shminux comments on Review: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids - Less Wrong

17 Post author: jsalvatier 29 May 2012 06:00PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (257)

Comments (257)

Sort By: Best

Show:

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: shminux 27 May 2012 05:46:54PM 5 points [-]

I like the summary given by one reviewer:

It says that REASONABLE parenting, with love, affection, attention, and fun times spent together is sufficient to let your child make the most of their potential. You do not have to be a SUPER parent, just a loving attentive normal parent, to achieve the same results.

What the book IS saying, is that in the LONG RUN, into their 30s and later, THAT is when your upbringing with begin to fade away. It doesn't matter how you bring up your kids, they're likely to end up with roughly the same earning power, roughly the same IQ, roughly the same level of happiness, and a couple of other measures, whether or not you insisted on taking them to ballet class when they objected, or to practice team sports even though they hated it. And THIS is why the book says (see point 1), RELAX. Have FUN with your kids, rather than stress them and yourself out over activities neither one of you is enjoying. Give them your attention when you're happy and relaxed, and if you need to let them watch TV for an hour to get some quiet time for yourself so that YOU can relax, and then spend QUALITY time with them, allow yourself to do that. You won't be hurting your kid's future income.

Certainly "love your kids and have fun with them, the rest will work itself out" is an attractive message. It contradicts my anecdotal short-term observations, but they don't claim any short-term effects, only long-term.

Comment author: MileyCyrus 27 May 2012 10:08:45PM 10 points [-]

You don't even have to be a "reasonable" parent. Parents in the 1960's were "bad" by today's standards*, and the kids turned out fine.

*The book talks about how parents spend far more time on childcare today than they did in the 1960's.

Comment author: shminux comment score below threshold [+] (13 children)

Comment author: MileyCyrus 28 May 2012 08:36:03AM 12 points [-]

A 2010's dad spends more hours taking care of children than a 1960's mom.

Comment author: wedrifid 28 May 2012 03:16:01PM 1 point [-]

A 2010's dad spends more hours taking care of children than a 1960's mom.

Wow. This is counter-intuitive.

Comment author: Emile 28 May 2012 11:32:57AM 0 points [-]

Is that true? That sounds surprising, but plausible - do you have a source for that?

Comment author: MileyCyrus 28 May 2012 11:34:50AM 5 points [-]

It's in the book.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 29 May 2012 01:31:20AM * 3 points [-]

I'd be surprised if it wasn't true. In the 1960s, a mother could just send the kids out to play on their own, which kids normally did if they weren't at school. Such things are unthinkable these days, and it looks quite plausible that today's standard way of helicopter parenting has increased the total amount of parents' time spent doting on kids so much that even if fathers did only a minority of it, they'd still spend a larger amount of time that the total time normally spent back in the sixties.

Comment author: jsalvatier 29 May 2012 01:43:18AM 0 points [-]

'Unthinkable' seems like an exaggeration. I played outside by myself as a kid (though that's 20 years ago), and I have the distinct impression that my bosses' kids have a group of neighborhood kids they play with unsupervised.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 29 May 2012 02:02:54AM * 9 points [-]

Twenty years ago was still a very different time in this regard. (Anecdotally, I notice that people who are in their mid-twenties and older have childhood memories very different from what is considered acceptable nowadays, both informally and legally.) See the "Free Range Kids" blog for numerous stories illustrating the modern mentality and jurisprudence about leaving kids alone and unsupervised.

In any case, even if you can still find some occasional examples of people allowing unsupervised play in some situations, it's definitely unacceptable to simply send the kids out and tell them to be back for dinner, the way it was normally done some decades ago.

Comment author: Vaniver 29 May 2012 08:23:19PM * 4 points [-]

In any case, even if you can still find some occasional examples of people allowing unsupervised play in some situations, it's definitely unacceptable to simply send the kids out and tell them to be back for dinner, the way it was normally done some decades ago.

One of my professors lives in a cul-de-sac where literally every house has ~2 kids of roughly the same age, and so most of the parents allow their children to just go outside and play with the gang until dinnertime. I believe at least one of the parents is typically watching, which is also a departure from the old days.

Hearing him describe it to the grad students / other professors, though, it was clearly a "this is an abnormal neighborhood which is like where I grew up, which is fantastic," and he's the only person I know of with a neighborhood like that (though certainly similar neighborhoods must exist).

Comment author: Alejandro1 29 May 2012 11:57:57PM 0 points [-]

Twenty years ago was still a very different time in this regard. (Anecdotally, I notice that people who are in their mid-twenties and older have childhood memories very different from what is considered acceptable nowadays, both informally and legally.)

But why? I thought crime rates in America had actually declined significantly since 20-25 years ago. If so, then why would it be more unacceptable today to let children play free than it was twenty years ago; has irrational helicopter parenting grown for other reasons, e.g. status competitions, with no correlation to actual danger levels? (Or is there something subtle I am missing, for example has violence declined in ghettos/low-class areas but the middle and upper areas we are talking about are less safe?)

Comment author: TimS 30 May 2012 12:33:02AM 0 points [-]

News media has improved. Once, abductions in small towns were news in that town (and nowhere else) - now it is possible for the abduction to be news everywhere. Without calibration for the change in availability of information, the obvious response is to believe that we are not safer.

Additionally, there have been changes in societies attitudes towards certain crimes. Increasing beliefs that certain crimes were bad (DUI, domestic violence, various sex crimes) has led to increased reporting of those crimes and stronger reaction to those crimes when they are reported in the media. This exacerbates the availability bias discussed above.

Comment author: Nornagest 29 May 2012 08:14:38PM * -1 points [-]

That's... seriously counterintuitive to me. I'm certainly not deeply embedded in parenting culture, and my childhood memories date to the early 1990s as well as being unusual in some ways, but I'm skeptical of drawing strong conclusions from an advocacy site. What else are you basing this on?

I would just ask my relatives about parenting standards, but unfortunately they're divided between having very young and adult children. And that's a pretty small and biased sample anyway.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 30 May 2012 02:55:27AM 3 points [-]

What else are you basing this on?

Just common everyday observation of people's attitudes. (I'm not a partisan of the FRK approach; in fact, I have no kids as of yet, and I'm still not quite sure what to think about it.)

continue this thread »

shminux comments on Review: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids - Less Wrong

Article Navigation

Comments (257)

Nearest Meetups

Virtual Study Room

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Recent Rationality Quotes

Recent Wiki Edits

Top Contributors, 30 Days

Recent Karma Awards

Comments (257)

Top Contributors, 30 Days

You'll need to login or register to do that

(Don't worry, it only takes a few seconds)

Create

Login