Kids as young as 6 months are aware of race. New book suggests we need to talk about it.

New research suggests children instinctively discriminate based on appearance and white parents are not helping their kids be ‘colour blind’ by ignoring the issue of race.

New book Nurtureshock from Po Brosnson and Ashley Merryman challenges many of the basic assumptions parents hold true about raising children.

The book discusses a 2007 study in The Journal of Marriage and Family which found that out of 17,000 families with kids in nursery, 45% said they’d never discussed race issues with their children and 75% of white parents never talked about race believing that by discussing race you highlighted differences rather than letting children grow up without a sense of racial boundaries.

What Nutureshock reveals is that children naturally notice visible differences between themselves and others (including race, gender, etc) and tend to group themselves where they feel they belong. The authors suggest it is imperative that discussions about race take place with young children in a positive way in order to avoid issues surrounding racial attitudes.   Although we might imagine we’re creating color-blind environments for children, differences in skin colour, hair or weight are like differences in gender – they’re obvious and need discussing.

“For decades, it was assumed that children see race only when society points it out to them. However, child-development researchers have increasingly begun to question that presumption. They argue that children see racial differences as much as they see the difference between pink and blue—but we tell kids that “pink” means for girls and “blue” is for boys. “White” and “black” are mysteries we leave them to figure out on their own.” Nurtureshock

So how did the researchers test a 6-month-old? They showed babies photographs of faces and found that babies would stare significantly longer at photographs of faces that are a different race from their parents, indicating they found the face out of the ordinary.  Authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman suggest, that although they are not exhibiting signs of racism—children’s brains noticed skin-colour differences and were trying to understand their meaning.

Another finding that may surprise a lot of parents is that the very period when parents feel then do not need to or should not be discussing race (when they are young) is infact the very developmental period when children’s minds are forming their first conclusions about race.

“Several studies point to the possibility of developmental windows—stages when children’s attitudes might be most amenable to change. In one experiment, children were put in cross-race study groups, and then were observed on the playground to see if the interracial classroom time led to interracial play at recess. The researchers found mixed study groups worked wonders with the first-grade children, but it made no difference with third graders. It’s possible that by third grade, when parents usually recognize it’s safe to start talking a little about race, the developmental window has already closed.” Nurtureshock.

The book also examines the problems of praise and giving too much, the affects of not enough sleep on children, why children lie, why siblings fight and many other fascinating areas.  It certainly made me question many of my own parenting ideas.  Its NOT a parenting manual though so if you are expecting to come away with a to do list at the end you will be disappointed, parts of the books gave me more questions than answers but actually this is probably best because ultimately we all need to made our own decisions about how to parent our kids.

Click here to read the Daily Mail’s article on Nurtureshock/Giving to much praise