From Research to Parenting Advice: What Gets Lost Along the Way

"I thought I was supposed to..." is a common refrain in our Tuesday night parenting group. The room is full of engaged, loving parents who are all committed to doing the best they can at the hardest job in the world. 

Many have been engaged in conversations about parenting online with their child’s teachers and doctors for more than a decade.

Like so many parents, they believe that they are following expert advice.

Before my graduate training, I believed that there was a clean, tightly written set of evidence with perhaps a few unanswered questions but certainly some sort of established consensus on the nuts and bolts of parenting. 

Apparently not. 

This may come as a surprise to anyone who has had the privilege and misfortune of encountering any online content around parenting topics recently. So many of them claim the ethos of the scientific method assuring the user that their advice is exactly what “research says.”

But somewhere between the research laboratory and a parent's Instagram feed, something important happens.

The context of this laboratory research becomes obscured.  What occurs in the lab is not immediately applicable to the complicated relationship between a parent and child.

Take a commonly cited, research supported bit of advice, “You should read to your child every day from birth.” The promises vary from increasing your child’s early language development all the way to maximizing the odds of entrance into a prestigious university. 

Now did anyone conduct a study where a group of families were randomly assigned to read every day from birth and some people just read every other day starting at 6 months and then compare which kids entered an Ivy League school? Of course not. There is not a randomly controlled trial for every single reading schedule and age of introduction. 

What observational research actually suggests could be better summarized by the claim that “Kids in language rich environments (kids who are spoken to, read to and sung to) have higher language aptitudes which in turn, affects their educational attainment.”

It all reminds me of playing telephone at a birthday party. You start with one sentence: “The horse is wearing shoes” and you end up with “The pony has a sock on its tail.” You can see how we got there but it is not exactly the same. 

So, does this matter? If the gist of “talk to your kids” is good advice why make this persnickety argument? 

Because when research is translated to advice it often becomes an absolutist recommendation that obscures the heart of the parenting. The recommendation becomes a way to define “good parenting” that misses the dynamic context of family life. 

You can imagine a parent who incentivizes reading with rewards and sticker charts in order to hit the “read every day” recommendation and then spends hours a day on her phone without talking to her kids.  Conversely, there could be a child who loves to recite nursery rhymes and sing in the car with his parents and hasn’t sat down with a book in weeks. 

Which child is in a language rich environment? 

The problem with the second family's experience is that it is much harder to measure. "Read to your child every day" gives us something wonderfully concrete: at bedtime, we can say whether we did it or we didn't. "Create a home rich in language, curiosity, and conversation" is much closer to the developmental goal, but there is no box to check at the end of the day.

The appeal of this research informed advice is it presents a certain and simple way of measuring our achievements in parenting. 

If you try a new recipe, you know that you have been successful within and hour or two. If you write a paper at school, you get your grade in a week. Handle a two year old’s meltdown? You won’t know if you did a “good job” for another 15 years. 

This is where concrete recommendations become incredibly seductive. You don’t know if you are managing toddler tantrums or moody teens well, but you can quickly assess whether or not you read a book, went over a screentime limit or if your child did their homework.

We can easily make these metrics the center of parenting and miss the target entirely. 

We have to find our way back to the question: What is the goal of parenting?

Are we trying to raise a child who reads earliest? A child who obeys? A child who achieves? Or a person who can eventually navigate the world competently, maintain relationships, tolerate frustration, exercise judgment, and live independently?

These goals aren't necessarily in conflict. I hope all of the children I raise and educate read well, behave appropriately, succeed academically, and grow into capable adults.

But the hierarchy matters.

There’s so much that we can use research for. It can teach us so much about how our brains work, change and develop. 

Research cannot determine what matters. Only we can do that.