Baby Geniuses
Does Baby Einstein really make kids smarter?
by Adrienne Martini
June 11, 2007
With my first baby, my intentions were pure. There would be breastfeeding and co-sleeping and slings and enrichment and tummy time and reading aloud and no TV. She would be as smart as modern technology and parenting theory would allow.
This lasted about a week. The reality crushed the living crap out of my mothering fantasy. Even after I realized that I had given birth to an autonomous and passionate human being who hated the sling and the breast and the co-sleeping, I consoled myself with her love of Baby Einstein. At least in this small way, I was doing something to nourish her developing mind rather than simply feeding it the mental equivalent of junk food.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a parent with a kid under the age of twelve who isn't familiar with Baby Einstein and its collection of "infant interactive" products. Best known are the videos, which have titles like "Baby Mozart" and feature some puppets, some bubbles, a classical music soundtrack and a large, disembodied hand that plays with toys. Other companies like Brainy Baby and So Smart offer similar products, but frequently play Jan to Baby Einstein's Marcia.
In addition to the physical items, what this category of enrichment products is also selling is the idea that you can make your baby smarter. I am not the only parent to buy what they're selling. According to Fortune, in 2005, this was a $2.5 billion market. The tiny grain of sand that has been polished into this multi-billion dollar pearl is "the Mozart effect," a hypothesis that has been floating around for well over a decade.
In 1993, a study by two researches at U.C. Irvine reported that spatial-reasoning scores of undergrads increased after exposure to a Mozart piano concerto. Similar results sprang from studies on children who were given classical piano lessons. By the end of the '90s, Georgia's governor Zell Miller proposed that the state spend over $100,000 to make sure that each newborn received a classical music CD before leaving the hospital.
While the idea of building a better zero-to-three-year-old is nothing new — flashcards have been The "Mozart effect" research kicked off a sea change in product design. around for generations — the "Mozart effect" research kicked off a sea change in product design. Improving intelligence through technology takes low-tech flashcards into the new millennium. But the jury is still out on the educational value that these products have. And in a country run by a "C" student, is a smarter baby a more successful adult?
Most of the items marketed to parents with very small children are careful with their descriptive language. Baby Einstein, et. al., make no claims about improving test scores or making kids smarter in a measurable way, because such promises would open up their research and development process to the Federal Trade Commission. If you read the advertising copy, what is being promised is that you can make your baby "brighter" or "enhance your baby's curiosity." Such vagueness protects against lawsuits.
The newest comer in the field, however, has no such qualms. The LENA learning system consists of a LENA voice recorder, which you put in a pocket on your baby's LENA clothing. At the end of the day, you download the information from the recorder onto your computer. The data is analyzed by the company's software, then you are given a report so that you know how many words your baby has heard during the course of the day.
©2007 Adrienne Martini and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Adrienne Martini has written for the Austin Chronicle and Cooking Light. A former editor for Knoxville, Tennessee's Metro Pulse, her first book is Hillbilly Gothic: A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood. She chronicles her adventures at www.martinimade.com. |
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