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I did not have this reaction of begrudging Scott. I was, I suppose, bemused- by problems with child rearing in a very progressive bubble.
There is a tendency to write off blue tribe helicopter parenting as mostly tiger parenting optimization for selective school admissions- and like, yes, these people do need to hear ‘you don’t have to do that. Major state schools are fine and your kid probably is not getting into Harvard anyways’. But it goes deeper than that. Having a teenager babysit is verboten to these people(I’ve had a ten year old do it- although not for more than a couple of hours). Putting the kids in the backyard to amuse themselves is verboten to these people. Spanking the kids when you catch them doing something bad is verboten- you have to just keep a constant watch to prevent the behavior instead. And they intentionally had twins?
I’ve talked before about how the core red tribe looks forwards to having elementary school sons(and they do- T-ball and children’s soccer are not seen as tedious in my circles). I think the blues vision of parenting is having 16 year olds instead and the relentlessly unpleasant nature of it all is by trying to make it more like tiger parenting a late teenager(disclaimer- do not have a teenager, don’t plan on tiger parenting when I do).
What makes you say that? The babies weren't IVF-conceived according to Scott.
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Interesting point. Perhaps for the blue tribe the portion of the kid's life where they're 'useless' and have to learn all the basic stuff just to function at all is very tedious (and distracts from more 'important' pursuits) and feels like a pure cost center, then their post-adolescence of finding a passion, learning 'real' ideas, and finally being able to have an impact on the world seems like an 'investment!' Under that model, they would 'tiger parent' their young child solely to ensure they're prepared to launch as early as possible, then pull every string they can to get their kid into the elite circles and to boost their status since the parents are acutely aware of how 'important' that status is to outcomes. Which is why they don't like to hear:
Oy, yeah. Funny enough I did in fact get an interview for Harvard, but did not get in, and went to a State School and had a fine time.
But I was brought up not being certain I would go to college at all so this was not a major disappointment for me!
It wasn't until years later that I finally realized that the Ivy league is just the "budding elite factory" and that if I had optimized harder for getting in, and I managed to attend, my life trajectory would have been MASSIVELY different. And not in all positive ways, I think.
Power laws rule everything around me, and Blue Tribe is probably HEAVILY aware of that, whereas Red tribe may sort of understand it but to them it at best seems a fact of nature, rather than a game to be played.
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