Kay Steiger

Over at Democracy, Richard V. Reeves, Isabel Sawhill, and Kimberly Howard have a fascinating new piece on the inequality of parenting in the latest issue. What they found is that parenting, much like almost every other aspect of American life, is facing income gaps. The problem isn’t just as simple as rich parents doing a better job as poor parents. As the authors put it:

Less-advantaged parents are struggling to make a living and often lack a partner to help them build better lives. Less money typically means more stress, tougher neighborhoods, and fewer choices. This is not to say that there has been a deterioration in parental investment in poorer families. In fact, parents without a high-school diploma spent more than twice as much time each day with their children in the 2000s than they did in the mid-1970s, according to data from the American Heritage Time Use Study, marshaled by Harvard’s Robert Putnam. But parents with at least a bachelor’s degree increased their investment of time more than fourfold over the same period, opening up a gap in time spent with kids, especially in the preschool years.

In other words, rich people’s parenting has improved much faster than poor people’s parenting. For these upper class parents, the authors argue, they approach parenting like a foodie might approach a dinner party: Putting in a lot of time and research, talking to others about what works and what doesn’t, and reading the latest research on techniques that prove to work well. Poorer parents, on the other hand, just don’t have the time or resources to invest in parenting in the same way.

On this point, the authors point to some of their own research. They found:

Our analysis suggests that the biggest gaps are not between the helicopter parents at the top and ordinary families in the middle, but between the middle and the bottom. Forty-eight percent of parents in the bottom income quintile rank among the weakest, compared to 16 percent of those in the middle, and 5 percent of the most affluent. Similarly, a high-school diploma has a stronger association with parenting quality than a bachelor’s degree. These findings illustrate the significance that parenting holds for eventual equality of opportunity. Children who already face higher hurdles to personal advancement are further disadvantaged by the weaker performance of their parents in preparing them for the world.

In other words, the gap the media spends the most attention on — those pesky high-income helicopter parents with their attachment parenting styles and how they compare to the “rest of us” who read newsweekly magazines — isn’t really where the focus should be. (Surprise.) Rather, it’s those at the bottom of the income ladder who have the the most to gain from small gains in parenting skills.

The authors lay out some really great solutions — universal pre-K, nursing visits — and miss a pretty major one: Paid family leave. But the idea that parenting is a gap  to which attention needs to be paid is worth considering.