What Does a Developmental Psychologist See in Burning Man?

When I sent my 86-year old father my photos from Burning Man, he replied that he didn't understand: Wasn't it for "hippie kids"? What was I doing there, and what did the experience do for me?

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The Love Bus (photo by Zai Divecha)

The Burn is famously different for each participant. Some Burners go to strut and party, some to share their art, a few to network and get ahead. Approaching our 60s, my husband and I get the most pleasure from camping there with our 20-something kids who extended an open invitation for the second time. But I also go to stay fresh, keep up on emerging ideas, and to prevent the fixed mindset I fear might creep in with age.

Like everyone, I bring my own kaleidoscopic lens to the playa. In my everyday life as a developmental psychologist, I experience much of my social world through a chronological telescope: When I look at children, I see the adults they may become; when I meet adults, I see the children they likely were. I’m keenly aware that we are all developing, all the time.

And I recognize that we are not nailed uniformly to a single rung on some developmental ladder. While some parts of us are reasonably established in adulthood, some parts of us remain deep in childhood. Psychologists call this normal developmental unevenness décalage, a French word that translates to “lag” or “gap.” Many people are not stuck but move flexibly and adaptively—like various spiritual teachers I’ve encountered, whose equanimity is spacious and evolved, yet who can erupt with the laughter and delight of young children.

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My headdress (photo by Zai Divecha)

At home, preparing for Burning Man, I gave myself permission to go the craft table and the dress-up corner to immerse myself in the elixir of creativity and make-believe. I emerged wearing a homemade caftan, wooden necklaces, and a medieval horned headpiece, along with a second headpiece of papier-mâché branches sprouting from a drywall skullcap anchored inside a turban. By the time I hopped on my bike at the edge of the playa, I could see my 10-year-old self in the mirror.

In my adult life, I advocate for improving childhood through my research, speaking, and writing. And there's much to do. In the first twenty years of life, we find out how the world works and we wrangle a place in it. For some, the process is kind, and for others it is bumpy yet manageable. For a surprising number, though, it is a tortured and traumatic path and they are deposited at the door of adulthood with handicaps and scar tissue. In a famous study of over 17,000 adults, about a third said their childhoods were free of “adverse childhood experiences” (one of ten serious conditions that can derail a child’s life), but about a quarter reported three or more types of traumas— a number that science now links to emotional and physical problems that persist well into adulthood.

And in a Hansel-and-Gretel world, the places meant to shelter, nurture, and protect children are the ones that do the most damage. Many children are traumatized in their homes, and show up at school unable to concentrate or manage their strong feelings. They are frequently misdiagnosed, drugged, punished or expelled. When adults have emotional problems, they are treated as mental health concerns, but when children have emotional struggles, they are often "behavior problems" to be controlled. Schools, too, can be unsafe:  Punishment is a popular but harmful approach to managing children, while cultivating kind, emotionally supportive school cultures is effective but slow to catch on. About a quarter of kids are bullied or harassed at school--an experience that can undermine the rest of their lives. Children do not enjoy the same relationship rights that adults are privileged with; they're made to return, day after day, to the places and people who abuse them.

Burners are a well-educated, modestly financially secure group, but emotional difficulties are equal opportunity. The playa is sometimes described as a kind of playground, but through my eyes it is unlike the one of our childhoods. This one acknowledges some real developmental concerns. Through installations, workshops, and talks, Burning Man offers a chance for some re-dos. Some rewiring.

And it can start with letting go of some of the grief collected on the journey so far. The Temple of Promise, a stunning Gothic cornucopia rising 97 feet above the playa—is a paean to both the normal and the outsized suffering of being human.

Temple of Promise (photos by Diana and Arjun Divecha)

Visitors walk through its increasingly narrowing form, leaving baggage, burdens, pains, fears, and mementos to be burned away at the end of the week. Messages fill and are hung from every available surface, and this year someone left three small suitcases. One woman vented an angry diatribe of suffering at the hands of an abusive stepfather and a complicit mother. Another message was written to parents who had died in a plane accident: “I have not been in a small plane since yours was taken down,” it said. “A friend has offered to fly me over this temple, and I am going to try to overcome my fear. My love is eternal.” On our fourth walk through the temple, my husband quietly released some of the sorrow of losing his mother three months ago.

