Do Your Kids Save Their Worst for You?

I recently saw a viral reel on Instagram claiming that "Children are 800% Worse When Their Mothers Are In the Room." This reel was based on a fake news article.¹ This study was written up as a satire (kind of like a tongue-in-cheek Onion article). The article claims that: “The study followed 500 families and measured neediness, whine crying, shriek screaming, attempted slapping, forgetting how to walk/use words, and acting the fool” and "children as young as eight months old could be playing happily but upon seeing their mother enter a room, were 99.9% more likely to begin crying, release their bowels, and need her immediate attention." The article ends with this suggestion from the pretend researcher: “Dr. Leibowitz is working on a spray that masks a mother’s natural pheromones to offer some relief but in the meantime recommends families invest in a bathroom with a working lock.”

Of course, this study is fake and meant as a joke but have you ever felt like it might be true? Do your children seem to save their worst behaviors and moods for you? Unfortunately, there isn’t any research on whether children save their worst behaviors for caregivers. But there is some research suggesting that children save their worst moods for their primary caregivers.

A fascinating study² looked at who children turn to in times of distress (and times of happiness) and why. The researchers examined the following questions:

• Are children more likely to interact with their primary parent (aka the parent who spends the most time with the child and does the most caregiving) or the parent with whom they have the closest attachment?
• Are children more likely to seek out their mother or their father?
• Does the child’s emotions determine which parent they are likely to seek out? Do they seek out a different parent when distressed versus when happy?

Study Details

To study these questions, researchers looked at how often 2-year-olds initiated interactions with either their mother or father during everyday tasks and whether it depended on their emotions at the time. The researchers determined which parent was the primary caregiver by looking at both the amount of time each parent spent with the child and the number of caregiving tasks (feeding, bathing, dressing, etc) that each parent did and determined whether each parent-child pair had a secure attachment (translation: the healthiest form of parent-child bond in which the child feels safe and supported and uses the caregiver as a “secure base” from which to explore the world). The researchers controlled for gender since most primary caregivers were mothers.

Study Findings

1. Children are more likely to turn to their primary caregivers for comfort when they are upset: The researchers found that distressed toddlers were more likely to interact with their primary caregiver (the parent who does most of the caregiving tasks and spends more time with the toddler). The stronger of a primary caregiver, the more likely toddlers were to seek out that parent when distressed.
2. Children are not more likely to seek comfort from a parent that they are securely attached to: It didn’t seem to matter whether the toddler had a secure attachment to the parent — toddlers were just as likely to seek comfort from a primary caregiver with whom they have a secure attachment as a primary caregiver with whom they have an insecure attachment.
3. Yet, children recover more quickly when they are comforted by a parent with whom they have a secure attachment: The toddlers in this study calmed down more quickly when they were soothed by a parent with whom they have a secure attachment. For example, toddlers with an insecure attachment might keep whining or fussing while a child with a secure attachment would be effectively comforted and go back to engaging positively with their caregiver.
4. When children are happy, they are just as likely to interact with any caregiver: It doesn’t seem to matter whether they are the primary caregiver, their mother versus their father, or a caregiver with whom they have a secure attachment.
5. Children tend to prefer their mothers in times of distress: The toddlers in this study also tended to seek out their mother versus their father when upset, regardless of attachment. This backs up previous research suggesting that most children show a preference for their mother (who is typically the primary caregiver) over their father or childcare provider. In this study, mothers spent significantly more time with their toddlers than fathers, with mothers spending 38 hours per week on average with the child and fathers spending eight hours per week on average. Mothers were also more likely to complete caregiving tasks.

It is important to note that this study was limited because it only studied heterosexual couples and families with a mother and father and did not include any families with the father as the primary caregiver (although there were several families in which the mother and father seemed to share the role of primary caregiver).

Translation

If you are your child’s primary caregiver (meaning you spend the most time with them and are responsible for most caregiving activities for them), then your child may be more likely to come to you in times of distress. This means that you may experience more tantrums, whining, complaining, and bad moods than the non-primary parent or a child care provider or teacher may experience. This is likely not a reflection of how effective you are as a parent but a reflection of your status as primary parent. If your child does not turn to you in times of distress, it does not mean that your child is not attached to you but may simply mean your child is not in the habit of seeking you out for comfort. Parent-child attachment is still really important since securely attached children seem to calm down more quickly in the context of a securely attached parent-child relationship. So keep being a consistent, responsive parent because the long-term impacts of a secure attachment are worth it.