On this West Virginia Morning, from allergies to introducing solids, the first few years of a child’s life have a surprising number of decisions for parents to make. In our latest entry of “Now What? A Series on Parenting,” Chris Schulz talks with Isabela Negrin, an assistant professor of pediatrics at WVU Medicine, about the ins and outs of early childhood nutrition.
On this West Virginia Morning, from allergies to introducing solids, the first few years of a child’s life have a surprising number of decisions for parents to make. In our latest entry of “Now What? A Series on Parenting,” Chris Schulz talks with Isabela Negrin, an assistant professor of pediatrics at WVU Medicine, about the ins and outs of early childhood nutrition.
Also, in this show, it’s been a year since Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired power plant shut down. Like hundreds of these plants around the country, the Homer City generating station in Indiana County faced stiff competition from natural gas and renewables. The Allegheny Front’s Reid Frazier went to Homer City to find out how the closure is affecting a community that relied on this plant for decades.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Eric Douglas produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
On this West Virginia Morning, the results from Tuesday’s primary election came in mostly as expected. Government Reporter Randy Yohe has covered the intense campaigning leading up to the primary and he joins us live in the studio with results and reactions.
On this West Virginia Morning, the results from Tuesday’s primary election came in mostly as expected. Government Reporter Randy Yohe has covered the intense campaigning leading up to the primary and he joins us live in the studio with results and reactions.
Also, in this show, we have the latest installment of our series “Now What? A Series on Parenting.” Parents are often left with many questions about how to raise a child. Two of the areas that are most concerning and confusing are feeding and nutrition. Government programs can offer many kinds of support, as Chris Schulz learned when he sat down to speak with WIC Outreach Liaison Sarah Moore.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Eric Douglas produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
Being a parent is a 24-hour role, and a lifetime commitment that has historically fallen to women. As men have started to take on more domestic work, what it means to be a father has started to shift.
Being a parent is a 24-hour role, and a lifetime commitment that has historically fallen to women. As men have started to take on more domestic work, what it means to be a father has started to shift.
Adam Webster has a lot of fond memories from growing up.
“My mother was able to spend a lot of time with us and we had a farm that we could go play and visit and help with work on the farm,” he said. “In hindsight, as an adult now looking back, my dad was working around the clock so that we were able to do those things.”
For many years, Webster’s experience was considered the norm: a father who provided the sole income for a household and a mother who stayed at home with the children. That dynamic has started to change in recent years.
A study published last year by the Pew Research Center shows that fathers now make up 18 percent of all stay at home parents, up from 11 percent in 1989.
It’s a new reality that Webster experienced firsthand after moving back to West Virginia years ago, when his daughters were still young.
“My wife was the one who had full time work when we got back,” Webster said. “I did notice that playgroups and activities during the day were mainly mothers. But there are definitely fathers out in that mix, too. In fact, I met a few good friends when we first got back, because they were the only other dads in these play groups.”
As men take on a more active role in child-rearing, what it means to be a father is changing.
Jessica Troilo, an associate professor of child development and family studies at West Virginia University, said fatherhood changed once before when industrialization caused people to move away from the home for work.
“As fathers started moving to cities to work, that’s where this notion of the breadwinner really kind of started to take hold,” she said.
Troilo said fathers were seen as providers, but less responsible for day-to-day child rearing. In fact, she said studies of parenting have historically focused on mothers, and only in recent years have researchers started to focus on other caregivers, such as fathers.
“In my field, one of the main journals goes back to the 1930s,” Troilo said. “If you look at parenting, it’s not parenting, it’s mothering. I think what we think of as parenthood is really based on mother’s experiences. Father’s experiences really weren’t taken into consideration until the 1970s.”
Beyond their focus on mothering, Troilo also said many studies in the past generalized a middle-class experience of single-income households, something that has become harder to achieve with rising costs and stagnating wages. As economic realities changed, Troilo said men started to look to different sources for their model of what a father can and should be.
“That Gen X group was really the first group of fathers or men to say, ‘I’m not going to look at my father as much. I’m going to look at my friends to see what they are doing,’” she said. “They started looking at peers more and saying ‘Oh, okay, well, my friends are more involved in nurturing, they are changing diapers, they are getting up in the middle of the night. So maybe I should be doing that, too.’”
Women still represent a majority of caregivers in America. The Pew study shows that the rate of stay-at-home moms has only decreased slightly, from 28 percent to 26 percent.
Troilo said part of what has held men back in the past has been a positive feedback loop of skills passed down from generation to generation, even perceived by some to be innate in women.
