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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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Apparently my whole feed is late 30s bloggers writing about child rearing now, even the ones I subscribed to for the AI news.

Today it's Zvi, continuing last week's discussion from ACX about free range kids, with a side of Aella's very odd childhood and perspective on allowing children agency.

Zvi, as usual, has dozens of somewhat interesting links, and is worth checking out. A lot of it is related to the issue that reporting parents for potential abuse or neglect is costless and sometimes mandatory, but being investigated imposes fairly high costs, and so even among families that are not especially worried about their kids getting hurt walking to a friend's house or a local store, they might be worried about them being picked up by the police, and that can affect their ability to do things other than stare at screens or bicker with their parents. I have some sympathy for this. When I was growing up, inside the city limits, there weren't any kids I knew or wanted to play with in the immediate neighborhood, or any shops I wanted to go to, and my mother was also a bit worried about getting in trouble with the law, so I mostly played in the yard. But perhaps there would have been, if wandering were more normalized? I asked my parents about this, and they said that when they were younger, they also didn't necessarily have neighborhood friends they wanted to visit, and also mostly played in their own yards and houses, but they could have wandered around more if they'd wanted. That was in the 60s, and I'm not sure it's heading in the same direction as the ratosphere zeitgeist or not. My dad does remember picking up beer for his grandma as a kid, which is also mixed.

My impression of the past is mostly formed by British and Scottish novels, where lower class children would rove around in packs, causing trouble (a la Oliver Twist), and upper class children would have governesses, tutors, or go to boarding school, where they were supervised a bit less than now, or about the same amount, and the boys would oppress each other a bit. Upper class girls could go for a walk in the garden with their governess. The police probably have an interest in stopping children from forming spontaneous gangs, which the suburban families were seeking to avoid. The not firmly classed rural children (educated, able to become teachers, but not able to enter high society) are represented as roving the countryside a bit (Anne of Green Gables, Little House on the Prairie, George Macdonald novels), and get into a bit of trouble, but there were only a few families around, and everyone knew who everyone was. My grandmother grew up in such a place, then divorced before it was cool, and taught in the South Pacific. I can't tell if wandering through the heather or prairie a lot is better or worse than reading lots of books and playing in the backyard.

The free range stuff, while it may be important for some people, seems a bit orthogonal to the Everything is Childcare problem (probably more about lack of extended family), since the age at which a child could feasibly be wandering the countryside or neighborhood (8? 10?) is the same age when they can be quietly reading novels or playing with their siblings or being dropped off at events while their parents drink a coffee or visit a bookstore or something. Unless that's also not a thing anymore?

Anyway, I don't necessarily have a firm conclusion to present, other than that that people are talking about it. @Southkraut gave me a bit of pushback for writing on screens in my daughter's presence, which I felt a bit bad about, but also not. I do agree with Zvi and Scott that it's probably bad if Everything is Childcare, and parents aren't allowed to read an article and post about it because the children might be infected by the proximity to a screen. (The children are painting. They have used their agency to decide that they want to paint, asked for the paints and supplies they need, and the older one has made a little notebook full of concept sketches)

Aella did have a weird and indeed abusive childhood, but mixed in with it there's bits where the parents were not being unreasonable. A kid that is so sensitive they burst into tears because "people will be looking at me" does need to learn how to handle being in public. When one of my nephews was a kid, they were very sensitive and lacking in confidence, so his parents signed him up for a taekwondo class. And he did like it, and it made a huge difference in coming out of his shell. So for "burning with shame and tears streaming down my cheeks" Aella, the parents were not in fact being cruel to insist "you have to do this or else".

Also for someone smart, she acted kinda dumb. "Oh no, if I do this thing, I'll be punished" but she can't figure out - e.g. with the spankings - "okay, grit my teeth, suffer this one, and then I'm free". Instead it took eleven beatings until she worked out "do it and get it over with". I'm sorry for her, but she definitely was not the sharpest tool in the box when figuring out how to deal with the situation. Probably because she was so over-sensitive and over-emotional, hence the karate lessons were the kind of outside distraction she did need to learn how to toughen up.

I know that sounds unsympathetic, but there really are parts of her story where I can't help but go "okay, this thing here? this was in fact good for you". Like this little anecdote:

And I had very normal hygiene habits for many years after leaving home - it was only after meeting a girl with gorgeous hair who told me “oh my secret? I just don’t wash it” when I started experimenting with weird stuff.

Yeeeeah. Someone who stops washing because somebody else said they didn't wash their hair (probably meaning they didn't wash it every day, or didn't use commercial shampoos rather than their own homemade blend of eggs and beer) is someone way too easily influenced and without any sense of "is this going too far?" I probably would have forced baby Aella to go to karate classes, too.

