The Myth of the First Three Years by John Bruer,
The Free Press, $25/拢15.72, ISBN 0684851849
WHAT advice can science offer to worried parents about child-rearing? 鈥淒on鈥檛
raise your children in a closet, starve them, or hit them on the head with a
frying pan,鈥� says Steve Petersen, a neurologist at Washington University in St
Louis. 鈥淒evelopment really wants to happen. It takes very impoverished
environments to interfere鈥︹��
In The Myth of the First Three Years, John Bruer quotes Petersen鈥檚
views in approving contrast to a wave of advice and political lobbying based
around the 鈥渕yth鈥� of his title鈥攖hat the brain of a young child is
especially vulnerable to experience in the first three years of life. Parents
have been told that these are the years in which they must get it right,
brain-wise. If they don鈥檛, the child is likely to pay the cost for the rest of
his or her life.
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What began as a wake-up call on the necessity of supportive environments for
disadvantaged infants has turned into a source of anxiety for middle-class
parents. Put simply, the idea is that fate is not in our genes, nor even in the
richly remembered experiences of childhood, but in those first three years of
life when the brain鈥檚 wiring is supposedly taking shape. Or as Newsweek
once said: 鈥淓very lullaby, every giggle and peek-a-boo, triggers a crackling
along [a baby鈥檚] neural pathways, laying the groundwork for what could someday
be a love of art or a talent for soccer.鈥�
Bruer argues that this 鈥渋nfant determinism鈥� is based on findings from brain
research that have been woefully over-interpreted, often not by scientists
but by educational enthusiasts and lobbyists.
Central to their claims are a series of observations suggesting that nerve
connections, or synapses, in the brain peak at about the age of three. Babies
start out with relatively few synapses, but the numbers rapidly increase until,
at about three, they begin to decease, stabilising at adult levels at age 4 to 5
years. So far, so uncontroversial. But Bruer鈥檚 鈥渕yth-makers鈥� go on to say that
stimulation during the synapse growth phase鈥攁nd only then鈥攍ays down
capabilities for the whole of life.
This interpretation is dubious because there is no evidence that having more
synapses enables you to learn faster鈥� indeed, research on fragile-X
syndrome, which can lead to learning difficulties, suggests that too many
synapses can be bad news. What鈥檚 more, adolescence鈥攁 period when synapse
numbers are not increasing鈥攊s a time of great learning and behavioural
change.
To take another example, the myth-makers cite evidence that baby rats
living in enriched environments develop bigger cortexes. For more than two
decades, William Greenough, a neuroscientist at the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign, and his colleagues have reported that rats reared in a complex
environment have up to 25 per cent more synaptic connections on each neuron.
Again, the problem is not the research, but the way it has been hyped as further
evidence that young brains are infinitely modifiable, their nerve cells
exuberantly growing in response to the actions of parents. As Bruer notes, the
big changes in the rat brains are confined mainly to the visual cortex鈥攁
region not ordinarily associated with learning. It seems the synapse story is
too simple.
Everyone鈥檚 an expert
Bruer鈥檚 review is both even-handed and biting, which makes it valuable for
showing how the various popularisers have distorted the science and the
scientists doing the work. It does a superb job helping us all toward a deeper
appreciation of the difficult task ahead: trying to understand learning, child
development and the brain. When it comes to bringing up children, everybody is
an expert. I have six and always noted how utterly different each one was very
early on. Parents seem to have little impact on their temperament and
intelligence. The basic biology of mind seems set to me, and very early on.