Monday 15 March 2010

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Health Report 29 min 2 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 3 days ago

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the focus of today’s health report and who is the host?

Norman Swann 0:00

Hello, it's Norman Swan here. Welcome to this week's health report. Today, the power of power napping to help creative thinking. But I'll warn you, it's more than 10 minutes shut-eye. Are mixed-handed children, ones who use their right hand for some tasks and their left for others, more at risk of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? Interesting research from Scandinavia later. and the power of positive parenting on positive psychology and indeed positive fathering. Felicia Hubbard is Director of the Wellbeing Institute and Professor of Psychology at the University of Cambridge in the UK.

Felicia Huppert 0:31

Positive psychology aims to try to understand what makes lives go well, rather than constantly focusing on what goes wrong. Because positive mental health, or what we can call it flourishing, is more than just the absence of disorder. And one of the key components of what makes lives go right is parenting. Now, there's an enormous literature on the way in which parental attitudes, parental behaviours influence the risk of mental health problems. But there have been very, very few studies looking at the way in which these parental behaviours, values, practices influence flourishing later in life.

Norman Swann 1:11

Most of the studies have been in children and not followed people through to late adulthood.

Felicia Huppert 1:14

Well, exactly right, yes. What's unusual about this study, as you say, is it's about long-range forecasting. It's actually looking at what happened in the early part of their lives and following them through later.

Norman Swann 1:25

Felicia Hubbard and her colleagues studied British women who've been followed since their birth in 1946. All sorts of information has been gathered on these women since infancy, including their memories of how their parents behaved towards them up to the age of 16.

Felicia Huppert 1:40

Yes, it is the way the offspring perceived their parents. It's a very well-validated measure. It was developed by Gordon Parker, who's the director of Sydney's Black Dog Institute, back in the late 70s. And there have been wonderful studies showing how reliable it is over very long periods of time and even when people are in different mood states and siblings seem to agree and so on. So it's a very good measure, even though it's about the child's perceptions of their parenting rather than any objective measure of the parents themselves.

Norman Swann 2:09

What were the things that you were looking for in the parenting styles and what were the things you were looking for in the children who were now, what, in their 50s or 60s?

Felicia Huppert 2:17

Yes. The sample we were looking at was sort of in the mid-50s. And in terms of parenting style, it turns out that there are three dimensions of parenting that come out of this. One dimension is warmth or care. Another one is the extent to which the parent is engaged in what the child is doing or kind of just laissez-faire and doesn't seem to care very much. And the third dimension is control, so the extent to which a parent is very controlling or overprotective or intrusive. And what does engagement look like? Engagement is when they take a real interest in what their child is doing and provide guidance, but not in an authoritarian or controlling way.

Norman Swann 2:58

So this is what in modern parlance they start to call the firm but loving parenting.

Felicia Huppert 3:02

Exactly that. It's not permissiveness. But it's not telling

Norman Swann 3:06

you what to do all the time.

Felicia Huppert 3:07

Exactly right.

Norman Swann 3:09

And what were you looking for in the children or the offspring?

Felicia Huppert 3:11

Well, one of the lovely things about this study is we had a very rich measure of their psychological well-being. I mean, there have been a few studies that have looked at things like a single question about, you know, how happy are you or how satisfied are you with your life? But we had 42 questions about psychological well-being, and it covers six dimensions, all of which are very important. There's autonomy and environmental mastery. There's personal growth, purpose in life, positive relations with others, and self-acceptance.