

Critics are rejecting the theory that children need close attention in their first three years, dismissing neuroscience as 'neurotrash'
Children in nursery
Working parents who put their children in nurseries often see childcare as a compromise they feel bad about. Photograph: OJO Images/Rex Features

Any parent who has felt guilty about putting their child in a nursery or felt under pressure to sign them up for baby music classes to give them a head start in life will note with interest the opening of a conference at the University of Kent this week. The event will look at what organisers call "the extreme focus on early childhood".

Academics will argue that parents of babies and toddlers – especially mothers – are subject to ridiculous levels of pressure to "get things right" that leads to "unwarranted anxieties and guilt".

Led by John Bruer, author of The Myth of the First Three Years, they say the neuroscience backing claims of the importance of parental connection in the early years has been hyped and that social policy focusing on the parent-child bond is "a waste of resources".

The conference reflects views that have been developing for a while. These take a stance against the arguments largely based on nurture theory which are advanced by the likes of psychotherapists such as Oliver James, author of They F*** You Up, and Sue Gerhardt, author of Why Love Matters. For a decade, this camp has argued persuasively that all the research shows children become psychologically and emotionally hardwired in the first three years and that the support of a close parental figure is crucial.

Gerhardt has warned of the potentially damaging effects of poor quality childcare: "Babies need to be with people they are attached to well beyond nine months," she says. "The first two or three years are the crucial window when various systems which manage emotions are put into place. In particular, it is when we learn to exercise self-control and to be aware of other people's needs. Without these basic emotional skills children may not grow up emotionally competent."

Much of Gerhardt's research is about the effect of the hormone cortisol, which is produced in the brain at times of distress. In normal situations, cortisol production is not harmful, but if a baby or toddler is left uncomforted for too long or exposed excessively to a stressful situation, the cortisol levels will spike. This is linked to depression and anxiety, and, alternately, to violence and aggression.

The effect of these views has been far-reaching, especially for working parents who rely on childcare. Last week a friend, the father of a 10-month-old boy, said to me sadly: "We've had to put him in nursery. It was either that or not have him (their son) at all." He works in the public sector. His wife is a teacher. Like many, they see childcare as a compromise.

For the anti-nurture camp, this emergence of guilty parenting is disturbing. They contend that children are resilient and continue to develop throughout their lives. As sociologist Ellie Lee of the University of Kent puts it: "It's making motherhood into a miserable enterprise when it should be fun and life-enhancing. Also, there is no culture of supporting parents, so they end up thinking, 'If I don't do this for my child, no one will'."

This week's conference will focus on the effect on women of this intense focus on the early years. Glenda Wall, a sociology professor from Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, will present a paper based on interviews with middle-class Canadian mothers. "The focus on maximising children's brain development has had the effect of further intensifying the job of mothering," she writes. "Not only are mothers responsible for children's physical health and safety (the standards of which are also increasing), their psychological health and happiness, but now also their future brain potential and intelligence."

Her case studies include comments like: "I have gained 60lb in four years. If I went and worked out, I would feel so guilty that I wasn't spending time with my son." When one mother was asked about recreational time alone with her spouse, she said: "We were together 10 years before our son was born. We are devoted to our son. My recreation time and my entertainment time is my son."

Wall adds: "The mothers in my study were typical in the sense they were more likely to be the ones in the family who made career sacrifices and cut back on hours at work to make extra time to spend with their children." And we do this, it is said, because we want to do the "right thing".

"Parenting expertise takes parental deficit as its presumption," says sociologist Frank Furedi, also speaking at the conference. "There is a fear about what would happen if mothers, particularly, were not existentially and emotionally close to their children."

I recently watched Furedi debate with "Tiger Mother" Amy Chua at an Intelligence Squared debate in London. The audience voted for Chua at the outset, but by the end were completely seduced by Furedi's view that "parenting is not difficult. Nuclear physics is difficult". He said: "I would argue that, if you as a mum or a dad are preoccupied with developmental issues, it's very easy to develop a certain obsessiveness. Almost everything that children do now is done on adult initiative and to an adult agenda which is extraneous to children's lives. "

Psychologist Stuart Derbyshire of the University of Birmingham recently wrote a stinging polemic for Spiked online about what he calls "the pseudo-science of the parent bashers". He argues that the popular idea that a person's fate is determined in the first five years of life is "completely baseless". "Any deficiency that children may suffer due to the inadequacies of their early years can be addressed later in their lives. Scientists who opportunistically promote early-years intervention to justify publications and grants risk turning neuroscience into a joke."

Many experts now argue that we simply cannot draw meaningful conclusions from the neuroscientific data available. Warnings of the dangers of "neurotrash" or "neuro nonsense" are gaining ground, voiced by the likes of philosopher Raymond Tallis and neuroscientist Cordelia Fine. John Bruer is against what he sees as a trend of using "neuro facts" to back up parenting theories and public policy. "Parents have been sold a bill of goods that is highly destructive, because it overemphasises infant and toddler nurturing to the detriment of long-term parental and educational responsibilities."

In the US the misuse of neuroscience has been far-reaching, he says. "Middle-class parents are attracted by the desire to obtain the best for their children in a highly competitive environment of getting into the right schools, meeting the right people, getting the right job. They also have the time and the resources to think about these issues and to invest in products ostensibly based on brain science." But the tide is turning. He notes recent class lawsuits launched by disgruntled parents against Disney for Baby Einstein, products that claimed to encourage genius in newborns, and against Your Baby Can Read, a system that purported to give five-year-olds the reading level of teens.

Bruer argues that, in the US in particular, a simplistic interpretation of brain science has been used to support policy recommendations, in particular the development of parentcraft programmes that privilege the parent-child bond over the family's place in society. Oliver James is alarmed by this backlash. He describes the idea that parents aren't that important as "complete garbage, postmodern drivel". "This is a story people want to hear," he sighs. "The last time this happened was with Judith Harris's The Nurture Assumption, which was a disgrace and left out vast amounts of evidence, including the whole of attachment theory." Harris's 1998 book challenged the idea that the personality of adults is determined chiefly by how they were raised. James said: "They [opponents of nurture theory] want to believe it's all genes. But the human genome project is proving beyond much doubt that genes are largely irrelevant to how we turn out. In time this will become the accepted wisdom.

"Neuroscience only forms a small part of the basis for saying that the early years are critical for later life.There are 6,000 studies on attachment theory alone, longitudinal studies following babies from birth to adulthood." James argues that there is no evidence to support anti-attachment sociological theories. "Ask these people, if it's not nurture, what is it? They will say peers and genes. But how come there are so many studies that don't support what they are saying? The first six years set your emotional thermostat. When I first made that claim it was a hypothesis. Now it looks increasingly strong that that's the case." So what should parents be doing differently?

Derbyshire says: "The main thing parents 'should' do is stop accepting that they 'should' do anything. We can embrace different approaches to bringing up kids and accept that parenting is not the be-all and end-all of raising a human being. Instead of being constantly forced back on to their own resources under the guidance of experts, parents might focus on creating a society that is helpful and supportive to a variety of adult goals, only one of which is raising children into adults and keeping them out of trouble on the way. We need to calm down about the importance of childhood."