Intensive mothers

[Xenia]

It seems pretty clear children benefit a lot if their mother has a good career and here is another piece of evidence of the damage housewives do to children:-

"Stay at home mothers are more likely to be unhappy than those who go out to work, according to new research.
Women who believe in "intensive parenting" are at risk of a range of mental illnesses including depression.

They think women are better parents than men, that mothering should be child centred and that children should be considered sacred and fulfilling.

This may put them in danger of suffering the 'parenthood paradox' where their ideology increases feelings of stress and guilt.

Psychologist Kathryn Rizzo, whose findings are published online in Springer's Journal of Child and Family Studies, said: "If intensive mothering is related to so many negative mental health outcomes, why do women do it?

"They may think that it makes them better mothers, so they are willing to sacrifice their own mental health to enhance their children's cognitive, social and emotional outcomes."
Related Articles

She said parenting is a big task and requires a variety of skills and expertise. Many women rate the challenge as one of the most fulfilling experiences in life.

But some previous research has suggested it may be detrimental to mental health, with women reporting taking care of their children as more stressful than being at work.

So her team at the University of Mary Washington, Virginia, looked at whether intensive parenting in particular was linked to increased levels of stress, depression and lower life satisfaction among 181 mothers of children under five.

Using an online questionnaire, they found out to what extent the participants endorsed intensive parenting beliefs by measuring their responses to a series of statements.

These included "mothers are the most necessary and capable parent", "parents' happiness is derived primarily from their children" and "parents should always provide their children with stimulating activities that aid in their development".

Others were "parenting is more difficult than working" and "a parent should always sacrifice their needs for the needs of the child".

Overall, the women were satisfied with their lives but had moderate levels of stress and depression.

Almost one in four had symptoms of depression and these negative mental health outcomes were accounted for by their endorsement of intensive parenting attitudes.

When the level of family support was taken into account, those mothers who believed women are the essential parent were less satisfied with their lives. Those who believed that parenting is challenging were more stressed and depressed.

The researchers said overall, the women were satisfied with their lives but had moderate levels of stress and depression.

They added: "In reality, intensive parenting may have the opposite effect on children from what parents intend."

Earlier this year a study of more than 60,000 US mothers found 41 percent of those not in work experienced worry compared to 34 per cent of those employed.

And 28 per cent suffered depression, eleven per cent more than the others. Psychlogists fear the phenomenon is linked with feelings of isolation and a lack of fulfillment. "

www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9381449/Stay-at-home-mothers-more-unhappy-than-those-who-work.html

xenia
You have quoted a shabby article from the Torygraph to help bolster your own situation and, presumably to make SAHM's feel they are letting their children down.
What if I quoted a Torygraph article about how the children of divorced couple are 5 times more likely to binge drink.here
How does that make you feel? Do you feel inadequate? Do you feel that you have failed your children? Or perhaps you feel grateful that I am educating you about your situation.

I am sure we could all find articles supporting whatever beliefs we want - it doesn't make them right.

Ps,
I really, honestly, think its perfectly OK to be either a SAHM or a working mother, as long as you are a good ( or good enough ) parent.

No does not bother me. The ratio of press articles against working mothers to for them is about 1000 to 1. The press is very keen to present a picture that all women want to earn a pittance and work full time and are traumatised by working which is simply not true. The case for women working is never made anything like enough in the press.

The press is very keen to present a picture that all women want to earn a pittance and work full time and are traumatised by working which is simply not true.

Do you mind me asking which newspapers you read, Xenia?

Can you even read a newspaper?

Is it just me that finds Xenia's writing difficult to read? The grammar is very odd and the sentences jumbled

I know lets play show and tell, I'll tell you mine, you tell me yours, everyone else can join in and then we can see if IQ really correlates with wealth creation.

Meh, bad grammar & sentences comes from middle age & early senior moments, we'll all get there sooner or later. I wouldn't pick on that so much (staring perimenopause in the face, myself).

You get more converts from attraction than promotion; one thing I'll say for Xenia is that she convinces me that high flying professional Power-broken women have loads of time to doss around on MN.

mini does it occur to you for even a nano second that there are members of MN with learning disabilities? Members with poor grasp of English? Members who had a poor education?

While you my feel justified in making a snide little dig at xenia you really shpould think before you post things like that.

Or are only those with a perfect grasp of the language allowed to post without mockery?

Oh come on wordfactory, Xenia overtly sets herself up as some kind of female icon of achievement ("come on girls, you too can be a hard-pressed single mother of five in North London and bleed yourself dry playing school fees and donchaknow this is feminist perfection and you are all moral cop outs not to follow my lead"). It's OK to mock her

Ni it's not, because it's not only xenia reading these posts.

