Before I became a coach and an author, I was an academic, doing my PhD in a field which used quantitative data and my Post-doctoral fellowship in a field which used qualitative data.
I am comfortable and literate with data. Data have always held a strong place in my heart.
I, like many parents have been SHOCKED by the amount of misinformation out there about vaccinations and how many people have made uninformed decisions about vaccinations, based on ONE incorrect study about MMR and autism, which has lead to massive outbreaks in measles.
Recently, I came across a similar piece of misinformation, that, like the incorrect vaccination report, created massive ripples that are still in play today.
In the 1990s a University of Maryland time-use researcher, John Robinson INCORRECTLY produced statistics that stated that between 1965-1985 the amount of time mothers’ spent with their kids dropped by 40%. He realized his mistake, and issued a correction.
However, over 50 articles, and books and essays reproduced the error, which continues to be spread to this day (particularly by conservative, right wing media outlets).
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This stuff makes me SO mad. How about you?
In my 15 ½ years of being a mother, I have worked outside the home for over 13 of those years and have struggled with my feelings of guilt regarding how much time I am spending with my kids and whether I was doing the right kinds of activities with them. AND like the research says, until I started to fall apart in the late noughties, and went down the path of self-healing, training & helping others, I was doing all that at the behest of my own self-care.
So – I want to give you the gift of this knowledge –
YOU ARE DOING better than your parents generation and, your kids are doing better in a number of different spheres (e.g. school, taking less drugs, having less unprotected sex, more going to college etc) and life is good, you know?
Don’t let that ONE wrong piece of information push you off track. You deserve time for you AND some guilt-free time off!