent was present, the developing rodent, despite smelling the scent and experiencing the shock, did not avoid the smell. Functionally, the presence of the parent blocked the young rodent’s amygdala from reacting. Indeed, the rodent actually showed a preference for the odor. This sounds bizarre, but we have duplicated these findings in experiments with preschool-age children.
      These reactions occur because early in life, humans are primed, as dependents on their parents, to form preferences for things associated with them – regardless of how pleasant or unpleasant the stimulus. For example, my father smoked cigars. I know the smell is unpleasant. However, that odor was learned in the context of my attachment to my father, so  I remain drawn to this stimulus. Most people can probably think of things associated with the home (“the nest”) to which they are attracted, regardless of whether they are pleasant or unpleasant. This response is part of a young animal’s survival strategy.
      Usually this system works well — it keeps us close to our parents, the nest, and the developmental benefits mom and dad bring. However, this system may also explain why, even in the context of harsh early environments, children still form attachments to their parents and things associated with them. This understanding helps explain why children often resist being separated from a parent even where there is maltreatment. It highlights the difficult and complex issues involved in separating any child from his or her parent.
      The adult brain and its inheritance from childhood
      Next, let us think about the adult brain: How do these brain circuits, shaped by early experiences during childhood, work later in life? Studies show that these neural circuits are activated when adults are trying to manage strong emotions, say, after a really bad day at work or when someone needs to calm down. The same neurobiology – between the prefrontal cortex and the subcortical regions – is involved when we lack complete information and need to fill in the gaps to understand fully what is happening.
      Taken together, these observations of the brain suggest that early experiences may influence future behavior by providing a template for understanding how the world works. One person’s templates differ from another’s. Such templates are presumably supported, at least in part, by subcortical regions and the medial prefrontal cortex.
      In situations of incomplete knowledge, a template influences an individual’s predictions of what a situation means and guides the response. Thus, matching what behavioral psychologists described more than 60 years ago, neuroscience can provide a biological model of how early experiences with parents and other caregivers form templates that influence how adults operate socially and emotionally, sometimes throughout their lives.
      To care for children, care for their parents
      All this demonstrates how important it is that parents themselves feel supported and are well-regulated. When parents are overly distressed, they may find it difficult to effectively buffer their children’s stress biology. However, when parents themselves are well and feel relatively secure, they are probably more effective than any other intervention in managing their children’s emotional reactions.
      Parents are powerful; they are the conduits of the emotional world to their children. This is easy to see in everyday life: If parents react well to something, their child often will do the same. If parents respond in a calm way, their child will likely follow that lead. In certain senses, parents are an extension of their children’s developing brain. For that reason, we should consider: How can we support families so parents regulate themselves well to help their children become well-regulated?
      Certain policies around parenting place children’s mental health at risk. For example, imagine the problems caused by the policy of separating children from parents who tried to cross from Mexico to the United States without visas. There are other areas of policy to consider. For example, how should we shape employment practices to ensure that mothers and fathers are sufficiently present in their children’s lives to provide a calm buffer against adverse experiences? How can we ensure parents’ mental, physical, and economic well-being so their wellness protects their children?
      Childhood adversity is the leading environmental risk factor for mental health problems. Many of these problems are preventable – they are not genetically determined from birth. That’s why, if we are serious about caring for children, we must care for parents.
      Parents ask me, “What is the best parenting advice you can offer?” I tell them, “Do what you can to take care of your well-being, to make sure you are feeling safe, and to manage your own emotions in a healthy way. When you feel this way, that gets translated to your children in a powerful way.”
      Header photo: Gita Krishnamurti. Unsplash.  More

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      in Children

      Nurturing curiosity and invention: How parents can put their children on the path to innovation

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      In December 2020, Gitanjali Rao, a 15-year-old inventor from Colorado, was named Kid of the Year by Newsweek. Showered with accolades, children like Rao are often treated as if they are unicorns, completely different than others their age. But that need not be the case. Virtually everyone begins life with the necessary building blocks to construct new ideas (defined here as a solution to a problem or an explanation for phenomena). However, by age five, only some children are still on a path to become adept at such thinking, while most leave it farther and farther behind. But such a fate is not inevitable.
      What would it take to help all children be able and eager to pursue ideas? The answer lies in two processes that begin during the early years: inquiry and invention. If you have ever watched three-year-olds at play, you have seen how children first pursue ideas. It usually begins with a problem: A child wants to fashion a tent out of blankets and pillows, understand why some bugs fly and others do not, or figure out how far the stars extend in the sky. Parents and teachers can fan the flames of children’s natural drive to think things through. To do so, adults should give children plenty of opportunities to solve the problems that grab them, spend time talking with them about the intellectual puzzles that haunt them, and guide them to test their speculations and revise their ideas. Parents and teachers should also be willing to talk with children about things that are unfamiliar, unknown, and perhaps even uncomfortable. By building on children’s powerful drive to inquire, invent, and mull over complex problems, adults can help them become avid, supple, and astute thinkers.

      “What would it take to help all children be able and eager to pursue ideas?  The answer lies in two processes that begin during the early years: inquiry and invention.”

      Eager to learn from the start
      Babies are born curious, equipped with antenna for detecting novelty. From early on, they notice when a new object or event comes within view or earshot. Research suggests that infants become familiar with their mothers’ tone and cadence while in utero. Soon after birth, most babies respond differently when someone other than their caregiver talks to them. Within months, whenever they see something different from what they have seen before, their heartbeat slows, their breath quickens, and their skin produces more moisture — all signs that they have taken notice.
      Watching visual patterns or images projected onto a screen, babies look longer at the one they have never seen before. They absorb the new phenomena, looking and listening until they see something that is no longer surprising. But they quickly go beyond using just their ears and eyes. Soon enough, babies expand their investigative repertoire to include touching, grasping, licking, and mouthing. By two-and-a-half years, they have acquired an explosively more powerful tool for investigating the world: questions. Toddlers can ask about items around them, but also about the past, the future, and the unseen. Since so much of their daily lives brings them face to face with new sights and sounds, their novelty detectors go off all day long, leading to a day crammed with investigation.

