Cuddles Now or Hookups Later

A terrific article in Time magazine talks about how we develop the ability to love -- as well as the style in which we love.

Writer Tiffany Sharples mentions unpublished research showing that kids who grow up in cold or hostile families are more likely to engage in sexual behavior at an early age.

Psychologists have long warned that children who grow up in a hostile home or one in which warmth is withheld are likelier to start having sex earlier and engage in it more frequently. In a study that will be published in March, Trish Williams, a neuropsychology fellow at Alberta Children's Hospital, studied a group of 1,959 kids ages 11 to 13 and did find a striking correlation between a volatile home and earlier sexual behavior. A few of the children had had intercourse at as young an age as 12, and while the number of sexually active kids wasn't high--just 2% of the total--the cause was clear. "Hostile parenting is highly associated with problem behavior," says Williams.

This is another thing that can seem like a big duh. When you don't get enough love at home, you'll try to get it wherever you can -- and for preteens and teens, love is pretty hard to separate from sex. (And that craving for love can be seen as a need for more oxytocin release to counteract the stress of daily life.)

But it's important to have this kind of statistical backing for what some people understand intuitively, because other people don't. Everyone thinks  -- or at least unconsciously feels -- that the way they grew up is normal. If you had cold withdrawn parents, you're very likely to parent your kids the same way, rationalizing it by saying, "They need to be independent and able to stand up to the hardships of life." Or something.

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Comments

[Anjuan]

As a parent of two boys (ages 2 and 1), and a one month old baby girl, I am keenly aware of the need to balance closeness and distance. I love hugging my kids and just sitting on the couch watching TV with them on my lap, but I don't want them to become "soft" and unable to deal with a cold unforgiving world. I think I will err on being "too loving" in order to give them to emotional foundation to operate in the real world and not look for affirmation and affection somewhere (or from someone) else.

[Adam Khan]

The very first sentence seems incomplete.

...how we develop...WHAT?

[Susan Kuchinskas]

Oh, Anjuan, that's a lovely sentiment. And I totally agree with you.

I thought of a good metaphor for this: You could think of a parent's love as analogous to calcium. If a kid gets plenty of calcium when she's little, she'll grow up with strong bones that can take the strain of hard work and don't break so easily. No one would say, "When my child grows up, there may be times when she doesn't get enough to eat. I'll starve her now to prepare her."

It's just the same with a parent's love: As you say, fill them up with it when they're young and they'll have a strong foundation from which to operate when they grow up.

[Susan Kuchinskas]

ah, and thanks, Adam, I'll fix that incomplete sentence pronto.

[Seth]

Anjuan-

Congratulations on your kids! You've got a long road ahead: best of luck the whole time.

It's essential to give children strength of character so that they grow up to be stable, strong individuals. I'm not sure that being too worried about affection is the best way to do that.

I think you might be trying to equip them in two senses, if I understand you right:
-To be able to cope with being starved for affection one day when you are not there for them, and
-To be able to cope with people treating them harshly or even cruelly.

In the first case, I want to offer some thoughts. If you refer to the day that they are almost grown up and grown up and don't have anyone for a time, you are doing them no disservice by raising them to know something's missing; that's supposed to be hard. If you refer to sooner, when they face school, this does suggest they need to grow to your not being there and affectionate all the time, but I think that's a challenge best addressed other ways (read on).

In the second case, I would think children are best served not by learning from you that the world can be cold and unforgiving, but to learn that people can be warm and loving. There will be no shortage of places to learn that lesson. A big part of equipping them for this should be providing a structure of love at home, so they know that people love and support each other.

To provide the strength of character to live without getting constant affection, I would think the move would be not about being careful with the amount of sweetness, but in general raising them to be strong individuals. When they get old enough, separate out time that you know you will spend apart and let them figure out how to solve a problem. (Problems are as simple as `What will I do for fun?'. Some adults are incapable of figuring out how to spend their time.) As soon as they have the motor skills and mental capacity for a task (or a bit sooner!), have them perform it, even if they do so badly and slowly.

That is the sort of independence they need – an ability to solve problems by themselves. They need to learn not to panic when things are not going their way and that sometimes things don't work like they want. This isn't given from not snuggling them, it's given by letting them have their own goals that they must pursue at, both to success and failure.

That's my two cents. Hopefully there's something worth reading.

[Victoria Calotychos]

Thank you Seth for your last comments, it is really helpful. I personally struggle with the two extremes of closeness and detachment because i don't know how to deal with the idea of my kids having to cope someday without me and that the world can be a cruel and lonely place. I suppose it is every parent's anxiety.
I absolutely agree with you that giving the child the skills to problem solve, tackling things one thing at a time and to allow them to do things themselves so that they learn and gain the belief and trust in themselves insulates them from feeling helpless in a large unpredictable world. Where I find it difficult is to what extent do you teach children to trust people - but then as you say if teach a child to love and trust, positive socialization, they learn to discern the difference.

[Susan Kuchinskas]

Victoria, I think you're right that it's the experience of having trusting, positive relationships that helps us later get a gut feeling about whether to trust someone else.

I just heard on the radio today a talkshow caller wondering if she should marry her boyfriend -- who lies a lot and is narcissistic! Before anyone laughs too loud, I used to have a very hard time, and still have somewhat difficulty, in knowing what's okay and what's not in a love relationship. I think if you have really solid, trusting loving relationships with your parents, you would be more likely to have the immediate reaction of, "You lied to me? That is so not okay."