Molding a Good Personality through Better Parenting - Essay Example

The idea of whether to provide more time for work and entrust child care with private daycare institutions against the concept of parents having to focus more time on child care themselves is a common point of arguments and discussions among parents and even caught the attention of a lot of social research nowadays. The Wall Street Journal published several articles which focus on the issue, two of which written by Sue Shellenbarger serve as the focus of this essay. 

               The first article “The Juggling Act Revisited” published on June 3, 2004, presented how five families cope with the changing times and priorities of the family in terms of income generation and child care. Four out of five ended up with either of the spouse devoting more time to child care and opted to go part-time work at home. These progressed as the couples realized the need for more quality time for the sake of the growing children. They are convinced direct parental attention could be more beneficial not only for the physical but for the social and moral development of their children. The other article published earlier on June 12, 2003, entitled “More Over, Mom: Research Suggests Dad's Role Sometimes Matters More," discussed the result of some research that showed fathers have a more direct influence on the child’s personality development when they cared for them on their early years. Of course, this doesn’t mean fathers provide great child care than mothers do, but most fathers focus their attention on the children when left at home compared to the fact that stay home mothers' attention is divided with other house chores other than tending to the child.

While the demand for parents to earn to provide for the family’s needs is a basic responsibility, the need for parents to provide better care for their children cannot be underemphasized. It is an accepted fact that parents give better quality child care, in normal cases, since the love and affection as parents are there compared to private daycare institutions which focus more on the child’s biological needs. Therefore, earning for the family and caring for the children are both priorities of the parents. It is therefore easy to cope with both needs when families understand these priorities and work for a better approach to balancing their time.

For couples who are yet to have children better planning and resource management is a key. At the early stage of the marriage, both spouses can earn full-time and with a good savings plan could decide later if either spouse or both would stay home full-time or part-time for child care when the need comes. For couples presently having a growing child that requires parental attention, it is always wise to provide or set aside some quality time for the baby when working to earn could not be helped.

Parents who are facing the dilemma of having to balance work and family should always put in mind that the quality of life and the personality of their children is also a measure of their success as individuals. Because of this investment in quality time for child care is as good as a better paying full-time job.