Quotessence
Home / Authors / Sandra Scarr Biography
Sandra Scarr

Sandra Scarr Biography

Author

Related Quotes

“The best way of thinking of an attachment in my view, is to see it as the outcome of an interaction between two people, each of whom contributes to the quality of the relationship. Most parents can promote a secure relationship with a calm, pleasant, patient baby. Only particularly sensitive and patient parents can promote a secure attachment to a difficult baby.”

PeopleThinkingWayTwoParentDifficultViewsQualityBabyPatientCalmBest WaySecureSensitiveOutcomesPleasantAttachmentInteractionWay Of ThinkingBonding
Author:Sandra Scarr
Create image

“Current conflicts and guilt about being a woman who is a mother and a person in her own right are a socially defined malaise, notan individual problem.... The conflict is not between being a mother and having a career; it is between nineteenth-century ideas about children and today's ideas about women.”

ChildrenPersonsIdeasProblemTodayMotherIndividualWomenWorkCareersCenturyConflictGuiltCurrentsDefinedMen WomenBeing A WomanNineteenth CenturyBeing A MotherMalaise
Author:Sandra Scarr
Create image

“Ideas about mothers have swung historically with the roles of women. When women were needed to work the fields or shops, experts claimed that children didn't need them much. Mothers, who might be too soft and sentimental, could even be bad for children's character development. But when men left home during the Industrial Revolution to work elsewhere, women were "needed" at home. The cult of domesticity and motherhood became a virtue that kept women in their place.”

MenNeedsChildrenIdeasCharacterHomeMightMotherLeftWorkResponsibilityRolesVirtueFieldsRevolutionDevelopmentNeededMotherhoodExpertsShopsElsewhereSentimentalCultCharacter DevelopmentIndustrial RevolutionDomesticityKept Woman
Author:Sandra Scarr
Create image

“Parents who are cowed by temper tantrums and screaming defiance are only inviting more of the same. Young children become more cooperative with parents who confidently assert the reasons for their demands and enforce reasonable rules. Even if there are a few rough spots, relationships between parents and young children run more smoothly when the parent, rather than the child, is in control.”

IfsChildrenReasonRunningYoungParentDisciplineDemandSpotsReasonableRoughTemperDefianceInvitingYoung ChildrenCooperativesTantrumsTemper Tantrums
Author:Sandra Scarr
Create image

“All in all, the communally reared children of Israel are far from the emotional disasters that psychoanalytic theory predicted. Neither have they been saved from all personality problems, as the founders of the kibbutz movement had hoped when they freed children from their parents. In any reasonable environment, children seem to grow up to be themselves. There is no evidence that communal rearing with stimulating, caring adults is either the ruination or the salvation of children.”

ChildrenProblemSeemsGrowsParentCommunityGrowing UpEnvironmentMovementEmotionalTheoryPersonalityEvidenceAdultsSalvationIsraelCaringSavedDisasterReasonableFoundersPsychoanalytic
Author:Sandra Scarr
Create image

“It is important for practical and psychological reasons to call any reasonably stable group that rears children a family.... The advantage of this view is that traditional and nontraditional families can all be seen to serve the interests of children. Children can also feel comfortable with an approved family form, even if it is not traditional.”

IfsFeelsChildrenImportantReasonFormInterestViewsGroupsComfortableAdvantagePracticalsTraditionalPsychologicalStableApproved
Author:Sandra Scarr
Create image

“Children need both latitude of expression and firmly enforced limits on their behaviors, in a blend that results in calm, patientmanagement. The key to success is to tailor the rearing environment to the developmental level of the child--what she or he can handle--and to individual differences among children.”

NeedsChildrenIndividualDifferencesLevelsResultsEnvironmentExpressionKeysLimitsBehaviorCalmHandleKey To SuccessTailorsLatitudeDevelopmentalIndividual Differences
Author:Sandra Scarr
Create image

“The time-use studies also show that employed women spend as much time as nonworking women in direct interactions with their children. Employed mothers spend as much time as those at home reading to and playing with their young children, although they do not, of course, spend as much time simply in the same room or house with the children.”