      “Adults should give children plenty of opportunities to solve the problems that grab them, spend time talking with them about the intellectual puzzles that haunt them, and guide them to test their speculations and revise their ideas.”

      Compared to other mammals, human newborns seem helpless; after all, other mammals walk and nourish themselves within hours of life. Yet by their third year, humans have learned a dazzling array of information and skills never available to the smartest dog, horse, or pig. The newborn cries and makes vegetative noises, but the three-year-old talks in full sentences; can carry on complex conversations; refers to the past and the future; and can tell intricate stories that include characters, plots, and surprise endings. Children’s urge to investigate explains how helpless infants, who merely burp, gurgle, kick, and cry, become savvy members of the community in just three years. Curiosity is the psychological foundation that explains the vast terrain of knowledge and skills acquired, apparently effortlessly, by all typically developing children.
      Photo: Difei Li. Creative Commons.

       The power of specific interests
      But the endless barrage of surprises and mysteries does not last forever. By the time children are three, they have a huge working knowledge of their everyday routines and environments. They know what will be on the breakfast table, the kinds of things their family members typically do and say, and what will happen on a trip to the grocery store. The everyday world becomes the familiar background to more distinctive events and objects, which call out for further explanation and mastery.
      At this point, children are ready to be somewhat choosier. They begin to play a more active role in deciding what aspects of daily life they can skim over and which to zero in on. While virtually all 18-month-olds seem inquisitive most of their waking days, four-year-olds are likely to seem blasé about many aspects of daily life: the trip to school, a visit from a neighbor, or the pigeons out the window. During this period, when daily life becomes mundane, most children develop specific interests. One becomes fascinated with bugs, another intent on watching to see what makes people laugh, and a third absorbed by small gadgets. But not all children focus on objects or creatures. Some collect information about the invisible or ungraspable, for instance, god, death, or infinity. In an examination of a large database of two-five year olds talking at home, children often asked many questions about such topics across relatively long periods.

      “Helping children become capable of and interested in developing ideas requires concerted effort from adults. And here the pandemic has, ironically, provided an opportunity.”

      For example, in the following exchange, a mother had just explained to her four-year-old daughter Laura that their pet bird had died. “He took his nest down and he knew he was dying and he got himself ready,” the mother said. At various points throughout the day, Laura said:
      “He knew he was dying?”
      “How did he know he was dying?”“I don’t want to die.”“I wonder what it feels like to be dead.”
      To sum up, although it is often invisible to adults, young children collect information about a wide variety of topics, and such knowledge lays the groundwork for future ideas. However, inquiry tells only part of the story.
      The role of invention
      Spend 15 minutes watching four-year-olds at play and you quickly notice that they don’t spend all their time investigating. Just as often, they are devising new objects out of various small items (e.g., string, silverware, blocks), planning imaginary scenarios, or mapping out the rules for new games. In other words, they are busy inventing. Just think of the child who fashions an airplane out of a small cardboard box, uses shoelaces to lock a sibling inside the bathroom as a prank, or lays bath towels over an upside-down chair to create a fort. All these actions are simple inventions. Meanwhile, children are engaging in other more intangible inventions — stories that recreate an upsetting experience, charts of made-up superheroes, and explanations of zero. These, too, involve new combinations of familiar elements to achieve a goal. But that is just the first stage of inventing.
      The road that leads from the earliest and simplest constructions to the more complex solutions of older children and adults is somewhat circuitous. Research has shown that very young children are stumped by some aspects of innovation. In one study, young children were invited to retrieve an attractive sticker from a small basket placed far down a narrow plastic tube. Offered various materials, including pipe cleaners, to reach the sticker, four-years-olds did not think to bend the pipe cleaner and use it as a hook. They could perform all the requisite actions, such as bending the pipe cleaner or selecting the correction solution when asked to choose from several options. But they could not seem to coordinate all the elements needed to solve the problem.
      Researchers describe this as a difficulty with ill-defined problems, a skill essential for more sophisticated thinking. Some new data suggest that young children are more adept than previously thought when solving problems that they find imaginatively compelling. In our lab, when children had to get a small character across some water to rescue another character, even four-year-olds readily used available materials to devise bridges, catapults, air balloons, and stilts.
      Meanwhile, just as children get better at orchestrating many elements of invention, they appear to lose a valuable asset. They become more rigid at using familiar objects in new ways, often stuck on whatever purpose they think an object was intended for. While the developmental picture of invention is complex, it points to one clear conclusion: When children invent, whether a fort, a story, or a new game, they use most of the tools required for more sophisticated problem solving; they use or combine familiar elements in new ways, thinking of different ways to achieve a goal, imagining future outcomes, and revising their plans.
      Understanding the idea of ideas
      During the early years, inquiry and invention develop separately. Before these concepts can be harnessed together to pursue more formal ideas and solve challenging problems, children need one more thing: the ability to treat one’s thoughts as an object — a mental representation that can be examined, revised, or reconsidered. We now have evidence that between the ages of five and six, children begin to understand the idea of ideas. When experimenters asked children to explain what an idea is, four-year-olds cast it in concrete terms: a plan of action or an object they made. For example:
      Child: “You could make anything you want, if you have one [an idea].”
      Experimenter: “So, what is your idea?”Child:  “To make a knot and it close.” [sic]
      But by the time children are six, most understand that an idea is a product of the mind and that there are many kinds of ideas. For example:
      Child: “Oh, an idea is something that you think!”Experimenter: “It’s something that you think?”
      Child: “It’s amazing, or it can be kind of scary.”
      The skills required to come up with illuminating explanations of puzzling phenomena and novel solutions to knotty problems are within reach of most children. But this capacity is not inevitable, nor is it simply the natural result of learning to spell, add, or write book reports. Helping children become capable of and interested in developing ideas requires concerted effort from adults. And here the pandemic has, ironically, provided an opportunity. Thrust into extended proximity with their children while they play, do school work, and even attend classes remotely, parents are in a good position to notice what and how children are thinking. When children gather information to answer their own questions (however unacademic or odd those questions may seem), mull over perplexing mysteries, speculate, outline probable or impossible outcomes, or consider alternative perspectives, they are practicing the skills essential to forming ideas. If parents and teachers learn to deliberately foster curiosity and invention, many more children than Gitanjali Rao will be on the path to innovation.
      Header photo: Jay Hsu. Creative Commons.  More