“I think it became kind of this norm, when a baby would cry, it was ‘Well the moms can handle’ or ‘The women in the family can handle this because they know what to do,’” she said. “‘Don’t let the dad try to step in.’ So then you have men not learning how to soothe the child.”
Jonathan Beckmeyer, an assistant professor in the School of Counseling and Well Being at WVU, studies the connection between young people’s social relationships and their health and well being primarily at adolescence and as emerging adults.
“Parenting is a skill. It’s a skill that people build over time,” he said. “They build through experience, and they build by watching other people engage in these behaviors. It’s the same thing for fathers and fatherhood. If a man is interested, or wants to be a more involved father in this child’s life, there’s nothing to prevent them from going and doing that.”
For many, being a father is tied up in ideas of what it means to be a man. Beckmeyer said depictions of fathers in the media often relied on tropes of either incompetence around the house, or stoic disciplinarians. As time went on, that didn’t fit with people’s lived reality.
“The kind of the shift has been a lot of men recognizing ‘Well, that’s not my life. And that’s not really a productive way to view other men and that’s not how I view myself,’” Beckmeyer said. “That narrative slowly starts to change within how individual men go about their family life. I think that’s been something that’s been really powerful, recognizing that good men can be emotional, and they can be supportive, and they can ask for help, and all of these kinds of things that have broken down a lot of the stigma around what is and what isn’t, masculinity, is starting to transition that over into family life.”
For young fathers like Cody Cannon, a comedian based in Morgantown, helping his son connect with his emotions is one of his key goals.
“I just want to make sure I have the impact on him that above anything else, it’s important to be empathetic and caring, and a good person,” Cannon said.
Despite not living with his son and being separated from his child’s mother, Cannon also emphasizes the importance of supporting his co-parent to ensure the best outcome for his child.
“I think it’s important for me to nurture the best aspects of him and to help make sure his mom is doing okay,” he said. “In order for him to have a better life, I had to make sure she also had a better life.”
Beckmeyer said kids need supportive, positive adult caregivers in their lives, regardless of gender, and mutual support can be an important part of that balance.
“Any and all parents and caregivers can have a really important impact on young people’s lives,” he said. “Mothers aren’t more important than fathers, fathers aren’t more important than mothers. It’s about ensuring that people are providing the supports and resources that the kiddos need.”
What it means to be a parent of any gender is deeply personal and individual, and there is no one way to do it. But according to experts, allowing for a greater variety in those roles can help create not just good outcomes for kids, but parents and families as well.
On this West Virginia Morning, being a parent is a 24-hour role, and a lifetime commitment that has historically fallen to women. As men have started to take on more domestic work, what it means to be a father has started to shift. Chris Schulz looks at these changes in our latest installment of “Now What? A Series on Parenting.”
On this West Virginia Morning, being a parent is a 24-hour role, and a lifetime commitment that has historically fallen to women. As men have started to take on more domestic work, what it means to be a father has started to shift.
Also, in this show, across the country, people who are incarcerated have reduced access to libraries, books and educational resources, according to the Appalachian Prison Book Project. For the past 20 years, the West Virginia-based nonprofit has worked to change that. They say that accessing books is a fundamental human right.
Jack Walker reports on the group’s history, and what it takes to get a book into an Appalachian prison.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Chris Schulz produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
On this West Virginia Week, legislators started off the week back in Charleston for the first time since the end of the regular session for interim meetings. Meanwhile, we heard about the state’s rising natural gas production, the new challenges of digital devices for parents, and ahead of Earth Day, we took a look at a major composting operation.
On this West Virginia Week, legislators started off the week back in Charleston for the first time since the end of the regular session for interim meetings. We learned more about the state’s finances, government auditing and a new approach to maintaining the state’s roads.
Meanwhile, we heard about the state’s rising natural gas production, the new challenges of digital devices for parents, and ahead of Earth Day, we took a look at a major composting operation.
Chris Schulz is our host this week. Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert.
West Virginia Week is a web-only podcast that explores the week’s biggest news in the Mountain State. It’s produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Jack Walker, Liz McCormick and Randy Yohe.
Digital devices and social media command more and more of our attention these days. Balancing this and creating healthy boundaries for increasingly younger children is becoming a bigger part of being a parent.
Digital devices and social media command more and more of our attention these days. Balancing this and creating healthy boundaries for increasingly younger children is becoming a bigger part of being a parent.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed the role of devices in childrens’ lives. According to a 2022 survey of parents conducted by the Pew Research Center, device use increased for all children between 2020 and 2021. One of the largest increases was in children that were under five in March 2020. Their use of tablets jumped from 51 percent in 2020 to 69 percent in 2021, an 18 percent increase.