I read your post and this led me to then read Aella's. I don't know, the points made by others responding to you are valid--she was just a kid. She seems to have had a very messed up childhood and I feel for her. This doesn't change my mind about her--it is, in fact, exactly what I might have expected had I ever given it much thought. I have known women with backgrounds that are variations on the same violent/controlled theme, and they have all been, unfortunately, intolerable to me (and some themselves given to violence). Which is odd because I have had a savior complex most of my life (I'm using a popular term here, I don't know or particularly care what the psychological term is).

I've never been interested in finding out more about this woman. I don't wish her ill, but I find the terminally online male obsessive fawning over her a strange sign of the times. Not a good one.

After “aella is dumb, because child aella was afraid of pain”, OP chimes in with “aella is lazy and superficial, because child aella cried after being publicly embarassed”. After these two unflattering bits of psychoanalysis (by two women), you lament the “male obsessive fawning“ over her.

This doesn't change my mind about her--it is, in fact, exactly what I might have expected had I ever given it much thought.

Is it, though? Would you say: religious conservative upbringing leads to damaged girls?

Or perhaps: abusive parenting leads to sexually liberated women?

But someone’s worldview must be in shambles, and maybe all.

“aella is dumb, because child aella was afraid of pain”,

That's not what I meant, and I expressed myself badly. I'm saying that she was old enough to work out that refusing would only lead to more beating, that this is exactly what happened, and that she was unable to motivate herself to grit her teeth and accept immediate pain in order to avoid future pain. That probably ties in with the "I used to cry when hitting the pinata because people were looking at me" part about over-sensitivity and over-thinking. Yes, it was a horrible choice. Yes, her father was wrong.

I am not sure characterizing the experiences she had as a child as "religious conservative" is accurate, or at least it's drawing the Venn diagram a bit large to encompass what I'd consider pathologic violence. The getting whacked with the stick bit repeatedly when told "come here" is far more a weird, violence and control for the sake of it experience than simple religious conservatism at work.

I have no idea if religious conservativism leads to damaged girls. I do know absent or distant father figures, and particularly violent and/or emotionally manipulative ones, do very much lead to damaged girls. And that's what she described in her partial memoir that was linked.

Also your characterizing Aella simply as a "sexually liberated woman" seems off here. Something something motte and bailey.

If I were her friend ot acquaintance (I'm not) I expect she'd not be able to tolerate me, as I'd be telling her all this LSD and free love isn't going to work out well for her in later life.

Also your characterizing Aella simply as a "sexually liberated woman" seems off here. Something something motte and bailey.

That is the point. It’s supposed to be a dilemma. The conservative tends to favour an education similar to aella’s, but detests what she has become (“damaged”). The liberal otoh detests aella’s education (“abuse”), yet finds she ended up fine (”sexually liberated”) .

So the lesson is: do the opposite, like George (not you). Every instinct they have, was proven wrong.

As to my own opinion, I don't think she's damaged, because for one, she doesn't think she's damaged. She also seems to have a pleasant undamaged personality, not bitter, mean or aggressive.

And I don't think parenting matters much, so that's how I escape my own dilemma.

The liberal otoh detests aella’s education (“abuse”), yet finds she ended up fine (”sexually liberated”) .

Nobody on either side of the aisle wants their daughter to grow up to be a whore, even an expensive one. The School of Hard Knocks needs no policy waivers to award Aella's parents an F for parenting.

That’s you though. You don’t have a consistent liberal position, you think a father’s main responsibility is to ensure his daughter’s eternal chastity.

Try to look past the whoring, and she seems perfectly nice. Top drawer, actually. If parents could mass produce aellas instead of the bush league kids they currently turn out, the world would be a richer, happier, more interesting place.

As to my own opinion, I don't think she's damaged, because for one, she doesn't think she's damaged.

But something is off-kilter where she admits her hygiene habits changed because someone said "I don't wash my hair" (and now we have Aella happily revealing that she has had more sexual encounters than showers in a given period). That's... extraordinarily vulnerable to suggestion, where I'm sure the person who said they didn't wash their hair never meant it to be taken as "and so you should stop getting washed at all".

Is that due to her weird abusive upbringing, or to some quirk of her psychology where she was an over-sensitive child who imagined catastrophic outcomes? I have no idea. But I don't think that can be parsed as "oh it's perfectly normal and fine".

It’s completely fine. I agree with the rationalist critique that people should be quicker to change their mind and habits, when they find a seemingly good idea, which is what she did. It’s absurd to accuse her of conformism (“vulnerable to suggestion”) .