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Reflect (photo by Diana Divecha)

A giant 20-by-40-foot colored tear drop, called Reflect, was captured at the point where it hits water, to represent all the tears shed by those left behind when someone takes his or her own life.

In childhood, adult power hierarchies—based on social status, gender, ethnicity, even height and attractiveness—are replicated inside the school walls, and kids learn early who’s on top and who’s pushed to the exit ramps. Kids often punish each other for being different, and power structures like schools and other institutions use whatever behavioral control possible to keep kids “in line.” 

A 50-foot chapel called the Totem of Confessions contained dioramas of surreal and dreamlike black-and-white photos, oddities that might pop up from the subconscious into dreams or fantasies or fears, and that would likely be considered shameful by others. And as a reminder of ever-present judgment, there was a confessional in the interior of the chapel.

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Totem of Confessions (photos by Diana Divecha)

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Time Out Corner (photo by Diana Divecha)

A Time Out Corner appeared out of nowhere on the playa, recalling the frequent punishment—deserved or not—of our childhood transgressions. Timeouts for children are now understood to be ineffective, even harmful. Brain imaging studies show they light up the same neural pathways as physical pain.

Some days, after writing about bullying and trauma, I marvel that most of us make it to adulthood as well as we do. The striving to connect, to still try, to be able to still wonder, was manifest in the sculpture Love. There, two massive wire adult forms were seated back-to-back, heads down in withdrawal, while the glowing child inside each of them reached out for the other, touching hands.

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Love (photo by Diana Divecha)

Identity Awareness (photo by Diana Divecha)

At Burning Man, there is an invitation to sort out what is personal encumbrance and artifice, from what authentically belongs to us. A giant question mark, barely propped up by a human figure reminded us to question the source of our choices, the source of our identity.

One of the Ten Guiding Principles of Burning Man—radical self-expression—is a direct antidote to the censoring—and censuring—of growing up, making space to question the conventions we take for granted. We took part with our crazy clothes, our go-with-the-flow schedules (some of us got up before dawn when others were just going to bed), and our explorations of new topics (from beekeeping to twerking). We passed the “Dick Parade” where 150 men bicycled through camp, bottomless, while gentle hecklers (a thing) encouraged the liberal use of sunscreen. In its counterpart, women paraded topless in "Critical Tits." Overhead, a man flew a glider, naked. “You’re guaranteed to not be the weirdest kid in the classroom,” the online guide soothes. It would be easy to dismiss the naked experimentation as exhibitionism, but I'm sure some riders may have been struggling with their body image or  health concerns; for some it may have been a healing process from being bullied, targeted, or abused; and perhaps others simply wanted to walk through the wall of a conventional boundary. There are as many possible reasons as there were riders.

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(Photos by Arjun and Zai Divecha)

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(Photo by Diana Divecha)

But by radical, they mean deep, not crazy: Consent is the cornerstone of a civil community, the Burning Man literature reads. It doesn’t refer to just sexual and physical touch, but anything that “will radically alter the experience of another person.” Prompts to good behavior were everywhere.

Another principle, "radical inclusion," is the antidote to the emotional abuse and social exclusions suffered in childhood. The consistent expectation of kindness is refreshing and softening, and people are just more present. I felt my own guardedness melt just a bit, with hugs, gifts, conversations, and gentle heckles.

Developmental psychologists find that play is the cauldron of intellectual, creative, and social development in childhood, and according to the Burner census, many people come to the playa just for that. The playful mood is their "top priority."

Everything that can be climbed on, is:

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(Photos by Arjun Divecha)

You can be a flamethrower, safely:

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Serpent Mother (photo by Jordana Joseph); Fire safety rules (photo by Arjun Divecha)

Puns are everywhere:

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Burning Man: What Where When (photo by Arjun Divecha); Camp Nevada (photo by Diana Divecha)

And a Disney singalong and Thriller flashmob are open to all comers—not something we normally have an opportunity to attend.

