Are Schools Pushing Our Children to the Limit and Making them Sick?

Is homework causing your child to get sick? This is a question that might result in some eye rolls, but reliable research and surveys conducted in middle-class areas present a pretty convincing case. 

Pressure for children to succeed in both sports and in the classroom has led to a desire, fueled both by parents and teachers, to not only achieve but overachieve. Of course we want our kids to be the best they can be and succeed in everything they do, and having a slightly competitive spirit is not a terrible thing given society’s competitive nature- but are we pushing our kids too far? 

Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and co-author of a study on Experimental Education, says that these days children are doing an average of three hours of homework per night, some less and some up to five hours. The problem has become so severe that some schools even have to place a limit on the amount of homework teachers are allowed to give. High achieving schools are separating kids at younger and younger ages, placing them in advanced classes and honors courses in grade school! 

Pope’s study focused in on upper-middle-class school districts because it is known that affluent families whose children attend privileged schools often do not question how much homework their child is being given and, as you can imagine, parents paying a lot of money for their child to be a student at a particular school expect results. But how is the pressure

privileged schools put on children affecting their health and happiness? To answer this question, Pope conducted a survey of over 4,300 students from 10 high-performance high schools. The results showed that 56% of students felt homework was the primary cause of stress in their lives. These levels of stress due to excessive homework not only affected the happiness of the students, but also their physical well being. The connection was very clear, high levels of stress were causing all kinds of physical problems, including sleep deprivation, weight loss, migraines, stomach aches, and even ulcers. Not to mention the impacts stress had on their mental health as well, causing depression and high levels of anxiety. Although the study was conducted with high school students, Pope also has data that presents the same conclusions with younger students. 

To stretch even beyond just homework, by having these attitudes drilled into student’s heads  at a  young age we are setting ourselves up to raise a self-centered, overly competitive, and“all work no play, winner-takes-all” generation of people. 

So how can we fix the issue and help our children’s mental and physical health while still raising smart, hard working people? Pope says the level of homework that showed the best results is two hours for high schoolers and a maximum of 90 minutes for middle schoolers, as well as finding a balance between sports and time to just relax. And it is up to parents to monitor their child’s health and find a way to teach them responsibility and being a hard worker without going overboard! 

New Research Raises Questions as to What Truly Makes Parents Happy

In the past, the major focus of parenting has gone to what makes the child happy and what kind of parenting is best for the them. But the last few years have seen a slight shift in this focus, from solely on the happiness of the children to the happiness of the parents as well. This has brought up a lot of curiosity as to what gives adults’ lives true fulfillment and happiness. 

Previously, it has always been thought that having children is what gives people’s lives fulfillment, but recently that has become a topic of debate. The question has become a heavily researched subject, drawing results that conclude there are only small differences between the reported happiness between parents and non parents. These findings raise another question- does true fulfillment derive more from one’s marriage rather than their role as a parent? 

Attempts to answer this question are being made by researchers around the world. A study conducted by Princeton found that 40% of married couples reported being “very happy” while only 23% of unmarried parents reported those same feelings. This could lead us to consider that it is our marital status rather than how many children we have that affects how we feel about our lives. 

Less debated is the observation that the role fathers and mothers play within the household has begun to shift, resulting in a change in the dynamic between spouses as well. In general, today parents spend on average a lot more time with their children then they ever have before. This change is seen especially with fathers, who spend “triple the amount of time with their children than fathers in 1965”. We should also think about how this shift in parenting has affected our satisfaction in our marriage and overall levels of happiness.  

So what does being a parent mean to you? How does it affect the happiness and fulfillment you feel in your life? And how does being a parent play into your happiness as a husband or wife?