"The Culture of Intensive Mothering"

The Washington Post ran a fascinating couple of stories yesterday about motherhood, fatherhood, and parenting in general. The main conclusion of the stories, which report on the conclusion of a 40+-year study by the University of Maryland, is that parents, and mothers in general, face "Mommy Guilt" about spending time with their children, despite the fact that today's mothers/parents spend more time devoted to primary child care than in 1965.

Other interesting conclusions of the study:

• Fathers spend almost three times the amount of time on primary child care than they did a few decades ago (but still not as much as women do)
• Time spent "Working + Parenting" is nearly equal for men and women
• Modern children participate in A LOT of extra curricular activities
• "Mommy Guilt" has come about because, while mothers (working or otherwise) are spending more time on average with their children, they do not feel as if the time is well-spent (see shuttling to/fro the bullet point above)

The articles are quite interesting, and not being a parent or a sociologist, I don't have much to add or opine. But something did catch my eye in the middle of the article.

[W]omen -- especially those in the middle and upper-middle class --
feel that to be good mothers they need to be experts on child development and
spend more and more time interacting with their children

Do parents spend too much time worrying about their children, and their children's development, to fully enjoy being a parent? Will I decide that exposing my four-year-old daughter to ballet lessons is imperative to her successful development as a human being? Even if that comes to the detriment of so-called "quality family time."

Typically, I'm full of opinions and judgements - whether they be well-crafted and meticulously researched or off-the-cuff. Thinking about this study, however, I don't really have much of an opinion. I just think the findings are interesting.