The Bunny March Against Humanity herds humans into a bus and they exit dressed as bunnies. Humans haven’t done such a good job of being in charge, the organizers say. So let’s give the bunnies a chance.

“The only cure for reality,” says the author Gary Lindberg, “is imagination.”

And finally, our sense of wonder was on full throttle much of the time. The location itself is dramatic, and the playa was saturated with one stunning installation after another. 

(Photos by Diana, Arjun, and Zai Divecha, and Julie Light)

The burning of The Man at the end of the week might not just represent an anger toward the political and economic establishment but perhaps a rebellion against the colonization of the heart and spirit as well.

This is a struggle we are all wired for. As we watched a group of young yogis strain, falter, and ultimately succeed in positioning themselves atop giant letters, an observer called out encouragement, shouting “This is what it is to LIVE!”

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DREAM LIVE BE OK (photo by Arjun Divecha)

The Only Parenting Model You Need

Do these scenarios sound familiar?  A four-year-old has a meltdown because he refuses to wear his fancy new clothes to his cousin's wedding. Or a middle-schooler quits basketball after an altercation with the coach and announces she wants to change schools. 

These situations, and many more, can challenge even experienced parents. And parents looking around for advice today are met with a barrage of conflicting information.

But one parenting model has withstood fads and changing times. It's an approach backed by four decades of developmental research showing that it is the very best style of parenting for both children and teens. And it works well for all different kinds of families, regardless of their ethnicity, income, education, or structure. It's called authoritative parenting. And it deserves more attention.

Developed by Diana Baumrind in 1966 at the University of California at Berkeley, the authoritative parenting model has evolved over the years. But most importantly, studies show that children raised with authoritative parenting are the most psychologically well-adjusted. They are creative and intellectually curious, and intrinsically motivated to achieve. They have good social skills and remain connected to parents and friends. And they manage themselves well--they are self-reliant, self-confident, they take initiative, and they have good self-control.

What is authoritative parenting?

As Baumrind explains, authoritative parenting artfully combines qualities of responsiveness and demandingness. 

• Responsiveness, or nurturance, refers to the warmth, love, understanding, and empathy that a parent offers a child. Responsive parenting accepts the child's unique needs, abilities, and perspectives, taking age and temperament into account. Responsive parents delight in their children and stay attuned to their feelings.

• Demandingness, or control, refers to age-appropriate limits, boundaries, and expectation that parents set for children. Behavioral guidelines and standards are best clarified through discussion and explanation, preferably ahead of time, which exercises the child's ability to reason rather than blindly obey. Discipline and power-assertion are last resorts--best reserved for issues of safety. Children become more autonomous as they get older (the end goal is they manage their lives themselves), so the authoritative parent celebrates the child's small steps toward independence. Again, skilled authoritative parents keep their expectations appropriate, taking into account the child's developmental skills and temperament.

How might these elements be applied to a real situation? In the case of the preschooler above (a true story), the parents sympathized with the child's distress. They knew he tended toward a sensitive temperament--that he might have been overwhelmed by the new situation and new people, on top of the 18-hour car journey they had just made. (Children with different temperaments react differently to situations.) They knew, too, that children this age are just developing the neurological ability to manage and inhibit their own behavior. So the parents decided this was not a battle they wanted to fight. How he looked, they reasoned, was less important than his comfortable participation in the happy events. So they allowed him to wear what he wanted, and the family met their bigger goal of connecting with and enjoying their extended family celebration. 

What authoritative parenting is NOT

The two dimensions of responsiveness and demandingness can intersect in at least four ways. Each way yields different parenting behaviors and leads to different child outcomes.

• Authoritarian parenting uses too much control and not enough nurturance. With these parents, it's "my way or the highway." An authoritarian parent might force the preschooler to wear the uncomfortable clothes or punish him for resisting. These parents want the child to "suck it up" without exploring what it feels like for the child. They value rules, obedience, and conformity, and they tend to be punitive, inflexible, and controlling. They do not value a child's growing independence but rather restrict his autonomy--often creating increasing conflict as the child grows. Authoritarian parents are not very interested in their child's point of view, since they are sure they know what's best. In the extreme, this type of parenting can devolve into abuse.
  
