Parents Tell of Decisions, Struggles in Child-Rearing

Buffeted by cultural shifts in their most perplexing and delicate job--rearing their children--California parents are caught between the traditional road and the often precarious new path that many have chosen, a new Los Angeles Times poll has found.

Many long for the structured world of Ozzie and Harriet--dad works, mom stays home--but just as strongly feel that they are better at child-rearing than their own parents, who followed that generations-old prescription far more than they do. They believe young children should be with their parents--instead of being in child care--but are also convinced that working mothers can have a heartfelt connection with their children.

Interviews with those who took part in the poll show that three decades after the women’s movement and economics began to upset tradition, people have come to accept that families can tailor widely disparate solutions to the dilemma of how best to parent.

“It’s such a personal decision, and I hate the people on both sides who rant about what’s right,” said Shannon Ikeda, a 31-year-old Monterey Park mother who typified the views of many. “It depends on the person and the family and the coping ability.”

The Times poll, a comprehensive survey on parenting and child care, began days after two Littleton, Colo., high school students armed with rifles and bombs mowed down 12 of their classmates and a popular teacher. The shootings, which were followed by another gun-wielding assault on a Georgia school, ignited a national debate on parenting and the fate of a generation of children poised at the fulcrum of their families’ struggle to balance work and family.

Directed by Susan Pinkus, the Times Poll questioned 2,021 California adults, including 1,601 parents, from April 25 to May 1. The margin of sampling error for both groups is 3 points in either direction. The margin for smaller subgroups is slightly larger.

For all the contradictions unearthed by the poll, California parents seized on simple solutions for rearing well-adjusted kids: More time. More involvement. Listening. Teaching values.

Strikingly, there were few differences of opinion on the major findings of the survey among most demographic groups, including parents and non-parents, blacks, whites and Latinos, men and women, rich and poor. All seemed to recognize the dice-rolling inherent in parenting.

“Parenting is really hard, and you don’t always know what’s best,” said Jennifer Beck, 23, a mother of two sons from Orangevale, near Sacramento. “The majority are really doing the best that they can.”

In a telling indication of ambivalence, however, the gauzy ideal of the 1950s still has an attraction greater than the grittier reality lived by many Californians.

More than two-thirds--68% of fathers and 69% of mothers--agreed that “it is much better for the family” if the father works outside the home and the mother tends to the children. Half of parents said they “strongly” agreed with that statement.

The view was most pronounced among Latino parents, 83% of whom endorsed it, as did 64% of white parents and 63% of black parents. So did those most directly affected--those with children younger than 18. Among that group, 64% of working fathers, 59% of working mothers and 77% of stay-at-home mothers firmly felt that things were best when dads worked and mothers didn’t.

In addition, 50% of all fathers and 81% of the mothers said they would rather stay home with their children than work, if circumstances allowed it. Similar results were found among non-parents.

Parenting experts suggest that the yearning for a simpler and more structured time is understandable, if unrealistic.

“It may be wishful--or wistful--thinking,” said Sandi Schwarm, executive director of the USC child care programs. But, she cautioned, “even Ozzie and Harriet and all the 1960s and 1950s serials--that wasn’t the way families really were. That was the ideal. The house was always clean.”

Given the timing of the survey, in the wake of the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, it was not surprising that Californians held a dim view of child-rearing--at least, everyone’s child-rearing but their own.

Few believed that parents are doing a good job of instilling values in their children. Overall, only 2% said parents are doing an excellent job on the values front, 17% said a good job and 76% characterized parents as doing a fair or poor job--a view shared by parents and non-parents alike.

Women, who the poll showed still bear most of the child-rearing burden, were slightly more optimistic, with 23% giving parents excellent or good marks to 16% for men.

Similarly, there was an overwhelming sense that children receive far too little discipline. Black respondents were somewhat more critical, with 93% of black parents saying that children were given too little discipline, compared with 83% among Latino parents and 86% among white parents.

Perhaps in self-defense, mothers who stay at home were more satisfied with the level of discipline than the others, although a majority of them also felt there was too little. About one in five of them said that children receive the right amount or too much discipline, while 74% said there was too little.

More than nine out of 10 respondents said children today are growing up faster than their parents did. That statement rang true across the board, with 92% of parents and 89% of non-parents agreeing.

“People don’t have any control over their children now,” said Minnie Vaughn, a retired mother of three who lives near Mt. Lassen. “Twelve- or 13-year-olds--the language they use!”