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      The gift of the COVID-19 pandemic: more playtime with dad

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      More playtime with dad during the COVID-19 pandemic may turn out to be one of the few positives to emerge for children from the virus. It could also serve as some compensation for children’s considerable losses in school learning and access to friends.
      Many children may have benefited during this time from the special contribution of playing with fathers to their social, cognitive, and emotional development.
      That’s because many fathers have spent more time at home during the pandemic. They have also spent more time caring for their children. While that shift has been particularly pronounced during the pandemic, according to official data, it also reflects a longer-term trend, going back 40 years, of gradually increasing paternal involvement.
      On average, fathers spend a higher proportion of their time caring for children than mothers playfully interacting with their children. That share may have shifted during the pandemic, but the amount of time overall that dads spend playing is likely to have risen.

      “The pandemic reminds policymakers how jobs can be remodelled to help fathers participate more in their children’s lives.”

      Playing with dad helps children develop
      Children’s extra playtime with their fathers matters for several reasons. First, when parents spend more time with their children, they strengthen their skills in areas that are crucial to play – understanding what interests children, following their lead, and generally being more sensitive to them. In short, many fathers have become more closely attuned to their children’s play and to the pace at which they learn.
      Photo: Mikael Stenberg. Creative Commons.

       Learning to be patient and follow a child’s lead can be challenging. Some young children take a long time to learn a new skill for the first time and once they have learned it, may want to perform the new skill again and again. Unattuned adults may wish to rush them, do it for them, or move on to something else.
      Second, fathers’ play makes a measurable and considerable difference to outcomes for children. Playing with dad is consistently linked to children being able to learn better and make friendships. More playtime with dads is also associated with less anxiety and fewer behavioral problems for children, who are less likely to get in trouble at school or fight with their peers.
      The special quality of fathers’ play
      Third, fathers’ play has some special qualities. Typically, it exposes children to a second person who is important in their lives. It also allows children to experience styles of parenting that differ from those demonstrated by their mother. As a result, children are exposed to differences and surprises in a safe environment. This can help them build capacities to manage change and difficulties in relationships.
      Focusing too much on dads’ rough and tumble play with their children is unwise. We should avoid making it emblematic of fatherhood. Lots of moms engage in this type of play, too. And many dads can also spend quiet time with their children, sitting with them and cuddling them, and we should not think of this as “un-dad-like” behavior. Nevertheless, rough and tumble play has real value and is an area in which many fathers feel confident.

      “One take-home message for fathers is to get stuck in and try to make time to play with their children from the outset.”

      Even very young babies benefit from fathers’ play
      The skills that fathers bring in playfully exciting young children can benefit not only toddlers but also young babies. In my studies on fathers’ playful interactions with 3-month-olds, fathers’ engagement predicted fewer behavioral problems at 12 months and higher cognitive scores at 2 years.
      It’s important that dads understand these findings because some may lack confidence in and feel reticent about caring for their babies. They – and others – may subscribe to the mistaken view that dads’ impact on children’s lives begins later. We also need to fight the mistaken cultural belief that very young babies don’t notice much about what’s happening around them. After 20 years doing child development research, I know that babies have a great capacity to notice and learn from very early in their lives.
      What should dads do?
      One take-home message for fathers is to get stuck in and try to make time to play with their children from the outset. Fathers can bring something important to their children, even and perhaps especially when they are very young. Dads might not feel confident at first, but they shouldn’t worry: They should just play and, with practice, they will get better at it. I advise fathers to try a range of activities beyond rough-and-tumble play. It’s also okay for fathers to sit quietly with a toy or a book and just snuggle up with their children. At least some of time, dads should slow down, follow their child’s lead, and play at their pace.
      Photo: Humphrey Muleba. Creative Commons.

      The pandemic has introduced stresses that can undermine play. When people are stressed, the focus of their attention narrows so they attend less well to their relationships. We have seen this shift in studies of the impact depression in fathers — there was a reduction in the surprises that fathers typically built into play with their children, who were subsequently exposed to a narrower range of play. So, as COVID-19’s effects continue, we should be mindful to protect parents’ mental health.
      Overall, the pandemic highlights the important role of fathers in child development. The past year should help policymakers recognize how jobs can be remodelled to help fathers participate more in their children’s lives. It also reminds family service practitioners to emphasize, facilitate, and capitalize on the assets that fathers, as well as mothers, can bring to their children from the earliest ages.
      Header photo: Jonnelle Yankovich. Creative Commons.  More

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      Caring dads probably came first, before providing dads

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      How central is hands-on, caring fatherhood to men’s roles in families? We know that many fathers are very capable caregivers. Data show that fathers in many parts of the world are doing more hands-on care than their own fathers did. Many dads warm to the role. And research demonstrates that involved fathering benefits children. But how much is interactive caring at the core of who men are as fathers? Is it a passing development, an aberration from men’s foundational, evolved roles over the history of our species: to be a hunter/breadwinner?
      New anthropological research offers an intriguing answer. It suggests that caring fatherhood is not only core to men’s parenting, but that it may have come first in human evolution, before fathers provided food for their offspring. Indeed, if humans had not first developed early forms of caring fatherhood, then the provider father might never have arrived: Thus, “caring dad” may have laid the evolutionary foundations for “provider dad.”
      This explanation springs from our attempts to understand a very distinctive and unusual feature about humans: We are virtually the only primates who routinely share large quantities of food with one another. Adult males, females, and children benefit from such sharing. Indeed, the pooling of high-energy food resources (such as meat and root vegetables) helps explain how humans evolved large, energetically costly brains that make up only a small percentage (~4%) of our body weight but require nearly 20% of the calories we burn each day. It also helps explain our unique family strategy of raising many very needy, slow-growing children at the same time, which sets us apart from other mammals, including other primates.

