Busting the Parenting Myth.

What makes a perfect parent? Rather, who is a perfect parent? Everyday as parents you may have come across n number of articles, research, etc. that will tell you what you should do and what you shouldn't. This column in a way contributes to that as well. And to top it all you may have several friends or relatives or even your own parents who may be telling you all that you are doing wrong with your child and instead how to do it right.

Recently, I read something really interesting about the various myths that we have about parenting and how these myths are propagated by the parenting experts as well. I thought it could be of some interest to all of you to know about these myths and try busting them on your own.

Let's look at some common parenting myths and make an attempt to understand why a conventional piece of wisdom is a myth. Most of the following information has been sourced from the book 'Freaknomics' by Levitt & Dubner. 

Myth 1: A child living in a big joint family is almost always smarter than the one living in a nuclear family. 

Research has shown that children from broken families need not necessarily end up becoming rebellious or develop some form of hyperactivity disorder. Whether a child's family is intact or not doesn't affect his/ her personality or academic abilities either, at least in the early years. This is not to say that joint families are redundant but a joint family does not affect your child's IQ.

What matters is whether the child has highly educated parents or not. A child whose parents are highly educated typically does well in school. A family with a lot of schooling tends to value schooling. In sum, parents with higher IQs tend to get more education and IQ is strongly hereditary. Myth 2: The neighbourhood impacts a child all the time.

How many of us in today's world even know the names of our neighbours, forget being pally with them? Many a times, the neighbourhood that we live in is blamed for our child's misdoings, to the extent that our counsellors or senior relatives may even suggest moving into a better neighbourhood. And who defines which is a better neighbourhood? 

What matters more is not the neighbourhood that we live in but the parents socioeconomic status. A high socioeconomic status is linked to high test scores, which seems sensible. Socioeconomic status is a strong indicator of success in general - it suggests a higher IQ and more education - and successful parents are more likely to have successful children. But moving to a better neighbourhood doesn't improve a child's success in school. This may be because moving itself is a disruptive force; even more likely, it's because a nicer house doesn't improve math or reading scores any more than nicer sneakers make you jump higher. 

Myth 3:  It's always better if the child's mother stays at home between birth and kindergarten  years. 

A mother who stays at home from work until her child goes to kindergarten does not seem to provide any advantage. Obsessive parents might find this lack of correlation bothersome - after all what the point of all those good parenting classes. But that is what the data suggests. 

Myth 4: If a child watches a lot of television, he or she will most definitely fail their exams. 

Now, one issue that most parents often have with their child is that they watch too much television. I 
more often than not tell them to use it as an asset, that is, the TV as an learning aid, which believe me 
is pretty easy to do. So, data suggests that there is not much of a correlation between a child's test scores and television watching. Contrary to popular knowledge, television watching does not turn a person's mind to mess. Neither is there enough evidence that using a computer at home turns a child to Einstein. There is sufficient evidence, however, that a child whose parents are active in the PTA tend do to well in school, probably because these parents value education.

The aim of this article is not to scare you off and make you stop doing conventional things which may be helping you and your child. Neither have I tried to preach what is right or wrong. This article has been written in order to shed some light over how sometimes we overthink and overindulge in conventional wisdom even when they might be futile. So open up and explore all possibilities. Good luck. 

(Article first published in Evescape, August 2014)