Parents, she added, “just don’t take the time. They are too busy making a living.”

Many of those questioned during the poll agreed. Asked to identify the biggest difficulty facing parents today, the highest percentage--20%--of Californians said it was time with their children, followed closely by their desire for good schools and the more generic subject of discipline, which received 18% and 17% respectively.

“You do so many things in so many different areas that everything is not good,” said Denice Barr, a 34-year-old Alameda mother of three who has juggled children and college for years. “You’re just lacking in all areas.”

Rosy View of Own Skills

If there was a harsh light aimed at other parents, poll respondents cast a rosy glow on themselves. Overall, 42% said they deserve an A for parenting--16% an A-plus--and another 51% gave themselves a B. Women were more self-congratulatory than men, with 48% giving themselves an A compared to 35% of men. Not one parent gave himself or herself a D or a failing grade.

Experts suggest that the results are a predictable extension of all parents’ belief that their children rank supreme.

“It’s very hard to be self-critical,” said Vivian Weinstein, president of the Los Angeles Commission on Children, Youth and Their Families. “We want to think that we’re doing the best.”

Accurate or not, parents also grade themselves high compared to the job their own parents did.

About half said that they do better than their own parents--and nearly three of 10 said they are “much better” than their parents.

Two-thirds of California parents with children younger than 18 said they spend more time with their kids than their parents spent with them.

Some experts said the parents may be reflecting a belief that they focus more sharply on their children when they are there--the thinking behind the much-debated concept of “quality time.” Others suggested that in past generations families had more children and the per capita attention given was actually smaller.

John Chionis, a Vallejo father of a 3-year-old daughter, believes today’s parents are in denial.

“You can’t run around like a chicken with your head off five days a week and then say, ‘OK, now I’m going to pencil you in, Junior, on Saturday morning,’ ” said Chionis, 43, who shares child care duties with his wife. “It’s moving in the right direction, but there’s a lot that needs to be done.”

Jim Irving, a real estate agent from Paso Robles, came to fatherhood in his late 30s, and says he spends more time with his two adolescent children than his rancher father was able to spend with him.

“My dad never played ball with me,” he said. “We probably do more in terms of spending time with our kids because of our age--we’re more aware of the fleeting quality of our lives.”

His communication with his children is also more pronounced, he said.

“We make an effort to do family things, do things together. . . . We have a much more open discussion of family things that I don’t recall having with my parents.”

Most of the parents polled cited specific evidence that they are regularly at their child’s side.

Three in five parents--and 68% of mothers--said they eat dinner with their children every night. The lowest percentage, not surprisingly, came from working men, only 52% of whom said they share nightly meals with their children.

Among Latinos, the commitment is higher, with 71% attesting to having dinner with their children nightly, to 53% each for blacks and whites.

But parental priorities otherwise appear mixed. Thirty-seven percent of parents said they attend all of their children’s activities, such as athletic events, school plays or open houses. About the same percentage, 39%, said they help their children with homework at least five days a week.

But while only 3% of parents said they never attend school activities, 12% said they never help with homework. (In addition to the 12% who said they never help, 5% said their children never have homework, meaning that in one of every six families there is no parent-child interaction over homework.)

Mothers Appear to Bear the Brunt

A generation or two into the women’s movement, the poll made clear, women still bear most of the day-to-day responsibilities for children. They do more homework, they share more meals, they spend a greater percentage of their time with the kids.

Asked whether responsibility for children in their house falls to the mother, the father or both parents equally, 54% said the burden is shared, but 39% said the mothers are in charge. Only 3% said fathers make the decisions.

But it depends on who is talking. Among fathers, 62% said both parents share responsibilities--but only 48% of mothers agreed. Similarly, 29% of men said mothers carry most of the burden, while a far larger 46% of women said they do.

The phenomenon was the same when parents were asked who makes child care decisions. Sixty percent of men said the decisions are made jointly, but only 42% of the mothers believe so.

Single mothers, of course, have the least support, both financially and emotionally. Of single mothers with children under 18, a striking 84% said they get no child support from their children’s fathers. And half of the single working mothers said the fathers are not involved in their children’s lives, with only 13% saying the fathers are fully involved. The remainder, 36%, said the fathers are somewhat involved.

Although the poll illustrates that many families yearn for tradition, strides have been made in the acceptance of different roles for women.

Among all Californians, 39% strongly agreed that mothers who work outside the home can forge as warm a relationship with their children as mothers who do not. Including those who agreed somewhat, respondents favored that optimistic sentiment by almost 2 to 1.