      “These findings highlight direct caring for children as an important feature of men’s lives from early in human evolution.”

      The advantages of food sharing can be seen in some contemporary societies that practice foraging (or hunting and gathering) to meet their food needs. Hunting can generate large, nutrient-dense food resources, but successful hunts of large animals are also unpredictable. Men’s specialization as hunters is generally possible only with the nutritional assurance provided by women’s more consistent foraging of plants, insects, and other small animals.
      Photo: Humphrey Muleba. Unsplash.

      Thus, it is clear why humans continued to share food after sharing had become established. The more difficult question is: How and why did it begin in the first place? Food sharing and role specialization can be costly to the sharers; you need reliable partners for it to pay off. Hunting is risky and was probably inconsistent in the deep past, with simple technology and rudimentary communication. So humans would not have hunted routinely – and would likely not have shared the proceeds widely – if there was no assured payback.
      The evolution of sharing would have required a history of cooperation, trust, and reliability within communities, including between males and females. What conditions might have enabled such strong, prosocial relationships to have already emerged among early humans and our extinct ancestors? Through observation of non-human primate behaviors, my research team suggests an answer: Low-cost, basic forms of adult male care of infants, aiding mothers, helped pave the way for greater cooperation, including food sharing.
      Non-human primate males offer rudimentary care
      For example, in some baboon species, individual adult males in larger multi-male, multi-female social groups form close social bonds with females when they have an infant. These adult males are very tolerant of the infant. They provide protection against infanticide and from aggressors in the group. These baboon friendships between adult males and females emerge during pregnancy and often continue beyond weaning, but they dissolve if the infant dies. Thus, the male-female relationship is supported by a loose form of joint parental care, which can give the male a better chance of mating, though the female generally does not mate exclusively with that male.
      Male mountain gorillas are also very tolerant of infants and juveniles, and interact with them, even though they do not seem to differentiate their own young from those of other males. This caring behavior may enhance the males’ attractiveness to females: Males who provide more direct care have more reproductive success, according to a recent study by my colleague, Stacy Rosenbaum. Likewise, macaque females in some species prefer males who interact with infants, according to recent data. So it seems that basic paternal care can emerge in primates even in non-monogamous situations when the males are unclear about paternity, which was long thought to be a major evolutionary barrier to committed fatherhood. This care for infants, and the relationship bonds that it builds with females, is low cost and thus possibly part of males’ mating effort.
      We argue that similar low-cost behaviors could have evolved in early humans and then been ratcheted up through evolutionary time. Caring would have laid the social and trust foundations for the later emergence of more proactive, riskier, more costly food sharing. Such food sharing eventually led to subsistence specialization and resource pooling that became common in human families and communities. Thus, we argue that the caring father predated the provisioning father rather than vice versa.
      Testosterone and caring capacities
      Another indicator tells us about the ancientness and centrality of child care to men’s parenting: their biology. Nurturing caring is supported in men and regulated by variations in hormones such as testosterone and oxytocin. There is evidence that men with lower testosterone often engage in more prosocial, generous, and empathetic behavior than men with higher testosterone. Our team of researchers was the first to identify, in the Philippines and subsequently in other contexts, a relationship between lower testosterone in men and the amount of child care they do. In a large project that tracked men in their 20s over five years, testosterone levels dropped significantly when men became partnered fathers.

      “This perspective questions how paternal roles have been viewed through 20th-century industrial societies, which shaped narrow perceptions of men’s capabilities.”

      Therefore, fathers appear to be biologically primed to provide direct care for their children. Indeed, in many other animals, fathers’ hormones change in similar ways when dads cooperate with moms to raise young. As anthropologists, we know that cultural contexts have large effects on shaping human parents’ roles in families. So it might be most accurate to say that men are biologically evolved to be culturally primed as caregivers.
      Photo: César Abner Martínez Aguilar. Unsplash.