  Children raised by authoritarian parents tend to become more dependent and passive than those raised by authoritative parents. They have fewer social skills and are less self-assured. Not used to following their own initiative, they also tend to be less intellectually curious.

Roz Chast from The New Yorker

• Indulgent or permissive parenting, on the other hand is high in nurturance but low in control. These parents are child-centered to the point of indulgence, offering a lot of freedom but too few expectations or boundaries. Indulgent parents are often overly concerned with their child's happiness, or they may see any behavioral control or demand as an infringement on the child's "rights" (a position popular in the sixties). This approach can also describe the classic helicopter parent: Rather than helping the child to develop her own skills, a parent will overcompensate, doing her child's homework or running interference for a college-age child who doesn't get along with a new roommate. In the example of the middle schooler who has an altercation with a coach, the indulgent parent is sympathetic, allows the child to drive the decisions, but does not help the child cultivate skills: A middle schooler, however, can be better supported by helping her speak up, advocate for herself, or come up with alternative ways to solve her problem. Avoiding the problem, by leaving the school should be a last resort only when the benefits clearly outweigh the costs.

Children raised by indulgent parents tend to be immature, with little self-reliance or self-confidence, and they take less personal responsibility than children raised with authoritative parenting. Lacking their own strong internal compass, they are also more easily vulnerable to peer influences.
 

• Indifferent parenting is low on both nurturance and control. These parents are neglectful, "checked out." They are self-centered and take little interest in the child.
  
  Children raised by indifferent parents have some of the worst psychological adjustment second only to hostile or abusive parenting. With little parental oversight or monitoring, these children tend to precociously experiment with sex, drugs and alcohol. They are more likely to be involved in delinquent behavior.

Why does authoritative parenting work?

Some behaviors and relationships are protective "developmental delivery vehicles," and authoritative parenting is one. It packages together a lot of elements that promote healthy development.

Responsiveness, for example, promotes the attachment bond, and when children have a strong attachment they naturally want to be more aligned with the parent.

Then, too, the discussion- and explanation-based approach helps children understand why to do things a certain way. As such, it promotes intellectual development by helping children to understand, and reason about, how relationships work, and to develop moral judgment and empathy. Back-and-forth discussion that respects the child's perspective is the best way to help her develop thoughts and ideas. In this way, she grows an internal compass of her own--one that will guide her when a parent isn't around.

High expectations are good, but children need the supports to achieve these. I insisted that my children learn to write thank-you notes but I let them pick out their notepaper and we made the writing session fun. They've continued the habit into their twenties. The same holds for the development of bigger skills: taking responsibility, being safe, gaining independence, learning assertiveness, and achieving psychological autonomy. These abilities come step by step, with each step identified and supported. And a warm and light tone helps. (For further reading, try Laurence Steinberg's classic, The 10 Basic Principles of Good Parenting.)

Authoritative parenting results from a highly effective balance of lovingness and high expectations. Depending on the situation and the child's temperament and development, this balance constantly shifts. But if parents can keep both dimensions in mind, they'll hit the sweet spot that enables the best long-term outcomes for the children. 

Safe Cosleeping is Better for Babies' Development than Sleep Training

photo by D. Divecha

Over twenty years ago, when our children were born, my husband Arjun and I had the sleep debate that many American parents still have today: Where should we put the baby to sleep at night? 

 Arjun grew up in India, and though he'd slept apart from his parents, his ayah (nanny) had always slept close by. I, on the other hand, grew up in small-town Minnesota and had slept alone in a crib at the end of a hall. When it came to our own kids, we each argued that the other's experience must have been better. He believed in the superiority of modern, Western ideas, and I was sure that the ancient practice of sleeping together was the natural state of parenthood.

"We'll roll over on her," he worried.

"We'll sleep better," I countered, thinking breastfeeding in bed sounded pretty good.