Melissa Sherfinski, associate professor of early childhood and elementary education at West Virginia University, said the American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend any screen time for children under two.
“After that point between ages two to five, about one hour of high quality, screen time, like educational shows,” Sherfinski said. “Then once kids are older, then there is more flexibility. But they also recommend for families to really think through a good plan for making some rules and even rituals related to screen time and the home.”
There are exceptions, such as to build relationships and keep contact with distant relatives.
“Unless it’s maybe through a FaceTime or Zoom, you know, talking to if grandma and grandpa are far away, or aunties and uncles are far away, and they’re getting that actual face to face and language content,” Sherfinski said.
According to Sherfinski, concerns around childrens’ screen time has existed about as long as screens of any kind. She said earlier studies on time in front of the television showed that TV was on six hours a day in many homes, one study showing that 39 percent of families with infants and young children had a television on constantly. She also pointed to a more recent study from Singapore that showed that passive screen time early in childrens’ lives correlates to attention issues in elementary school.
The concern around screen time is not limited to childrens’ direct usage either. In a survey of families around screen time conducted by Pew and released in March, nearly half of teens say their parents are at least sometimes distracted by their phone when the teens are trying to talk to them. The younger the child, the greater the impact of that distraction.
“What happens then with the dynamic is, that takes away from the parent’s ability to engage with the child, to sing to the child, to talk with a child et cetera, all those things that are so important for children’s language development, children’s cognitive development,” Sherfinski said. “That’s some of what some of those earlier studies found: that too much screen time, or even just background screen time with those really young children under two, can be problematic for their development.”
For young children, the consensus seems to be clear: less screen time is better in favor of face-to-face human interaction. Things start to get a little murkier when it comes to screen time for parents and older kids, however.
Elizabeth Cohen, associate professor of communication studies at WVU, pointed out that internet-enabled devices, as well as social media, are simply a continuation of long-established social exchange.
“The way that I look at social media is, it’s really an extension of other types of social elements in our life,” she said. “A lot of people like to think of social media as, ‘Oh, well, social media came in and changed the way that we do things.’ And I tend to see social media as more of an extension of things we were already doing. These are tools that we designed as humans to connect with other humans.”
Cohen said there’s no denying that people, in particular adolescents, experience anxiety and even feelings of not being in control around social media. Much of that seems to arise from what Cohen calls social comparison behaviors. That can be adults comparing their parenting styles to others, or teens and children comparing themselves to their peers.
“This is not limited to social media, but I do think you have 24/7 access to people to compare yourself to now,” Cohen said. “Social comparison is just that natural human tendency of us to figure out how we are doing by comparing ourselves to other people in society. There’s upward social comparisons, which is kind of aspirational. But there’s also a downward social comparison, that, ‘I’m glad I’m not that one,’ or, ‘I seem to be much better off than this person over here.’”
But she is less convinced about the direct impact of social media on these issues. Psychological studies of the impact of social media are very much still in their infancy and are confounded by many of life’s variables that make it difficult to pin specific issues directly to social media use.
“It’s really impossible to understand all the different factors going on,” Cohen said. “A lot of studies will use interesting control variables and stuff, but the reason I said I’m continuing to be very skeptical, because there’s so much stuff going on at the same time that people are immersing themselves in social media.”
The good news for many is that screen time and interaction with social media is something that – barring work and school requirements – is largely up to each individual’s control. But Cohen points out that a lot of the difficulty for parents can stem from setting limitations on something they struggle to regulate for themselves.
“It’s how you use them. It’s not like there’s inherent evil in the technology,” Cohen said. “We design the technologies, and we decide how to use them. These are things that parents really have to wrestle with, because they’re in the driver’s seat. You have to make decisions about screen time and stuff like that, but that’s hard when adults also have a hard time setting limits.”
She said a big part of the uncertainty surrounding social media in particular is because it is so new to have the internet, and therefore so much information, available with such immediacy.
“I think we’re at a point of figuring things out,” Cohen said. “I think some of this might even come down to etiquette one day, where there’s just going to be certain norms that we start to develop about what’s appropriate, and what we consider healthy.”
Sherfinski echoes Cohen that if used correctly, social media and devices can be used to enrich children of all ages and strengthen familial bonds. She recalls the story of a friend who lived away from her granddaughter, but was able to research bees and pollination with her over the internet.
“I’m thinking of, you know, all of the grandparents who have so many, you know, wonderful things to share,” Sherfinski said. “If we threw away social media and access to screen time and all of that, that wouldn’t necessarily be a perfect thing either.”
A lot remains to be learned about the role of digital devices and social media in child development but for now limited, intentional use seems to be the best approach for all family members.
