Children and parenting studies

A series of studies highlighted by science daily today focus on parenting and upbringing. First up:
Good Parenting Helps Difficult Infants Perform As Well Or Better In First Grade Than Peers:

"The key to first-grade adjustment for both difficult and easy infants was good parenting," said Anne Dopkins Stright, associate professor of human development at Indiana University"

Then here is a study on how mothering in the first couple of years affects general 'bidability';

The study found that children who had developed a close, positive, reciprocal, and mutually responsive relationship with their mothers in the first two years of their lives did much better in both respects--responding to their mothers' requests not to do something and regulating their own behavior--than children who hadn't developed such ties.

In terms of social policy these might mean that there could be savings in what it costs to deal with crime and disorder if we were to support early years' parenting. I would suggest that supporting families to be able to devote one parent to childcare might be worth considering.
Then there is the wider social environment, via its effect or at least influence on parents,

"This study does not show that poverty leads to bad parenting, which in turn leads to poor outcomes in children," according to Dafna E. Kohen, adjunct professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine at the University of Ottawa, senior research analyst at Statistics Canada, and the study's lead author. "Rather, this study shows that in neighborhoods where there is socioeconomic disadvantage, children's verbal and behavioral outcomes are influenced by poor parental mental health and parenting behaviors."

See more here. In turn then, this suggests that thinking more carefully about neighbourhood renewal might be good. Once we know these things we should recall Jesus' words, "It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble." which seems to me to imply a culpability before God if we make it harder for people to avoid sin...

And while we're considering that, we might want to contemplate the effects of socioeconomic deprivation on sexual activity among teens.

results revealed that school level socio-economic factors remain very influential even after individual pupils' socio-economic status is taken into account. Dr Henderson explained: ''School-level socio-economic factors, such as levels of deprivation, do have a big influence. This suggests that an individual who is deprived but attending a school with an affluent catchment area may be discouraged from sexual activity, whilst an affluent individual attending a school with a deprived catchment area may be encouraged towards earlier sexual intercourse."

So the Christian right's agenda would appear to be better served, in the light of research, by promoting social justice and diminishing socioeconomic differentials. There's a turn up for the books.