If you decided to read past the title of this column because you were expecting to hear me launch into a rant questioning how third-party payers or any credentialing group can honestly and fairly judge the quality of an individual physician by measuring the outcomes of his or her patients, I apologize. This column is about the quality of time, specifically the quality of time a parent spends with his or her child.
From an article in the Washington Post (“Making time for kids? Study says quality trumps quantity,” by Brigid Schulte, March 28, 2015), I learned of a study by Milkie et al. published in the Journal of Marriage and Family (“Does the Amount of Time Mothers Spend with Children or Adolescents Matter?” J. Marriage Family 2015;77:355-72 ) in which the researchers found that the amount of time a mother spent with her child was unrelated to the child’s behaviors, emotions, or academics. The only exception was during adolescence when more engaged maternal time was associated with better outcomes and fewer delinquent behaviors.
The sociologists who performed the study had observed in their previous research that working mothers today spend as much time with their children as did at-home mothers in the 1970s. This observation surprised them, but clearly fits with their current data that suggest that quantity doesn’t matter.
What did matter was quality. In fact, the authors found that if a mother was sleep deprived or felt guilty, anxious, or stressed, her time with her child could actually be “detrimental” to the child. The only factors that consistently had a positive impact on the child were maternal income and educational level.
Measuring the quantity of time a parent spends with his or her child is relatively easy. Assessing the quality of that time is much more difficult. The findings in this study won’t be of much help to a parent who wants to enhance the quality of time he or she spends with her child. Meeting the criteria of being mentally healthy, unstressed, well-slept, and economically stable is easier said than done. However, let’s say that you are a parent who is fortunate enough to be able to pull it off. Does this mean that just because you have your act together that your child is automatically going to get quality time?
I would answer, “No!” Because if we really want to know, let’s ask the child, because it is the child who should be defining the quality of time he spends with his parent. Unfortunately, many parents lose track of the child’s perspective when they are evaluating the time they spend together.
For example, you come home from a tough day at work and find that your 3½-year-old has been cooped up inside because the daycare provider didn’t want to take the kids out in the rain. It’s 40 degrees. It’s more than a light rain, but not a torrential downpour. Your son wants to go out and play in the puddles. Your plan for quality time had been to read one his favorite books to him for the umpteenth time before you start to fix dinner.
If we let the child define the quality of your time together, it means that both of you are going to get wet. Clothes will have to be changed, and the dinner that he wasn’t going to eat very much of anyway is going to be delayed a few minutes. But let’s face it – a few minutes out in the cold rain has the potential of being an event that one or both of you will remember for a long time. Is it going to have the educational value equivalent to the language skills your son will acquire from hearing multiple repetitions of the spoken word? Will it enhance his chances of being a competent reader? Probably not. But your son may learn that there is fun to be had outside on a rainy day. Or he may learn that 40 degrees is a little too cold be outside if it is raining. But he will certainly learn that you are someone who likes to share experiences with him and someone who is will to give him some say in what those experiences are.
A parent might argue that if I let my child choose the things we do together, it means we will always be watching cartoons. My response to that observation would be, “You’ve already made one mistake by letting him watch cartoons in the first place; let’s not make a second one. Give him healthier choices, and don’t impose your notion of quality on your time together.” Sometimes just standing by and watching your child enjoy himself is quality time for both of you.
Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “Coping with a Picky Eater.” E-mail him at pdnews@frontlinemedcom.com .