      These insights suggest that caring fatherhood is not an aberration of changing current social conditions. Rather, it is rooted in our evolutionary past and can be supported by changes in testosterone, other hormones, and the brain, which help men shift from one specialized role to another and back again. A biological and cultural requirement for these shifts toward caring is men’s proximity and availability to their children. In some societies that practice foraging, men are with their children for much of the day, and those fathers are more involved in hands-on child care than fathers in virtually any other human societies. We are still learning about the biology of fatherhood in these societies, but these caring behaviors and fathers’ availability to their children often correspond with lower testosterone in men in the Philippines, the United States, European countries, Israel, and other settings.
      Is caring fatherhood linked to being community minded?
      In our most recent research, we explored whether testosterone levels are linked to fathers’ social roles not only in the family but also in the broader community. In the Republic of Congo, we studied fathers in BaYaka families, which rely on forest resources for a major part of their income. They are generally hands-on dads, holding their babies, taking their older children with them to work in the forest, and sleeping with them as a family. BaYaka communities are also egalitarian and very cooperative.
      As part of their roles as fathers, BaYaka men are valued for generously sharing resources across the group, so caring fatherhood in this context is not limited to the nuclear family but extends to the broader community. In our study, we tested for links between fathers’ testosterone and rankings from their fellow dads on these locally valued roles. We found that those men considered to be better community sharers had lower testosterone than their peers. Also, BaYaka fathers who were seen as being better providers had lower testosterone than fathers who were ranked as less effective in acquiring resources. So in many contexts around the world, lower testosterone in fathers is linked to expressions of parenting that fathers, their partners and co-parents, and their broader community value as critical contributions for children.
      Caring fatherhood is no longer peripheral
      These findings challenge how we might think about contemporary fatherhood and its potential. They highlight direct caring for children as an important feature of men’s lives from early in human evolution. This perspective questions more historically and culturally limited ways in which paternal roles have been regarded, viewed through the particularities of 20th-century industrial societies, which shaped quite narrow perceptions of men’s capabilities. Our growing understanding of the biology of fatherhood underscores the flexibility of fathers to adapt to meet the many different challenges that face parents, whether it is providing direct care to children or food and resources for them.
      The digital economy – and more immediately, the COVID-19 pandemic – are bringing fathers’ work back into the home. This means that many men are spending more time in closer proximity with their children. Will this greater availability of dads to children be correlated with a surge in caring fatherhood and further narrowing of the gender care gap?  Our research with BaYaka fathers also raises questions of whether more caring fatherhood can be harnessed to encourage greater community engagement by men in an age when many serious challenges demand communitywide action.
      Header photo: Shiloh Hrissikopoulos. Creative Commons.  More

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      Poverty generates strengths and rational decisions, not just damage

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      Is adolescent parenthood amid poverty always poorly thought out – the irrational miscalculation of youthful short-sightedness? It depends. Some studies of teenage parenting show worse outcomes for both mothers and children, but others indicate better outcomes, once social disadvantages are accounted for. Starting a family early may make sense, even in the long term. To understand why, we should step down from our ivory towers and into the shoes of people from disadvantaged backgrounds who are making these decisions.
      Damaging decisions can be rational
      A disadvantaged young woman –  like her relatives – can expect a shorter, unhealthier life than a more affluent young woman. Her unconscious calculations, formed under the effects of poverty, might also vary from her better-off contemporaries. For example, decisions about whether to delay pregnancy for further education might involve a different cost-benefit matrix for a low-income woman than for someone who has more resources. If she waits, then her parents – their health probably already declining under the chronic stress of poverty — might be unable to help her raise the kids. She’ll want those children to reach adulthood before her parents’ advancing health issues compete for her attention. When is a good time to begin a family if a woman wants to be well at least until her oldest grandchild is five? Answers to this question have anticipated childbearing choices across socioeconomic groups; they have also accurately predicted an eight-year gap between the first birth for an average woman and for women living in poverty. Therefore, an early start can be rational, given the circumstances.
      This example begins to show why we need well-rounded ways to capture the diverse impacts of living in poverty. For understandable reasons, a conventional deficit approach concentrates on the damage that disadvantage causes for long-term physical and mental health. But this focus can be too narrow. It may not recognize that some actions –  irrational within privileged contexts –  are reasonable for someone in poverty, even if these actions might also harm health and well-being.
      “Hidden talents” spring from poverty
      Focusing solely on damage caused by living in poverty can also obscure mental strengths – what are called “hidden talents” – developed by the experience. For example, adversity may enhance abilities to address challenges relevant to disadvantaged environments. People may develop specific abilities to deal with harsh and unpredictable situations where threat looms large and potential rewards are sparse and short-lived.

      “We should step down from our ivory towers and into the shoes of people from disadvantaged backgrounds who are making decisions.”

      Cognitive tests of young British homeless people showed that, predictably, they performed less well on many activities than did peers from more affluent backgrounds. The deficit process – linked to sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, chronic stress or neglect –  damaged their performance on most tests. However, on the creativity test, the homeless scored on par with others. Surviving on the streets may put a premium on creativity –  being able to solve problems imaginatively – leading to homeless people scoring within the typical range.
      Research has revealed other allied skills. Studies by Seth Pollak at the University of Wisconsin-Madison show that people who have been physically abused may develop an enhanced ability to detect threat. This can help them spot danger early and avoid it.
      Other studies suggest that, in unpredictable circumstances, it is valuable to be able to shift attention  and form memories quickly and efficiently. Cognitive studies show that people who have recently experienced violence may do as well as – or even better than – people who have not experienced violence on tests of remembering information relevant to social dominance. However, such findings are difficult to accommodate if we rely solely on a deficit model that highlights the undoubtedly widespread damage that poverty and adversity can inflict on brain and body.
      A “strengths-based” model complements the deficit approach
      An approach that combines the deficit model with models of reasoned responses and hidden talents is vital for many reasons. It can help fine tune policy and interventions. It can encourage the development of learning and work environments that capitalize on strengths that arise from adversity. It can help explain apparently anomalous research findings where enhanced performance among people in poverty might otherwise be dismissed as a fluke or mistake. Finally, it challenges researchers, who typically come from privileged backgrounds and who may overlook strengths developed through poverty: A broader, more complex model makes us question our assumptions of what is “normal.”
      In terms of policy interventions, a broader model might make parenting programs more effective. In general, authoritative parenting is regarded as the gold standard. Characterized by high demands and high responsiveness, and by giving children choices and flexibility, this approach is believed to secure the best academic and mental health outcomes for children. Experts advocate it and prefer it to authoritarian parenting styles that brook no discussion or dissent.
      Better parenting programs
       But maybe parenting that provides children with choices and flexibility is not always the most rational or even effective approach to raising children. African American children typically face a much harsher reality than affluent White contemporaries whose parents are more likely to favor an authoritative, more liberal style. African American children are much more at risk if they make a single mistake — such as saying something a police officer dislikes, shoplifting once, or misbehaving in ways a teacher finds threatening; when done by a White child, these actions might be dismissed or explained as exploring boundaries. The costs to African American children of slipping up – involvement in the judicial system and tougher punishment – are high. This helps explain why some African American parents are harsher and more authoritarian. Are they making a mistake? It’s unclear: There is some evidence that children who experience strict, no-discussion, but non-abusive upbringings have better outcomes in these contexts than more permissive parenting.

