So I’m perusing the post election results at Instapundit when I come across his link to a NYT story – kids are safest under grandparents care – and I have to take a look. The key:
The study is important because grandparents are a growing source of child care for working and single parents. Some health researchers speculated that grandparents may be out of touch with modern safety practices, and as a result, they worried that children being cared for by grandparents might be at higher risk for injury.
But the opposite appears to be true. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health analyzed caregiving and injury data from the National Evaluation of the Healthy Steps for Young Children Program. The program includes information about 5,500 newborns in 15 United States cities during 1996 and 1997, with follow-up over the next three years.
The analysis showed that having grandparents as caregivers cut the risk of childhood injury by about half. Compared to organized day care, care by other relatives, or even care by a mother who doesn’t work outside the home, children who were cared for by a grandmother were less likely to be injured.
When I read this, of course my first thought is “You go, Grandma”.
But I noticed how drably they wrote this. They would have willingly thrown grandma under the bus had the results been what I daresay they were hoping for, with a headline like “Killer Grandmothers” or “Grandparents – the hidden peril”, or even “Grandparents: We knew they lost their touch when they let the grandkids eat in the living room!”. And they buried a couple of other things, two. Like just how good are these “modern safety practices”, anyway. My generation rode bikes without helmets, rode in cars without seat belts, and those of us who survived into crabby middle age are just fine. And you have to go to the primary source to discover that single moms are a menace, OK, show a higher rate of injury.