Last week, a New York Times blog post reignited the discussion for another generation of new parents. "Sleep Training at Eight Weeks: Do You Have The Guts?" it asked. Sleep training is the process of getting a baby to sleep through the night through a variety of behavioral techniques, and in the extreme by letting a baby "cry it out" in a room without a parent's responsive soothing or feeding. After a couple of days, the logic goes, the baby "gets used to it," and "learns" to sleep alone through the night.

Photo by D. Divecha

This school of sleep training, based on operant conditioning, runs counter to the current science of infant development. Here are a few examples:

• Crying in babies is not a misbehavior to be modified; it is a physiological signal that something is wrong. Babies who are picked up when they cry learn that their needs will be met and they cry less over the long run. On the other hand, if a baby's crying is consistently ignored, she can learn that her signaling system is ineffective, undermining the developing sense of self-efficacy. Her natural demands, then, can escalate into more anxious ones. The general rule of parenting infants is that you cannot spoil a baby.

• Though many Americans want their children to learn to be independent as early as possible, forcing a baby to manage herself alone is not the way to foster independence. Rather, independence arises naturally out of a secure relationship that builds up after many episodes of having her needs adequately met. For a summary of studies on the relationship between cosleeping and later child outcomes, see here.

• To a helpless baby (and all babies are), crying and being ignored is inherently stressful. Though mild stress can "inoculate" a little one and help her learn to self-regulate her inner states, overwhelming stress--especially in infancy--can be toxic. Toxic stress can interfere with the expression of genes that set a baby's stress regulation levels in the developing brain.

• Each baby is different, with a unique temperament, yet sleep training is a one-size-fits-all approach. Just because one baby sleeps through the night doesn't mean that all babies can and should. A vital part of parenting involves learning your baby's unique needs.

• And finally, a systematic review of sleep training programs for babies under six months, published recently in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics concluded that the strategies have "not been shown to decrease infant crying, prevent sleep and behavioral problems in later childhood, or protect against postnatal depression." In fact, sleep training in the first weeks and months of a baby's life, "risk[s] unintended outcomes, including increased amounts of problem crying, premature cessation of breastfeeding, worsened maternal anxiety, and, if the infant is required to sleep either day or night in a room separate from the caregiver, an increased risk of SIDS."

Cosleeping, not sleep training, is what is "biologically appropriate," says James McKenna, director of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame. McKenna has studied infant-parent cosleeping for most of his career.

Photo by D. Divecha

Technically, cosleeping is defined as any situation where the infant and parent are within sensory range of each other. It has often meant sharing the same bed, but that has some risks as Arjun pointed out. Nowadays, McKenna, and many others in the United States, recommends separate-surface cosleeping, for example, placing the baby in a bassinet within reach or in a small crib next to the bed. 

"There are as many ways to cosleep with your baby as there are cultures doing it," McKenna says.

Here's why keeping babies close is important:

Following birth, babies and caregivers remain physiologically connected to each other in complex ways, and when this bond is supported, babies do better. Breastfeeding, for example, is ideal for brain growth and future health. Babies who are breastfed have lower rates of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), diabetes, and other serious health conditions, while breastfeeding mothers have lower rates of postpartum depression, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and hypertension. Breast milk is low in calories (but easy on digestion) so babies feed every hour and a half to two hours. When babies sleep close to their caregivers, they sleep more lightly, and wake two to three times more often than babies who are further away. The close proximity offers easy access with minimal disturbance.

Individual babies vary in how often they wake, from two to 13-15 times a night. But feeding isn't the only thing that happens more in the frequent wakings. When babies rouse, oxygen levels and heart rates rise, which is good for brain growth and development and immune functioning. The light sleep and frequent stirring also interrupt and stop episodes of apnea, or pauses in breathing, that can be deadly when prolonged. 

And babies aren't the only ones responsible for the wakings. When McKenna observes mother-baby pairs sleeping in his lab, he finds that mothers wake babies about 40% of the time, and babies wake mothers about 60% of the time. The nighttime cameras show that mothers are often simply reassuring the babies emotionally: They "touch, hug, inspect, whisper"--loving gestures that also in turn raise baby's heart rate and oxygen levels. 