      “A broader model might make parenting programs more effective … Educational practice also could gain insights.”

      Perhaps advocates of a simple deficit approach should get closer to the realities of disadvantaged lives and gain a broadened perspective. For example, it is tempting to conclude that hypervigilant behavior — checking for potential dangers – developed in an abusive childhood offers no benefit and only damage as a working model for a more typical adult life. But this may ignore an asymmetry in the costs of trusting someone you cannot trust compared with trusting someone who can be trusted. Erring on the side of caution may be reasonable, and not merely a mark of impairment caused by stressful early experiences that we should work to reverse.
      Social workers recognize such subtleties. Such behavior makes sense to them and matches their experiences. They see that it can be reasonable (if damaging and not desirable) for young people who are raised in adversity to use aggression to acquire social status or to engage in delinquent behavior to secure resources when they are deprived of opportunities. In contrast, developmental scientists who study youth behavior are often not focused sufficiently on the context; they may concentrate more on the shortcomings of the individual and on interventions that can improve that person’s outcomes.
      Insights into the impact of poverty on learning 
      Educational practice could gain insights and accrue benefits from broadening the deficit approach. Studies suggest that adversity impairs a variety of cognitive abilities. However, research also suggests that, in some conditions, adversity may improve abilities to switch between tasks. Particularly in stressful settings, this skill seems to come to the surface, whereas it may not be apparent in neutral settings.
      Working memory – keeping track of changes in the environment – also seems to be enhanced by some experiences of adversity. These hidden talents could help inform the design of learning environments where the optimal set-up for a disadvantaged child might differ from that for a more affluent peer.
      These insights might also help us design more equitable testing environments for children. Exams with problems that require hours of focused activity may be harder for students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are used to more dynamic situations where their attention is more distributed. Pencil-and-paper problems might be harder than hands-on calculations. Problems about money – a pressing need for children from low-income families – might be more difficult than more abstract problems. We should recognize that children in poverty or from working-class backgrounds may be skilled at – and particularly benefit from – solving problems collaboratively.
      No one believes that poverty is good. The damage it causes far outweighs any marginal benefits. However, a strengths-based approach, combined with a better understanding of reasonable behavior, can complement the perspectives and tools already available to us, even if this approach comes with its own set of challenges. This endeavor can help us understand how contexts of adversity shape people’s strengths and weaknesses. It may swing the pendulum more toward intervening to improve those contexts and away from simply trying to change the individuals who live in them.
      Header photo: Rolls-Royce plc. Creative Commons. More

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      Chronic, low-level parental conflict contributes to children’s mental health problems

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      Low-level, poorly resolved conflict between parents – bickering, giving the cold shoulder, eye-rolling – can seem inconsequential. It isn’t physical violence, after all. But it is a feature in many families. And such behavior may help explain enduring mental health problems for many children, including depression, anxiety, poor sleep, and aggressive behavior.
      Reducing this type of chronic interparental conflict and tension helps children feel the emotional security they need for robust mental health – not only when they are young but also as adults.
      Most people recognize that engaging in yelling matches, throwing things, and acting in ways that are physically aggressive are unhealthy conflict behaviors that can harm children’s development. However, the wider issue is more subtle. It’s about how parents tackle commonplace, sometimes tiny disagreements that all couples can expect to have – conflicts that are natural, inevitable occurrences in any intimate relationship.
      A disagreement might be about politics. It might be about who folds the laundry. Many parents don’t see eye to eye on issues related to work-life balance – they may argue about who is spending enough time on child care. A couple from one of our studies was adamant that they had never had a conflict in 27 years of marriage. Eventually, they acknowledged that for nearly three decades, they had disagreed about whether the peanut butter should be kept in the pantry or the refrigerator.

      “It’s about how parents tackle commonplace, sometimes tiny disagreements that are natural, inevitable occurrences in any intimate relationship.”

      Smoldering battles lead to hypervigilance
      How parents tackle such apparently minor (and major) differences matters to children’s mental health. Some couples focus their attention not on collaborating or solving the problem, but on insults, verbal anger, or non-verbal expressions of anger. Friction can be caused by one parent pursuing the dispute through continual nagging and the other parent withdrawing. Small conflicts may remain unresolved for lengthy periods, festering, creating tension, and harming children’s mental health.
      Damage is done not by a single or even a few instances, but by chronic interactions of these kinds. They compound and accumulate, stacking up and eroding relationships. Early thinking suggested that if parents bickered a lot, children would get used to it and become desensitized. But studies since the 1980s have demonstrated the opposite: Amid chronic marital conflict, children may become increasingly sensitive to the episodes. They can become hypervigilant, tracking signs for a conflict breaking out. This can make them prone to spotting conflict where there is none or where the typical person might ignore what’s going on. Such focus can be exhausting emotionally for a child.
      It is a mistake to believe that children are unaware when parental battles happen behind closed doors. Children are highly tuned to their families’ emotional climate. They can tell if there is tension; they don’t have to witness it. They also recognize when conflict has been resolved, even if they haven’t witnessed the resolution.
      Constructive conflict can benefit children 
      In contrast, children’s mental health can benefit when parents behave constructively around their conflicts. When parents have differences, they can talk calmly together and focus on solving the problem. Perhaps they touch each other gently while talking, maybe even use kindly humor with one another. This might even have a boosting effect on children – they see that their parents can work out differences so they feel that their family is safe and secure. The children don’t need to worry that their family system will be disrupted. They can expend their energies elsewhere.
      Photo: OUCHcharley. Creative Commons.

