Science Isn’t Here for Your Mommy Shaming
A few years ago, Time magazine published an article titled, “Cell-Phone Distracted Parenting Can Have Long Term Consequences.”1 It reported research supposedly showing that “distracted parental attention” could hurt infant development, and especially a baby’s ability to feel pleasure later on. What exactly did this research study? Did it directly measure parental cell phone usage and test infant cognition? Did it carefully document day-to-day distractions in the lives of caregivers?
Not exactly. The article was based on the results of a single study where researchers deprived rats of nesting material.2 These stressed rat mothers provided fragmented care to their pups, who, researchers later found, went on to develop emotional problems—as measured by their likelihood to consume sugar solution (low) and play with peers (low). Using animal models to tell us something about humans is entirely routine, and this scientific technique is an important one when it is costly, difficult, or unethical to experiment on humans directly. But it raises methodological problems. Rats aren’t humans, and insufficient bedding is not cell phone use.
Articles that make confident claims about parenting on the basis of shoddy evidence can fuel the fire—giving mommy-shamers unwarranted confidence to scold parents.
Can we really draw conclusions about people using rat models? The answer is “yes,” but we have to be careful in doing so. We need critical thinking