When you mock the grammar, spelling etc you are implicitly telling many other posters that they are not up to it. That they will open themselves up for mockery.

And that's just bad manners.

I disagree. A post directed to a specific poster has to be read for what it is or else we are letting PC go mad.

It has nohting to do with PC, mad or otherwise.

It is simply good manners.
You either have them or you don't.

Wordfactory, It's just my humour and I believe Xenia probably has a sense of humour too. I wouldn't say it if I thought for one minute she wasn't 100% secure in herself.

Oh I'm certain xenia doesn't give a tinker's cuss .

It's just other posters I think of...

xenia likes yanking people's chain. when someone responds with personal criticism, i suspect she knows she has wound them up very well.......

There is no objective measure of manners, wordfactory - they are highly culturally-specific.

Are you saying she's trolling Tilly?

I'm curious about where the research drew its sample and also if they asked about socio-economic status, how they defined depression, whether they analysed for age of child, size of family, fans financial difficulties, access to social support...

And did they ask working mothers? I wonder if there is a bigger picture of families particularly the 'squeezed middle' struggling with the economic crisis, unemployment, lack of work etc

Xenia isn't a troll.

I am just a bit miffed why we keep hearing the same worn out argument, I simply wish she would turn her planet sized brain to something else.

We hear discriminatory remarks about IQ and class constantly. We hear how bright people can prosper whilst women of lower intellect should be wet wipes to the arse of humanity, children are boring, only a thicko would spend time with their child. Mine is 11 and doing IGCSE, hardly a boring child to be around. I don't think only low achieving women chose to look after their children, in fact there is evidence to suggest quite the opposite is true. I think whether someone prospers and makes money is probably less to do with IQ and more to do with personality, opportunity, education and even geography.

I think IQ is much more plastic than is currently widely understood.

but the amount of anti WOHM stuff on MN is v high. it tends to get ignored which shows how normal & entrenched it is.

Anti WOHM sentiment on MN goes with extreme pressure not to follow NHS advice on sleep training. Little wonder that intensive parenting is associated with mental health problems

'The press is very keen to present a picture that all women want to earn a pittance and work full time and are traumatised by working which is simply not true. The case for women working is never made anything like enough in the press.'

I agree with this as far as the sentiment towards the press goes 'The press is very keen to present a picture that all women' X,Y or Z .
That is why I would not go around quoting press articles about women and employment. I would always suspect an agenda, and I would be correct -- one reading of the article suggests employment outside the home is a good thing, but closer examination reveals that the notion of women working outside the home has been measured using criteria that would never be used to measure the benefits of men working outside the home. And actually, the article wasn't about women in general being employed vs. women in general being stay at home parents, it was about a particular attitude to being a mother on the part of a small minority of mothers, where the women are using the children as an emotional investment vehicle, whether for cultural reasons or for personal reasons of their own.

The same could be said of a lot of men and their choice of career, if they have invested heavily in it on an emotional level (which many men do), and derive their sense of self worth from it. Experiencing bumps in the career path or finding that the chosen career was not all it was cracked up to be, and didn't deliver the ego reward they had hoped for can be extremely traumatic for a lot of men. With men, it's called burnout or midlife crisis. I see a good deal of it in men about ten years older than I am right now. You see it in the statistics on heart attacks that hit men upon retirement from a career that was rewarding. They lose themselves when they get that gold watch because they have identified so closely with their working identity.

Anyone with a basic ego problem who chooses a life career for themselves, be it parenting or engineering, will end up suffering when putting all of their eggs in one basket backfires, as it is guaranteed to do. People who have sorted themselves out ego-wise will have it easier.

Back to the press. Here are questions you never see asked about men as employees:
Are men happy?
Do they worry?
Are the children of men affected by the fact that the men work outside the home?
Nobody in the press cares.

Math - Good point, well made

What a ridiculous OP. We really should not feed this monster.

The article in the Telegraph is about women who believe in "intensive parenting", not about SAHMs. Not all SAHMs are into intensive parenting and some WOHMs certainly are.

Conclusion of article? Intensive parenting is bad for mothers and children.

But Xenia concludes from this that unknown "housewives" of unknown origin damage some children.

Hm. If this is the quality of thinking in the boardroom I´m sure I wouldn´t fit in there! I think I´d be happier at home ; )

The only two problems with being a SAHP as far as I can see, whether you are helicopter mum or horizontal is the fact that it is accorded very little respect and is largely lived out in isolation.

It was certainly surprising for the Telegraph to produce a slant against housewives as it fills up page after page week after week with sexist articles suggesting all women should be at home. I am surprised this one slipped through the net.

It wasn't a slant 'against housewives', Xenia.

It was a report of a study on one particular attitude to the role of the mother and the specific practices that arise from that particular set of beliefs about the role.