      We should take seriously the risks posed by widespread, poor resolution of disputes among parents. Most children are exposed to parental disagreement on almost a daily basis: Poorly resolved parental conflict is an important factor in mental health outcomes. Family history of the home environment is a robust predictor of good and bad outcomes. 
      Children feel emotionally insecure
      The wide range of mental health outcomes associated with interparental conflict suggests that several mechanisms may be involved. One pathway relates to children’s sense of emotional security: They need to feel that their family system is safe and secure.
      Destructive, unresolved interparental conflict can make children uneasy about the strength of the emotional bonds that are vital for their survival. As a result, children might act out to stop the conflict, or withdraw into themselves and into negative feelings to avoid such threats. In the short run, such strategies can help children manage life with their parents, but in the longer term, these types of learned behaviors – applied to other situations, such as at school or with friends – aren’t good for them or those around them.

      “Children are highly tuned into their families’ emotional climate. They can tell if there is tension; they don’t have to witness it.”

      Children may blame themselves for conflict
      Another pathway involves the thoughts children may have during interparental conflicts. Some children blame themselves, thinking: “I’ve made Mom and Dad fight. I’m responsible.” These feelings of self-blame can fester and break down children’s self-worth. Children who cannot stop their parents’ fighting may feel they have failed, which can lead to depression.
      The implications of poorly managed parental conflict do not stop there. This type of conflict is correlated with parental depression and the quality of the parent-child relationship. Some parents imagine they can compartmentalize conflict with their partner. However, if you are angry with your spouse, you may unintentionally take it out on your children, snapping at them and parenting in a harsher manner. Or you may feel exhausted and withdraw, lacking the energy to engage with your children in a meaningful way. There may also be “compensatory” spillover, where a parent turns to a child for comfort, placing undue pressure on the child to make up for the loss of an unfulfilling relationship with the partner. 
      Damage may endure into adulthood
      Research suggests that these mental health impacts of mishandled interparental conflict can often endure into adulthood: Even after children have become adults and left home, the quality of their parents’ relationship can still affect their mental health and well-being. This might be partly because couples can get stuck for years in a negative way of interacting, exposing their children to chronic interparental conflict throughout development. Additionally, children may model their parents’ pattern of interaction in their own relationships, which may further damage their mental health.
       It’s never too late for parents to change
       There are ways to prevent these injurious impacts. Smaller studies have shown that interventions with parents can lead them to handle conflicts more constructively, encouraging them to solve problems together and speak kindly to each other. These interventions have led to short-term improvements in children’s mental well-being. Interventions to support parents’ mental health and develop positive parenting also make a difference. Important relationships with peers, other adults, or a sibling also buffer the impact on children of interparental conflict. Policymakers, researchers, and practitioners have important work to do to translate this decades-long research into large-scale interventions needed to bolster millions of families affected by this phenomenon.
      For parents who get stuck in poor ways of managing conflict, it’s never too late to try healthier ways of tackling differences. But it’s best to start early, before children are exposed. Otherwise, the occasional negative interactions may gradually become so much the norm that nobody realizes what’s happened to a once-loving couple relationship – or to the children.
      Header photo: Unsplash.  More

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      Children flourish in new forms of family, but some still suffer outsiders’ stigmatization

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      People concerned about children growing up in new forms of families (e.g., LBGTQ families, families created by donor eggs) have worried unnecessarily. In the face of dire warnings about such families, studies consistently show that their children turn out just as well as – and sometimes better than – kids from traditional families with two heterosexual parents. Findings have been remarkably similar, whether studies have focused on families with lesbian mothers, gay fathers, transgender parents, or single mothers by choice. Findings on families created by donations of eggs, sperm, or embryos, as well as by surrogacy, reflect the same pattern.
      In studies of all these new forms of family, we, along with other research teams, have found that the quality of family relationships matters for children’s welfare far more than the number, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or biological relatedness of the parents.
      It has taken nearly 50 years of studies, many following children across decades, to establish the empirical evidence. And there has been plenty of heartache along the way, starting with lesbian mothers who lost custody of their children back in the 1970s. In the half century since then, public and expert fears about new forms of family have underpinned various legal barriers to parenthood, discriminatory practices, and widespread stigmatization.

      “My brother and I knew people in our school that had gay and lesbian parents and that did get bullied quite a lot, and that scared us from telling people.”

      More new forms of family coming
      However, even though research on children’s outcomes is clear, the story does not end there, for two reasons. First, the diversity of new family forms seems likely only to expand as science advances and people seek new paths to parenthood. Artificial wombs, eggs, and sperm are just over the horizon. At the University of Cambridge Centre for Family Research, we are already examining children’s outcomes in co-parenting families in which couples are not romantically involved, children are parented by single fathers by choice, and transgender people give birth after they have transitioned.
      These developments pose fresh challenges to what has long been seen as the norm for children to flourish. Let’s hope people avoid repeating over-hasty judgments. We should await the evidence and be calmed by encouraging outcomes from other new forms of family.
      Children are asking for change
      Second, and perhaps more important, there is much more to say about children in these new forms of family, beyond simply logging their long-term outcomes. What is it like for them to grow up in such families? We should listen to their voices, and hear their thoughts and feelings. To that end, our team has conducted many studies gathering children’s stories.
      Through our work, we have found that schools, parents, and the wider society still have much to learn about supporting children in non-traditional families through their experiences, which can be upsetting. The distress is not related to the type of family children have, but because of stigmatization, inadequate communication, and lack of understanding, mainly from those on the periphery of home.
      So, for example, many children with LGBTQ parents have been stigmatized in school, by society, and sometimes by wider family. When we interviewed children of lesbian mothers born in the mid-1960s when they were young adults, almost half reported being teased or bullied as teenagers.
      Stigmatization burdens children
      “I wasn’t allowed to go to my friend’s house anymore,” said Anna. “Her mum and dad forbade me from going anywhere near, and that hurt me because she had been my best friend for a long, long time. I lost that friend. And then, of course, there was a chain reaction. Everybody found out. They said, ‘Don’t go near her, she’ll turn out like her mum.’”
      John was bullied when schoolmates found out about his lesbian mom. “School was one big nightmare really, because I got picked on so much,” he explained. “I had cigarettes stubbed out on the back of my neck, and high-heeled shoes thrown at me, and a bit of hair cut off, and my head chucked down the loo, and that sort of thing.”
      Children have felt the need to clam up about their families because of widespread prejudice. Stacey explained: “My brother and I knew some people in our school that had gay and lesbian parents and that did get bullied quite a lot, and that scared us from telling people. So, we never told anyone. It was hard keeping secrets.”

