Research that Benefits Children and Families—Uplifting Stories

Strange but true, the assignment this week about providing an example of how research conducted proved to be positive on children and/or families, directly made me think of the show “Wife Swap”.

I have only seen a couple episodes, but I can say that families experience a huge wave of change and it is the children as well as the husband who express frustration.  The families are able to see that getting along outside of their bubble is sometimes harder to do than they believe.  The wives are thrown into other ways of doing things, sometimes experiencing great heartache, grief, and embarrassment along the way. 

And if that wasn’t enough, at the end of the show or experiment, the two families can get together and talk about what they liked and disliked about the change.  I believe this experiment creates positivity because it alleviates the sometimes felt; the grass is greener on the other side theory.  It reminds families of what they have together and often that their so-called routine needs working on so all members are happy. 

My Personal Research Journey

My original topic that I am interested in regarding early childhood is infant temperament.  I have wondered if infants who have calm and easy going parents are more likely to have a calm and easy going baby.  Or if parents who are high strung would have a high strung baby.  To narrow down my topic I had subtopics that included, is a baby’s temperament predetermined or shared with a parent(s), does the mother’s stress have any effect on the baby’s temperament, and what are the temperaments evolution over time.  
 

To choose one of the subtopics was a little difficult for me and hopefully my colleagues will be able to assist me in this.  I am more interested in a baby’s temperament in regards to the mother’s.  But since I haven’t done any research on the topic and don’t quite sure know whether a mother’s temperament has any effects on her baby, I wondered as well if a calm mother were to have an ill-tempered baby.  And if she did, would that just be how the story goes, or did the mother’s perhaps stressful pregnancy have anything to do with the baby having such an opposite temperament from her? 

So ultimately to wonder if a baby’s temperament stemmed from the mother’s actual temperament or from the infant’s unique own, or if the mother’s stress during pregnancy had anything to do with it, was a hard decision to make in terms of a subtopic.  I think it would be difficult to research whether a mother’s child had a temperament normal to what they should have or due to something like stress because the baby cannot be reborn to different circumstances to test out the waters of the other side. 

Although we have an assignment due this week asking us to pick a subtopic for our simulations, I am at best a little undecided and am hoping my colleagues will read this and be able to give me a little help.  I will report back with anything new.