Time with dad is time well spent

Great to see a story like this, which confirms everything I’ve been saying about dads and kids for years.

December 2008 by Ewen Callaway
New Scientist

When picking out that perfect Father’s Day gift next year, sons and daughters might want to look to their own accomplishments before deciding between a gaudy polyester tie or splurging on a new set of golf clubs.

The more effort a father invests in his children, the smarter they are as kids and more successful as adults, new research shows. And highly educated fathers make even more of a difference than less educated dads, all things being equal.

“It’s not [just] about having dad around, it’s about what kind of dad he is,” says Daniel Nettle, a psychologist at the University of Newcastle, UK, who led the new analysis, based on surveys of more than 10,000 children over half a century.

Nettle used the National Child Development Study, which traces the lives of every Briton born between 3 and 9 March, 1958. Surveys taken in the 1960s and 70s asked mothers to rate the father’s involvement in his child, from “inapplicable” to “equal to the mother”. These and later surveys through 2005 tracked intelligence, income, and education of the participants.

Nettle has previously used the same data set to show that wealthy men father more children than paupers.

With paternal investment, however, time seemed to be the most important currency. At age 11, children of highly involved fathers boasted markedly higher IQs than children with less present dads. “This is not half a point, this is a few points of IQ, on average,” he says.
Sons over daughters

Nettle also found that highly educated and successful fathers get more bang for their buck, compared with uneducated and working class men. All things being equal, fathers of high socioeconomic status gave children a small extra boost with their attention than less affluent fathers.

However, this effect did not last through middle age. At 42, the children of super-dads were no more socially mobile than other children - regardless of the father’s education level or profession.

Sons enjoyed more of a boost than daughters, possibly because men face more hurdles in climbing the social ladder than women, Nettle speculates. This could be one reason why fathers tended to invest more time in sons, than daughters.

Robert Quinlan, a biocultural anthropologist at Washington State University in Pullman, says the study breaks new ground in showing the benefits of having a father around - especially an affluent one.

Quinlan wonders, though, whether discrepancies in a father’s socioeconomic status make a real-world difference, rather than a statistical one, detectable only in large-scale surveys. “How much would you pay to get a half a point of IQ,” he asks.

Journal reference: Evolution and Human Behavior(DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2008.06.002)

Mr. Dad Seal of Approval: Holiday 2008 recipients

With the winter holidays just around the corner, we’re announcing the latest recipients of the Mr. Dad Seal of Approval, which recognize products and services that promote father-child relationships. We evaluated dozens of entries and selected the very best. And because economic times are tough, we also tried to select products that are affordable. Here are a few highlights. The complete list is available at our website, www.mrdad.com/seal.

• “How’d They Build That?” DVD series, from MarvelousMedia. www.marvelousmedia.net
• I Spy matching game, from Briarpatch. www.briarpatch.com
• Star Pilot, from Young Scientists Club, LLC. www.kidsciencekits.com
• Readeez Volume One, from the Readeez Company. www.readeez.com

Dads: This applies to you too. Parent Smoking During Pregnancy Raises Kids’ Heart Risks

Heard about some studies in England that found that pregnant teens were deliberately taking up smoking. Why? Because they’d heard smoking leads to smaller birthweight babies and they wanted to have a less painful delivery. Can’t argue with the less-painful delivery part, but smoking is clearly not the way to achieve it. While having mom smoke during pregnancy is awful, it’s coming out that dad-to-be’s smoking around the pregnant mom is dangerous as well.

By Ed Edelson
healthday Reporter – Thu Nov 20, 5:02 pm ET
Nov. 20 (HealthDay News) — Damage to the arteries of children of smokers can be detected in the early decades of their lives, a new Dutch study finds.

“Smoking in families is harmful for children, including their cardiovascular system, as was found in many other studies,” said research leader Dr. Cuno S.P.M. Uiterwaal, an associate professor of clinical epidemiology at the University Medical Center in Utrecht. “This study adds that tobacco smoke exposure may have such effects already in very early life.”