      “Schools, parents, and wider society still have a lot to learn about supporting children through their experiences.”

      Effective school challenges to prejudice
      Schools must create a positive, supportive environment for such children. It pays off. Carol, 14, highlighted helpful action by her school: “Basically, they spread the word how it’s not very good to say, ‘Oh this is so gay’ or ‘that’s so gay,’ even though it’s used as a different meaning. They tell them that’s wrong and why you shouldn’t say that.” Mike, 17, recalled how a new English teacher, who was gay, made a difference: “He has one of the Stonewall ‘Some People Are Gay, Get Over It’ posters in his classroom. Just seeing the poster in his room is really cool.” As part of our research project, the UK campaign for equality of LGBTQ people, Stonewall, published 10 recommendations from children on how schools can support them and their same-sex parents.
      Children of transgender parents have been bullied and teased in similar ways, and inclusive attitudes by schools can help them. Wendy explained: “I put my hand up and said, ‘I don’t have a dad because my dad’s transgender,’ and I got an award for it ‘cos it was actually really brave of me to say.”
      Tell children what’s happening
      Parents also should consider being more open about what is happening in their families. “It would have helped if he had explained things a bit better,” said Henry, 18, reflecting on when his father transitioned to being a woman. “It wasn’t so much him wearing dresses, but more him being a bit manic and doing strange things.” Chris, 18, advised other children in a similar situation: “Try to get them to communicate with you as much as possible because it’s worse if things are happening and you don’t know why.”
      Children tend to accept, in a matter of fact way, their father’s or mother’s change of gender if it happened while they were little or a long time ago. “Chloe’s always been Chloe,” said Susanna, 14, who was a toddler when her father transitioned. “I don’t remember when it actually happened, so it’s basically been for as long as I remember.”
      Experiencing transition can worry them
       But some children find it difficult when they experience a parent’s transition. They can have fears of loss, which typically pass, but which can be very real during gender transition. Jade, who was six when her father transitioned, was upset about losing her dad: “When she transitioned, I felt like there was a hole in my heart because I missed my dad and every time somebody talked about their dad, I got really upset.” But she grew more accepting. At age nine, Jade reflected: “When she transitioned, it made her a lot happier ‘cos, when she was a boy, she was really unhappy. Ever since she’s transitioned, she’s come home from work, hugged us, and been really happy. It’s changed a lot since she transitioned.”
      Another upset can be rejection of parents by their wider family, so children lose contact with some relatives. Theresa, whose father transitioned when she was six, explained: “People on my mum’s side of the family really struggle with it. Her parents and brothers, and basically everyone over there, cut us off. It made me sad and kind of angry because it’s really no reason to be horrible.”

      “When children found out later, as teenagers or adults, they felt more negatively about how they were conceived and their relationship with their parents.”

      Children should not have to explain their families
      Children may also feel responsible for explaining to the outside world issues such as gender transition. “My problem,” explained Susanna, “has been having to explain to other people constantly because no one really understands.” Josh reported: “Sometimes, random people ask me questions and I have to explain to them. That gets tiring for me.”
      Our research has highlighted issues for children born through assisted reproductive technologies, such as egg, sperm, and embryo donation, or surrogacy. Some children as young as two or three years might ask of a single mother by choice: “Do I have a daddy? Where is he?” Some – but by no means all – especially as they get into their teens, are eager to fill a gap in knowledge about themselves by finding out more about their donor, surrogate, and any half-siblings born to the same donor or surrogate.
      “It’s important to me now . . . I’m always thinking about what she looks like,” explained Sarah, 14, who was born through egg donation. Alex, 14, conceived by sperm donation, said: “I would like to know who he is . . . quite a lot . . . Recently a lot more than I used to.”
      Tell children early about their origins
      We have found that it is generally better to start talking to children early about how they were conceived and born. Children who find out later, as teenagers or adults, tend to feel more negatively about how they were conceived and in their relationships with their parents than children who have had the conversation about their beginnings early. Many parents hold off telling their children, fearing that the children will love them less. However, these fears are unfounded because children who are told early tend to be very accepting, often not particularly interested, and unshocked by learning more as they grow older.
      The risks of not disclosing this information to children have grown with the advent of ancestry sites offering DNA tests, which can suddenly lead unsuspecting children to discover half-siblings and relatives of whom they had no inkling. Children may find their identities destabilized, and learning about their beginnings in this way can undermine their trust in their parents.
      The story of new forms of family is largely good news, of children flourishing, much as we might expect them to do in traditional families, and sometimes doing even better. The composition of their family does not upset them. It is other factors, such as people’s reactions to their family or the lack of information about their origins, that cause them distress. The solutions lie in better understanding, greater societal acceptance of diverse families, swift challenges to prejudice, and openness within families about where their much-wanted children came from. More