As a stay-at-home mother, Jennifer Beck might be expected to be critical of her working peers, but she is not.

“There are moms who have to work and there are moms who just can’t take it [at home],” she said. “People are getting more understanding that they know their kids and know what’s best for them.”

As Beck indicated, mothers are more emphatic about the choices of their peers--68% said employed mothers can have as warm a relationship with their kids as those who stay home. Twenty-eight percent disagreed. Fathers are more ambivalent, with just over half agreeing and a significant 39% disagreeing.

Some of the poll respondents cautioned that it is dangerous to assume anything based on groups. Some working mothers nurture children better than others, just as some stay-at-home mothers are far more available to their children than others in the same category.

“The ‘stay-at-home mother’--that doesn’t mean she’s staying at home,” said Gloria Brookins, a retired Los Angeles schoolteacher who reared a daughter on her own. “All of that is relative.”

On the other side of the ledger--work--there also is little condemnation of women who combine employment and a family. Three-quarters of respondents said working mothers are just as committed to their jobs as women who do not have children.

(This series of questions was asked only about mothers--not fathers--because women still bear most of the responsibility for children.)

Although many of the views were expressed across the board, there are substantive differences among some women, related to their income.

More affluent women--those with household incomes of more than $60,000 annually--were more prone than their less affluent counterparts to say that children interfere with a career, that working mothers face discrimination and that working mothers are better than stay-at-home moms.

For example, 39% of the more affluent mothers said having children often interferes with a career, compared to 28% of those with household incomes of $20,000 a year or less. Conversely, 31% of the wealthier mothers said children never interfere, while 40% of the less affluent said they never do.

Parenting experts suggest that higher-income jobs likely require more time commitment, and thus create greater tension for women trying to balance that sort of job and children as well.

The poll makes clear that the constant effort to balance work and family can take a toll on men, women and their children. Overall, when asked who suffers most as they juggle responsibilities, 51% said their own personal needs, 25% said the children, 17% said their marriages and 10% said their work.

“The rest of the stuff in our lives is put on hold, but she’s only going to be this age once, and this is the foundation for the rest of her life,” said John Chionis of his 3-year-old, Tatiana. “We’re investing in her.”

Interestingly, there is a substantial difference among the less affluent and the wealthier when it comes to their perceptions of who suffers most in the balancing act.

Among those with household incomes of less than $20,000 annually, 46% said their personal needs suffer, and more than a third--37%--said the children suffer. Among those in households making more than $60,000 annually, a whopping 66% said they personally suffer, and only 11% said their children bear the brunt.

Some poll respondents suggested that working mothers who make more money working longer hours may, out of guilt over the time spent away from their children, run themselves more ragged than others. Other respondents hinted at a vein of selfishness among the better-off. But maybe it is simply a matter of definition.

Shannon Ikeda, the married Monterey Park mother of a 6-year-old, Raiden, doesn’t join either camp particularly. Like many of the women in the poll, she has spent time at home and time at work since her child was born.

Now working after three years at home, she firmly believes she has found the right balance for her family, one that nurtures her need for adult stimulation while offering her son, who has a form of autism, a structured school environment in which to flourish.

Ask her what suffers most in the effort to balance life and work and she blurts out her answer, which concerns a very personal need.

“Sex!” she laughed, though she was definitely not joking. “That’s at the bottom of the barrel for me!”

How the Poll Was Conducted

The Times Poll contacted 2,021 adults statewide, including 1,601 parents, by telephone April 25 through May 1. Telephone numbers were chosen from a list of all exchanges in the state. Random-digit dialing techniques were used so that listed and unlisted numbers could be contacted. The entire sample was weighted slightly to conform with census figures for gender, race, age, education and region. The margin of sampling error for the entire sample and for parents is plus or minus 3 percentage points. For certain subgroups the error margin may be somewhat higher. Poll results can also be affected by other factors such as question wording and the order in which questions are presented. The survey was conducted in English and Spanish.

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Traditional Family

Most California parents, men and women alike, appear to favor a traditional family setup:

* “It is much better for a family if the father works outside the home and the mother takes care of the children.” Agree/disagree?

Agree: 69%

Disagree: 25%

Don’t know 6%

Source: Times Poll

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Work or Watch the Children?

* If you were free to do either, would you prefer to have a job outside the home or to stay home with your children?

* “A working mother can establish as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work outside the home.” Agree or disagree?