'The most valuable things about me are my tits'?

She didn’t say that, and there’s nothing wrong with being valued for your tits, or your abs, or your yellow hair.

Only God, my dear,

Could love you for yourself alone

And not your yellow hair.

The conservative tends to favour an education similar to aella’s, but detests what she has become (“damaged”).

Conservatives absolutely do not tend to favor educations similar to her, you are attacking a caricature. No conservative I know would beat their child twelve times in a row as they're crying in pain. That's very tail-end behavior for EXTREME religious conservatives, and religious in the weird Southern Baptist sense.

My opinion is just my opinion and is not meant to represent the macro level worldview of the group you're labeling "conservative." I'm speaking from my own experience of the world, particularly over time, and my views have evolved since I was much younger and the world seemed an eternal spring.

I've read on this very forum the view that parenting doesn't matter much, possibly related to a widespread view that nature trumps nurture. I think parenting most definitely matters--I'm absolutely certain of it--and also because of my own experiences and from watching people grow up around me.

I wouldn't suggest a certain parenting style will produce particular results all the time, but that's different from saying it doesn't matter.

I am not a psychologist thank god, and am not charged with having any particular view of this woman's psychology, damaged or not. I would suggest that her lifestyle at 30 is probably not sustainable in any sort of happy fun time past, say, 40 or beyond. Thankfully it's none of my business.

My read is that Aella’s problems are a combination of:

A: Pretend Patriachal Upbringing

I. Her father wants to fulfill his role as leader of the family. This social technology has basically been lost by the 80’s and 90’s, so he fills the gap with a untested hypothesis.

II. But he’s not actually the leader of the family, the government is, and deep down, everyone knows this. It’s why the image of the father subtly threatening his daughter’s garbage boyfriend is an image of hilarity in the modern era. Everyone knows Dad is completely emasculated.

III. He can try to raise her right (and be bad at it, possibly, but directionally correct.) Also, being blunt, he seems ignorant of certain commonsense items, such as paying to send his daughter to a college in line with his ideals, whether he thinks he’s the perfect daughter or not. Better to send your “troublesome” daughter to Pensacola Christian where she can meet a good man, than throw her to the world’s lions.

IV. But once she’s 18, at the latest, she is free to do anything she wants, and as a young attractive woman, in a world where women are wonderful, she discovers she can wrap a lot of people around her finger and potentially is naive to the fact that they may very much not have her best interests in mind.

B: Women are Human Beings

I. As was alluded to elsewhere in the thread, it’s not surprising that Aella wants to be valued primarily for her innate characteristics. She’s a woman, that’s par for the course. Hence the joke about battle writing in women’s fantasy novels vs. men’s fantasy novels.

II. Aella eventually and unsurprisingly discovered that her most marketable asset is her sexuality. This has been common knowledge, although not phrased that same way, for all of human history prior to the last 100 years or so. 

III. As I previously mentioned, at this point no one in her family has any capability whatsoever to pull her back from the brink, either by force or by reason. For example, we would have much less of a drug problem if parents could bring their children of any age back into the family home, legally and by force, to separate the kid from the drugs. A good, or even mediocre, father is very likely to think the same way about his daughter and prostitution, but is in the same fashion stymied to prevent it.

IV. Aella, at the center of a number of failures and bad incentives, turns to sex work because then she doesn’t actually have to accomplish anything to earn her money, and can receive market value for her innate characteristics. 

V. One of her innate characteristics is being an undeniably smart wordcel, so she is able to justify all this by making it sound cool and empowering, and she is in the Bay Area sphere where lots of excellent rationalizers both live and want to fuck her.

VI. *Et voila*, here we are talking about her.

To summarize, mostly I just feel bad for her. If she converts to traditionalist Catholicism in her 60’s, it won’t surprise me at all. I think she is papering over many terrible things with her mental firepower, eventually it will all catch up to her, it will turn out the money and the fame were fleeting, and she will turn that high IQ to higher things at last.

Additionally, as a father myself, I think fathers should be very aware of the very real limits placed on our ability to lead our families. I don’t know what the best solution is, but cosplaying as Abraham ain’t it. Be as unemasculated as possible, without going to jail, I guess.

Not George, but religious conservative upbringing does not combine well with sexual liberation in adulthood and this making a damaged woman is… not a weird thing.

So would a less restrictive, less religious childhood, combined with sexual liberation, be less damaging then? If not, what does your theory predict? Everything, based on anything?

