[Please send your own letters as well.]

October 29, 1998

Toronto Globe and Mail

Dear Editor:

     No one who has ever taken an introductory child development course
would be surprised by findings that parental behaviours are a better
statistical predictor of children's problems than family income.  It is
methodological axiom that measures closer (parental behaviours) to the area
of interest (children's problems) than more distant ones (family income)
show stronger levels of association. What should be surprising is the
uncritical analyses of these findings by the authorities quoted in your
story.  First, it is a remarkable leap to suggest that money geared to
income supplementation should be transferred to parenting programs.  Did
the authors examine other
childhood issues that have been shown to be related to income rather than
parental upbringing, such as chronic illness, accidents, and cultural
impoverishment?  Did the authors consider the effects of low income on
parents as well as children?  It is astounding that authors of a study on
children and families would suggest policies that diminish the importance
of low income and
family poverty on family functioning and child well-being. Second, the
authorities quoted show little appreciation of the social implications of
identifying parents as the problem rather than the conditions that support
parents.  Why did the authors not go closer to the source and examine
children's coping mechanisms?  Clearly, measures of children's coping would
have high greater relationship to their problems than parental behaviours.
With such findings the researchers could have recommended shifting money
from income supplements AND parental training programs towards  mounting
large-scale counseling initiatives for children. Poor parental behaviours
represent a range of factors, most of which are related to family income
and few of which were probably included in this study (e.g. poor housing,
poor schools, deteriorated neighbourhoods). Third, the authors take no
notice of findings that indicate that increasing economic inequality within
a society has adverse effects on all families within a society.  As
inequality increases a society begins to show a range of effects that
epidemiologists have described as involving general greater malaise,
increasing alienation, and decay of civil institutions. Is it not puzzling
that societies with greater equality of resources seem to have families
with fewer problems? Are all adults in Scandinavia such wonderful parents
or is it that they live in societies that prefer to tackle problems at
their source, that is the basic organization and allocation of resources
within a society, rather than looking for convenient scapegoats on which to
allocate blame. The problems families in Canada are experiencing involve
much more than poor parenting!

Dennis Raphael
Associate Professor Public Health Sciences
University of Toronto

978-7567
Visit our Web Site for Free Copies of Our Community Quality of Life Reports!

http://www.utoronto.ca/qol

  ****************************************************
   Canalising a river
   Grafting a fruit tree
   Educating a person
   Transforming a state
   These are instances of fruitful criticism
   And at the same time instances of art.
       -Bertolt Brecht
  ****************************************************

Dennis Raphael, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Associate Director,
Masters of Health Science Program in Health Promotion
Department of Public Health Sciences
Graduate Department of Community Health
University of Toronto
McMurrich Building, Room 101
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5S 1A8
voice:    (416) 978-7567
fax: (416) 978-2087
e-mail:   [log in to unmask]