"Remarkable to observe," McKenna says. And, not surprisingly, his cameras show that babies spend almost 100% of their sleep facing their mother.

Staying close to the adult's body helps the baby remain at a more stable body temperature. Physical contact, in close cosleeping, helps babies to "breathe more regularly, use energy more efficiently, grow faster, and experience less stress," says McKenna. Babies, too, who are not necessarily breastfed, as in the case of adoption, will also naturally reap the many other benefits of such close contact.

When babies are artificially put into deeper sleep through formula-feeding and the sensory isolation of a separate room, McKenna says, they not only are deprived of this close interaction and its attendant physical and emotional benefits, but the risk of SIDS rises. By contrast, in cultures where co-sleeping is the norm, incidents of SIDS are far lower or even unheard of. 

Not all cosleeping arrangements are safe, though. Parental smoking, drinking, and drug use make parents insensitive to their babies and can be dangerous. The presence of other children and/or heavy duvets that can smother, are also are dangerous. So are places where a baby can get trapped, like gaps between beds or in couches or recliners. (A list of recommended guidelines can be found here.)

Despite the benefits of cosleeping, pediatricians still frequently recommend sleep training to exhausted parents of infants. This is unfortunate, especially for young infants under six months old. Rather than working to harmonize the mother and baby's biological systems, sleep training begins an adversarial emotional relationship between parents and their children. As McKenna points out, it sets us early onto the course of trying to make our children who we want them to be rather than respecting who they biologically are. And ironically, parents' sleep efficiency is not related to the number of times they're woken, but to their overall stress; e.g., mothers who exclusively breastfeed wake more often but have better quality and duration of sleep. McKenna recommends that  pediatricians provide information on all sides of the issue so that parents can make informed decisions.

In our case, with a little practice and encouragement, Arjun got used to babies in the bed. And he'll be first to admit how addictive a baby's scent is.

Photo by D. Divecha

Our girls had different timelines for transitioning to separate beds. By the time they were preschoolers, they began the night in their own beds, often ending in ours. But by this time, a family's values and preferences can be safely in play, and closeness happened to be just fine with us.

Time is always on your side, in parenting. Children won't be twenty and still sleeping with you.

Though in the deepest corners of our hearts, we sometimes miss it.

The US Government Should Step Up and Join the Rest of the Modern World in Helping New Families

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photo by D. Divecha

When my first baby was born, I had already studied children's development for seven years. Yet I felt unprepared. When the baby first pooped, my husband and I rang for the hospital nurse; when it came to breastfeeding, I needed to be shown how to position everything. Heading home, part of me was in disbelief that, as two-day-old parents, we could take this little person away unsupervised.

My family was halfway across the country; my husband's was halfway around the world. Both of us worked full-time, and I was on a six-week disability leave from my job. I had no help, and the clock was ticking. In those first few weeks, I couldn't get out of my nightgown. Our bed was an explosion of laundry, food, mail, papers, bills, and diapers. And the shape of the day, once driven by work, flattened to the rapid recycling of a newborn's needs, in addition to a few basic ones of our own.

Three years later I was pregnant with our second child and in a new academic job, in a department of 15 or so men and one other woman. On the advice of a "work-life balance expert," I had requested to teach one fewer course so that I would have some time for parenting--and who better to do this than a developmental psychologist? I felt radical--for a second--until the university countered by prorating both my salary and my progress to tenure. The arrangement was unprecedented there, and my status quickly became labeled The Mommy Track.

Back in 1991, a pregnant academic was rare (unheard of in my department, as far as I knew) and my male colleagues treated me with a curious distance.

"I feel like there's so much estrogen in the room," one commented in a faculty meeting.

"I'm impressed that you can be so pregnant and smart at the same time," another complimented.

It was not uncommon for my lunch to go missing from the refrigerator; most of my colleagues didn't recognize their own lunch bags, since their wives packed them. I not only packed my own but also packed my preschooler's lunch, prepped for dinner, and left the day's instructions for the sitter, all by the time I left home at 6AM.