If her parents were blue tribe perverts who raped her and beat her and she grew up without a father, would that not be easier for you to explain? And even easier for your worldview, if aella was more of a trainwreck than she is. I think this is part of the reason why so many conservative people complain about her (and ‘have never been interested in finding out more about this woman’), because for all her whoring she doesn’t seem all that damaged. Weird for sure, but not more than other rationalists.

because for all her whoring she doesn’t seem all that damaged

'The most valuable things about me are my tits'? That's not striking you as unusual for a smart woman? I don't know, I get from that short piece about her upbringing why she wants to retreat into merely the physical and shut off her mind, because of the early experiences of constantly being hyper-sensitive and also having to be hyper-conscious and in control of every word and action - reverting to animal instinct is a welcome relief and I understand that part of the benefits people find in being submissive is sinking into that state of not having to think or do or be in control, just be a body moved about and reacting to stimuli under the direction of another.

But even there, she wants attention for her sexuality to be seen, to be desired, to be valued. And if she thinks that "I have until I'm 35 to enjoy being hot, then when I'm 35-45 I'll have to work at it" - then what? 45 and there's nothing there anyone cares about in her anymore, because her tits are no longer perky and there are other sets of 20-30 year old hot tits out there? That's kinda sad, and I hope she has more going on once her sexual attractiveness wanes. I hope she has people who like her for being Aella, not for being "hot tits girl".

I am not interested in the personal lives of eccentric prostitutes(quite literally, I noped out of learning about Aella at the ‘showered 20 times a year’ stat- this was also the first time I heard much about her). It’s entirely possible that she’s less screwed up than I’d gotten the impression of. I am simply noting that girls raised in a sheltered, conservative manner often emerge from experimenting with hookup culture as broken women.

I'm mildly interested in her due to the overlap of Christian homeschooling, which my childhood was adjacent to, and the Bay Area Ratosphere, which I became interested in from Scott's writings. I want one of them to write a social novel, something like Tom Wolfe, about their culture. And there are several fine writers there, but as far as I know they're all bloggers, not novelists. (Unsung excepted, but it's philosophical fantasy more than social observation)

Adding:

“aella is lazy and superficial, because child aella cried after being publicly embarassed”

Something that I find interesting about her stories is their ambiguity. It's unclear whether she was being publicly embarrassed (by her parents enrolling her in a class of much younger children), or if they were doing the normal thing, she would have worked her way out soon enough had she chosen to pursue it, and she just felt embarrassment due to social anxiety or something. I took it as the latter, because she related it to not liking to hit a piñata because the other kids would look at her, not to something most people would find humiliating. The freaking out, crying, begging her parents to let her leave, probably in front of the instructor, and trying to run away does sound very embarrassing, for both her and her parents.

she just felt embarrassment due to social anxiety or something

That's what I took away from the anecdote; it just happened that the other kids were toddlers (it was a beginners' class after all) and she had the hyper-sensitivity that she describes as crying because other people looked at her at a party. So to put it in CBT terms she was catastrophizing - "if I'm in a toddler class, everyone will think I'm only as good as a toddler!" There's no indication there were other people there than the teacher of the class, maybe (but not for sure) other parents. She was convinced other people were thinking about her, paying attention to her, being critical of her - and that's all down to the lack of self-confidence that being made go to a class like that is addressing. Well, and from the home environment where her parents were constantly watching and being critical, but that's another matter.

Ah I may as well simp to the end.

Aella really likes being valued more for her innate characteristics than for accomplishments she has to work hard for

I don’t think that’s fair. Who doesn’t value being young and attractive? She merely wants to advertise and enjoy all the advantages and opportunities being young and attractive confers upon her, without being slowed down by old rules no one really understands, and the self-interest of less desirable rivals.

Why can’t you be valued for both, innate characteristics and accomplishments (innate consciousness, ha) ?

I don’t think that’s fair. Who doesn’t value being young and attractive?

Sure.

I don't necessarily think that she's wrong. When four year olds are asked what they want to be, and the boys say firefighter, and the girls say princess, they aren't wrong, even if the boys could literally become firefighters whereas the girls could only metaphorically become princesses.

The karate story is weird. Plenty of parents would be upset and embarrassed if their seven year old walked into a trial karate lesson, saw that the other kids were smaller, and proceeded to throw a tantrum about it, then hide in the bathroom sobbing. That's significantly worse than the average public school kid who's parents spent way less effort instilling discipline into. It's more in line with the public school kids who have behavior action plans in place. It's not too surprising that her parents would be pretty shocked, they must have actually believed in the early obedience regime, or why go to so much trouble? It turns out they were wrong, and would have gotten better a psychological grounding by reading Notes From Underground.

Who doesn’t value being young and attractive?

Confucian societies?

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