Uiterwaal and his colleagues reported the finding in the December issue of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology that they used ultrasound to measure the thickness of the walls of carotid arteries, the major blood vessels to the brain, in 732 young adults, average age 28. Records showed that 29 percent of the mothers and more than 60 percent of the fathers smoked during the pregnancies.

The inner lining of the carotid arteries was thicker for the young adults who had both parents smoking during pregnancy, a sign of potential danger in the years ahead. The thickening was strongest for maternal smoking.

“We believe that our findings with regard to fetal exposure may serve as a first signal which will have to be confirmed by other research in this area,” Uiterwaal said.

It has long been known that “exposure to tobacco smoke of pregnant women is bad for many reasons, such as low birth weight and increased risk for childhood respiratory disease,” he said. “Our study now adds that it may also already harm the cardiovascular system of the unborn child.”

The study does need confirmation, Uiterwaal said. “We are indeed trying to do a similar study in healthy young children, 5-year-olds, as that would eliminate many of the possibly confounding influences in later childhood,” he said. “We are currently measuring arterial wall linings of these children of whom we know the gestational history.”

A weakness of the current study is that it relied on the memories of participants about smoking histories, said Dr. Michael Katz, senior vice president for research and global programs at the March of Dimes Foundation.

And yet, Katz said, “the claim they make is probably valid, because it jibes with many previous studies showing the harmful effects of smoking during pregnancy, by anyone in the household.”

“Any smoke in the environment is bad,” Katz said. He cited a previous study that showed an increased risk of cleft palate among children of smokers, even if the mothers themselves did not smoke. “It’s not by any mysterious way, just by inhaling,” Katz said. “That is why smoke-free environments are desirable.”

There was one pleasant surprise in doing a study of smoking during pregnancy in the Netherlands, Uiterwaal said. “The smoking rate of mothers in pregnancy of 29 percent in the early 1970s that we found in the present study has dropped to some 4 to 5 percent to date in the Netherlands,” he said. “A very fortunate drop from a public health perspective, but it will make this issue more difficult to study at present.”

Current estimates are that about 10 percent of American women smoke during pregnancy.

Facts about the incidence and damage due to smoking during pregnancy are available from the March of Dimes Foundation.

Save the last dance for dad

What a wonderful story. Such a pleasure to see (a) some positive articles about dads and (b) so many delighted girls and their fathers. No question that girls whose dads take an interest in them grow up healthier, more confident, happier, and do better in school and their careers.

By BOB VOSSELLER • MANAHAWKIN BUREAU • November 18, 2008

LACEY — Many happy, young ladies were present during Friday’s third annual Parent Teacher Student Association Daddy-Daughter Dance held at Lacey Township High School.

The school gymnasium was transformed into a giant dance floor. Other activities included a craft area and a table where each young lady could pick up her own tiara.

“It was really hopping Friday night with more than 650 people attending the dance,” said Laura Caroccia, president of the PTSA.

Read more

Study First to Link TV Sex To Real Teen Pregnancies

I’m definitely not advocating censorship, but I hope this new study from the American Academy of Pediatrics will get Hollywood to stop promoting the idea that the only way to be happy is to have sex with as many people as possible.

Study First to Link TV Sex To Real Teen Pregnancies

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 3, 2008; A01

Teenagers who watch a lot of television featuring flirting, necking, discussion of sex and sex scenes are much more likely than their peers to get pregnant or get a partner pregnant, according to the first study to directly link steamy programming to teen pregnancy.

Read more

Stress during pregnancy hurts kids

Yet another reason to keep your pregnant partner happy…

JERUSALEM, Oct. 28 (UPI) — Stress during pregnancy results in slower development, learning and attention difficulties, anxiety and depressive symptoms, Israeli researchers said.

