Sandra Scarr Quotes

#1. All we know is that the school achievement, IQ test score, and emotional and social development of working mothers' children are every bit as good as that of children whose mothers do not work.

Sandra Scarr

#2. Not until Freud's writings became popular did descriptions of infants center on relationships with their mothers. The idea that children have feelings of any lasting importance for their development is a very recent invention (or insight if you wish).

Sandra Scarr

#3. Children thrive in a variety of family forms; they develop normally with single parents, with unmarried parents, with multiple caretakers in a communal setting, and with traditional two-parent families. What children require is loving and attentive adults, not a particular family type.

Sandra Scarr

#4. A healthy newborn has been delivered in a more or less satisfying fashion. The baby is feeding well, has short nails and a clean bottom, and has not drowned. What now?

Sandra Scarr

#5. Fortunately for common sense, psychological research has shown that babies with more than one attachment are less distressed whenmother leaves to go to work. They are more content and playful in the presence of other adults, meaning that they feel secure with people other than Mother.

Sandra Scarr

#6. Children are just different from one another, especially in temperament. Some are shy, others bold; some active, others quiet; some confident, others less so. Respect for individual differences is in my view the cornerstone of good parent-child relationships.

Sandra Scarr

#7. Parents ought to feel more comfortable about the care of their children than some experts would seem to permit. If children were so fragile and parenting so difficult to learn, where would we all be as adults?

Sandra Scarr

#8. Babies need social interactions with loving adults who talk with them, listen to their babblings, name objects for them, and give them opportunities to explore their worlds.

Sandra Scarr

#9. Day care poses no risk for children, provided that it is high quality ... Poor quality day care is risky for children everywhere ... The cost of poor quality day care is measured in children's lives. High quality day care costs only money.

Sandra Scarr

#10. Until the Second World War, it was unthinkable for a married woman of the working or middle class to disgrace her husband by working after marriage, because her employment indicated that he was a poor provider

Sandra Scarr

#11. Parents sometimes think of newborns as helpless creatures, but in fact parents' behavior is much more under the infant's control than the reverse. Does he come running when you cry?

Sandra Scarr