ChildrenUseShowsHomeYoungMotherCoursesReadingHouseRoomsStudyDirectInteractionEmployedYoung Children
Author:Sandra Scarr
Create image

“Each era invents its own child. Over the past 500 years, conceptions of the child changed gradually from an ill-formed adult who must be subjugated to society's goals to a precious being who must be protected from unreasonable social demands. Childhood has come to be seen as a special period of life, rather than as a temporary state of no lasting importance for adulthood.”

YearsChildrenStatesPastSocialGoalChangeChildhoodSpecialChangedPeriodsDemandAdultsImportanceIllErasLastingTemporaryConceptionProtectedAdulthoodOver The PastUnreasonable
Author:Sandra Scarr
Create image

“Babies learn most of what they know from interactions with their parents, but not of the formal, instructional variety. Babies learn from spontaneous, everyday events--the mailman at the door with a package to open...all of which need adult interpretation. They are real events of interest and concern to babies and young children....By contrast, infant education is artificial and out of context.”

KnowsNeedsChildrenRealYoungParentInterestEducationDoorsEventsBabyAdultsConcernEverydayVarietyInterpretationContrastArtificialInteractionFormalSpontaneousInfantPackagesYoung ChildrenOf ContextMailman
Author:Sandra Scarr
Create image

“Given Freudian assumptions about the nature of children and the biological predestination of mothers, it is unthinkable for mothers voluntarily to leave their babies in others' care, without guilt about the baby's well-being and a sense of self-deprivation. Mothers need their babies for their own mental health, and babies need their mothers for their mental health--a reciprocal and symbiotic relationship.”

NeedsWellsChildrenSelfCareMotherGivenBabyGuiltMental HealthWell BeingAssumptionSense Of SelfUnthinkableDeprivationReciprocalPredestination
Author:Sandra Scarr
Create image

“Mothers have not always had the most important role in their children's upbringing, when they had other economic roles to play. Inpast centuries, fathers were the key parent in the upbringing of the next generation, because moral training, not emotional sensitivity, was thought to be central to successful child-rearing. Mothers were thought to corrupt their little ones with too much affection and not enough stern training.”

ChildrenLittlesImportantEnoughPlayMotherNextFatherParentMoralRolesSuccessfulToo MuchGenerationsEconomicCenturyEmotionalKeysTrainingAffectionSensitivityNext GenerationUpbringingChild Rearing
Author:Sandra Scarr
Create image

“Mothers and fathers act in mostly similar ways toward their young children. Psychologists are still highlighting small differencesrather than the overwhelming similarities in parents' behaviors. I think this is a hangover from the 1950s re-emergence of father as a parent. He has to be special. The best summary of the evidence on mothers and fathers with their babies is that young children of both sexes, in most circumstances, like both parents equally well. Fathers, like mothers, are good parents first and gender representatives second.”

ThinkingWayFirstsWellsChildrenStillsYoungMotherFatherSexParentSpecialBabyCircumstancesBehaviorEvidenceGenderOverwhelmingRepresentativesPsychologistSimilarityYoung ChildrenEmergenceMother And FatherHangoverSummaryGood ParentLike A MotherHighlighting
Author:Sandra Scarr
Create image

“Some television programs are made very attractive to young children by presenting short, rapidly moving sequences and ever-changing episodes.... Some experts now argue that slower- paced television fare that allows children time to think about the material is more valuable than the faster-paced programs that merely capture their attention.”

ThinkingChildrenMadeMovingYoungAttentionTelevisionMaterialsProgramValuableArguingFasterAttractiveExpertsCaptureEpisodesSequencePresentingYoung ChildrenTime To Think
Author:Sandra Scarr
Create image