Marta Weinstock-Rosin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem School of Pharmacy said that stress during a mother’s pregnancy can cause developmental and emotional problems for offspring has long been observed by behavioral and biological researchers.

However, in her experimental work with rats, Weinstock-Rosin said she was able to demonstrate the stress/developmental relationship in a conclusive, laboratory-tested manner.

In her laboratory experiments, Weinstock-Rosin found rat mothers were subjected to stressful situations — irritating sounds at alternating times — and their offspring were later shown to have impaired learning and memory abilities, less capacity to cope with adverse situations such as food deprivation and symptoms of anxiety and depressive-like behavior, as compared to those rats in control groups that were born to unstressed mothers.

All of these symptoms parallel the impairments that have been observed in children born to mothers who were stressed in pregnancy, Weinstock-Rosin said.

Under conditions of excessive stress, the large amount of the stress hormone cortisol reaching the fetal brain can cause structural and functional changes, Weinstock-Rosin said.

The findings are scheduled to be presented at an international conference in Jerusalem Wednesday and Thursday.

© 2008 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Overcoming Bedwetting

Dear Mr. Dad: My seven-year-old is a happy, well-adjusted, intelligent boy, but he still wets the bed almost every night. How unusual is this? Should we have him tested to see if there’s a medical problem, or is there something we can do to help him overcome this on his own?

A: Sporadic or continuous bedwetting is far more common than most parents realize, even long after daytime toilet training is completed. A quarter of five-year-olds still wet the bed. By age seven, it’s down to 20 percent, and by age ten it’s about five percent. That number keeps dropping into the early teens, and fewer than one percent of middle schoolers are still wetting the bed.

Bedwetting (also known as “nocturnal enuresis”) can result from any number of causes—medical, behavioral, environmental—and most are nothing to worry about, and it almost always goes away on its own.

Let’s start with some of the basics: Did you or your wife have the same problem when you were young? Recent research has found that the tendency to urinate at night often has a genetic component. You’ve developed the ability to wake up when you feel bladder pressure, while a child still sleeps through the sensation. Letting your child know that bedwetting often runs in families—especially if you had the problem yourself—can help your son to feel less ashamed of something that really isn’t his fault.

Testing is rarely necessary unless your child was dry for six months or more and then began wetting the bed again. This is called secondary nocturnal enuresis and may (or may not) indicate a medical condition.

Before even considering medical intervention, make sure you’ve tried the obvious. Limit your child’s liquid intake after dinner and require a trip to the bathroom immediately before going to bed. Avoid anything with caffeine in it, which acts as a diuretic. Sometimes these simple solutions do the trick.

If not, there are several treatments available. Your child can sometimes develop greater bladder control by waiting a little longer to urinate during the day. Knowing he really can hold it in if he has to can be a big confidence booster. There are also a variety of alarms that vibrate when they sense moisture, waking the child and building a conditioned response to the full bladder. Talk to your pediatrician to see if one or more of these approaches is appropriate to your child’s situation and age. Again, remember that even without any interventions, your child is almost certain to grow out of it before long.

In the meantime, it’s important to help your child deal with the embarrassment he surely feels. Bedwetting can take a toll on a child’s self-esteem, hurt his performance at school, and can make it hard to develop and maintain friendships (sleepovers, camping trips, and other overnight activities are out).

It’s never appropriate or helpful to punish your child for wetting the bed. Younger kids can wear pull-ups at night, but for older bedwetters this can be a source of shame, so it’s better to use a waterproof mattress pad and cover. Some experts suggest having the child help change the sheets each time, but only as a normal part of his or her responsibilities. It should never be viewed or presented as a “you made this mess, now you clean it up” kind of punishment.

Finally, if you’re still concerned, you might want to pick up a copy of “The Potty Trainer,” by Dr. Preston Smith. You can also listen to a podcast of an interview I did with Dr. Smith at my website, www.mrdad.com/radio.

The New Father: A Dad’s Guide to the First Year Second Edition