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