10,000 hours

In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 hour rule--the idea that to be good at anything that requires mental stamina or concentration, like playing classical piano or programming a computer, someone has to pass the 10,000-hour practice threshold. If you've pursued your craft for at least 10,000 hours, he writes, studies show that you will have a chance of being a major success. But if you haven't, chances aren't nearly as good, even if you have boatloads of talent.

I wonder how much this applies to motherhood or fatherhood. In one of my mothers' groups, a mother of several children told us, "It gets easier after your second child." This would seem to validate the 10,000-hour rule, at least for raising babies and toddlers. A mother of two children would have put in at least 10,000 hours after three years, assuming she cares for her kids about ten hours a day, seven days a week. (For most mothers of babies under one year of age, it's a lot more time than that.) So that by the time her two oldest kids have passed through babyhood and one of them has also passed through toddlerhood, that mother, according to Malcolm Gladwell's theory, would have become a master at her "craft."

What happens, however, when you only have one child? And what happens after toddlerhood, when the problems you're facing are so different that the experience you've gained in the first three years might not help you that much?

I suppose that part of being a good parent, when you don't have those 10,000 hours under your belt, is realizing and accepting early on how much you don't know, and finding several sources of information to refer to--especially, mothers and fathers who've been through it already. One of Gladwell's main theses in Outliers is that a community of influences shapes successful people--that they are always the products of communities, not just gifted individuals who tried hard. I would say that's equally true for good mothers.