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photo by D. Divecha

When the second baby was born, I took a three-month leave-without-pay from work, and this time I recruited my mother-in-law from India to help us at home. I wanted time to settle in, and now had an idea of what that would take.  I needed to figure out new care arrangements, get to know my baby's signals, keep up with the physical demands of two little ones, recover physically, get some sleep. I wanted the older child to feel secure, I wanted space to learn about the second one, and I wanted to have enough love left to give to my husband. Most of all, I wanted to protect the inner spaciousness that would allow me into the altered state of consciousness that was my children's world, and that would keep me connected to the exquisite beauty of all that was happening.

I let my department know of the successful delivery of our second daughter. One colleague called to congratulate me. The secretary sent a plant. At the end of three months, I returned to work bearing sweets (determined that my colleagues acknowledge this birth) and my breast pump.

Anyone who is employed and has children knows the seismic pressures involved in the transformation to becoming a family. I took a hit financially and professionally, and I absorbed the micro-aggressions, but I returned to work. Many people, however, are forced into the Solomonesque choice between caring for their children and making a living. Unfortunately, American workplaces lag behind--way behind--the rest of the world in acknowledging and supporting this transition. This month, the 22nd anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act, I wrote an op-ed piece with my colleague Robin Stern, about why it is so important to children's development that the government protect and support families with adequate paid parental leave.

The thread that begins to be spun between baby and caregiver--that will grow and anchor and support the child throughout life--needs time, space, and attention. The quality of that thread determines the all-important "startup" process, and it also echoes throughout the lifespan in mental and physical health, relationship choices, and more.

Supporting families is an efficient investment in the nation's future.

Family Stress: It's Not All in Your Head

For most of my kids' childhoods, I felt that my ability to guide my family faced direct competition from school, and many forces beyond.

In elementary school, heavy backpacks bent my kids' soft little backs. Homework intruded into playtime, even though research has shown that play is important for cognitive and social development. In middle school, more homework and big projects hijacked precious family weekends--just when my kids needed more sleep, more time to adjust to their rapidly changing brains, and more healthy time with friends, and when my husband and I needed some rest. By high school, the downward pressure from looming college applications threatened to torque my kids' developmental arc.

"Don't do anything for a college resume," I warned. "Make choices because they make sense to you."

As the tsunami of outside competition flooded toward us, I felt like a little mushroom field trying to filter toxins out of a roaring river. The competition over messaging added even more pressure: media was saturated with hypersexualized images, dysfunctional interactions, unrealistic problem-solving, violence, and more. It was hard to stay on top of it all, to teach my kids the difference between our values inside our family versus values in the outside world. This on top of our own adult pressures to manage childcare, two jobs, meals, paychecks, health care and sick days, quality time, extended family, and maybe a few friends.

Adults are stressed, but our kids are stressed, too. A recent survey found that in the United States, teens' stress has now surpassed that of adults. Many young people say that they are overwhelmed, depressed, and sad because of the stress that they, themselves, gauge to be unhealthy. And the mental health of teenagers in this country is declining over time. Many parents are frantic, reaching for whatever levers they can put their hands on: hiring therapists, looking to medications, and trying ancient practices to calm everyone down. If only we could find the right key, we parents think, we can unlock the stress, and our child will thrive. 

photo by Elvin

But when the number of kids and families struggling is so large, we have to start asking questions about the systems beyond ourselves. We parents love our children wildly, and ultimately, they're our responsibility. But our ability to care for them successfully also depends in large part on how the wider culture, policies, and values support childrearing. And on that score, America is not doing very well, especially compared to other countries. Last week I published an op-ed in The Washington Post exploring that theme. One of the comments was provocative: "America hates children," it read.

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you," goes the saying. And I'm here to affirm: The stress that you and your kids feel is not all manufactured inside your family. Self-help goes only so far, and sometimes it even deludes us into accommodating to a maladaptive situation. A new election cycle will roll around soon, and it's time to start asking when America will put children first.