Read the Book(Uploaded) and write about the questions(each 1150~200 words)

understand why, recall from Chapter 5 that a dyad (two persons) provides greater in- timacy than a triad (after adding a third person, interaction must be shared). In ad- dition, the birth of a child unbalances the roles that the couple have worked out (Knauth 2000). To move from the abstract to the concrete, think about the implica- tions for marriage of coping with a fragile newborn’s 24-hour-a-day needs of being fed, soothed, and diapered—while having less sleep and greater expenses.

Yet husbands and wives continue to have children, not because they don’t know how to avoid conceiving them, but because having their own child brings them so much sat- isfaction. New parents bubble over with joy, saying things like, “There’s no feeling to compare with holding your own child in your arms. Those little hands, those tiny feet, those big eyes, that little nose, that sweet face . . .” and they gush on and on.

This is why there really is no equivalent to parents. It is their child, and no one else takes such delight in a baby’s first steps, its first word, and so on. Let’s turn, then, to child rearing.

Child Rearing As you saw in Figure 10.2, today’s parents—both mothers and fathers—are spending more time with their children than parents did in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite this trend, with mothers and fathers spending so many hours away from home at work, we must ask: Who’s minding the kids while the parents are at work?

Married Couples and Single Mothers. Figure 10.5 on the next page compares the child care arrangements of married couples and single mothers. As you can see, their overall arrangements are similar. A main difference is the role of the child’s father while the mother is at work. For married couples, about one of five children is cared for by the fa- ther, while for single mothers, care by the father drops in half to one of ten. As you can see, grandparents and other relatives help fill the gap left by the absent father. Single moth- ers also rely more on organized day care.

Day Care. Figure 10.5 also shows that about one of four children is in day care. The broad conclusions of research on day care were reported in Chapter 3 (page 84). Apparently only a minority of U.S. day care centers offer high-quality care as measured by whether they provide safety, stimulating learning activities, and emo- tional warmth (Bergmann 1995; Blau 2000). A primary reason for this dismal situa-

tion is the low salaries paid to day care workers, who average only about $16,000 a year (“Child Day Care Services” 2009).

It is difficult for parents to judge the quality of day care, since they don’t know what takes place when they are not there. If you ever look for day care, two factors best predict that children will receive quality care: staff who have taken courses in early childhood development and a low ratio of children per staff member (Blau 2000; Belsky et al. 2007). If you have nagging fears that your children might be neglected or even abused, choose a center that streams live Web cam images on the Internet. While at work, you can “visit” each room of the day care center via cyberspace and monitor your toddler’s activi- ties and care.

Nannies. For upper-middle-class parents, nannies have become a popular alternative to day care centers. Parents love the one-on-one care. They also like the convenience of in-home care, which eliminates the need to transport the child to an unfamiliar environment, reduces the chances that the child will catch illnesses, and eliminates the hardship of parents having to take time off from work when their child becomes ill. A recurring problem, however,

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One of the most demanding, exasperating—and also fulfilling— roles in life is that of parent. To really appreciate this cartoon, perhaps one has to have experienced this part of the life course.