site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   15058 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The Long Arm of the State and Parenting

@ControlsFreak challenged me on my assumption that society has changed to the extent that the average parent faced real consequences if they treated their children the way every child was treated even 40 years ago, in the dark days of the 1980s.

Immediately I fell into personal anecdote, “I’ve been pressured by other women to supervise my children doing tasks I was able to do alone at the same age.” “All the parks have signs that children under 12 need to be supervised.” I even gave a personal anecdote about an Amtrak train that made it seem like I am disturbingly misremembering things or a short-lived policy was walked back. This gave me pause. So I did the more rational thing and asked, what kind of data can I find on this?

Looking around, I found a study that analyzed how many kids had parental rights terminated in the year 2000 compared to now. Their data only goes to 2016, but it does present a trend:

The cumulative prevalence of having parental rights terminated for both parents was 0.7% in 2000. It then increased to just under 1.0% in 2007 before decreasing between 2007 and 2012, ultimately falling to 0.9%. Starting in around 2012, the rate of the termination of parental rights started to accelerate, reaching a high of around 1.1% by the end of the study period in 2016. This 0.4% increase is equivalent to a 60% increase from 2010 to 2016.

There is a trend of more children being taken away from their parents, which is what I expect.

For every parent that has a child removed, there will be more that are investigated. What does that number look like?

Now, the claim in the title: Does CPS investigate one out of every three American children? The answer to this one is not available directly in the primary source reports and the underlying data is only available after an application for research use, so we’ll have to trust a group of researchers at the Washington University school of public health. They download and de-duplicate the master data files from 2003-2014 and confirm that 37% of American children are the subject of at least one screened-in referral to CPS from ages 0-18. We can sanity check this against the numbers we saw above: Around 2.5% of children are the subject of a screened-in referral each year. If about 2 percentage points of those are first-time subjects each year, then in 18 years you’ve investigated 36% of American children. There are extra complications when considering the children entering and leaving the cohort each year, but the 37% number estimated by these researchers makes sense given what we know from the CPS reports.

1/3 of American children are investigated by the time they are 18. That sounds like a ridiculous number. Are American parents just becoming disturbingly vicious and attacking their kids more than in the past?

Additionally, the most common type of maltreatment found by CPS is neglect. 64% of substantiated victims are victims of neglect only and most of these neglect cases are specifically about lack of sufficient supervision rather than lack of access to food or clothing.

No. Basically my intuition - the intuition of most parents - is correct. Insufficiently supervising your child will get you a visit from CPS and your child potentially removed. The data bears that out.

Now I am curious. Denizens of the Motte: How many of you see children between the ages of 8-12 out and about without a parent in your day-to-day life? How does that compare with the freedom you or your parents had when they were children (if they were born before 1990?)

How many of you were allowed to do simple things, like run to grab an item at the grocery store by yourself, before you were 10? How old were you when you first got to buddy up with a similar age child and split off from your family at an county fair or water park? If you are a parent now, what age would you consider this safe to allow your child to do?

Now I am curious. Denizens of the Motte: How many of you see children between the ages of 8-12 out and about without a parent in your day-to-day life?

Rarely, but I'm not sure whether it's because kids are not trusted to be on their own or because his schedule is kept full by his parents. Comparing my nephew at any age to myself at that age I certainly had way less structured activities scheduled to keep myself busy. All my free time would basically be either me playing on the computer/watching TV on my own or playing outside unsupervised (or very loosely supervised) with friends. Sometimes I guess I was also being an annoying little brother watching whatever my brother was doing. By contrast, my nephew is driven from sports training to playdates every weekend.

How does that compare with the freedom you or your parents had when they were children (if they were born before 1990?)

I was born before the 90s, and went on my own walking to and from my elementary school every day, at 6 years old. It was considered a normal thing back then.

I like to think I turned out fine, but I'm conflicted as to how I will want to raise kids if I have them, because my own upbringing goes against both "old" and "new" rules. I was allowed to be on my own and wasn't really "kept busy" by my parents the way kids nowaday are, but also I was an early "screen junkie". My parents had barely any control over the time I would spend on the computer, and I certainly could go on full-day binges.

I was born before the 90s, and went on my own walking to and from my elementary school every day, at 6 years old. It was considered a normal thing back then.

Same, in the 80's, I walked about a mile home from school in first grade (though I got a ride to school). That year, we moved to only about a half mile from the school, and I never got another ride to or from school until my friends were old enough to drive.

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Were structured activities a way to occupy a child who could no longer legally be left to his own devices?

We assume it's college-track related, but college admissions don't ask about elementary-age activities and most reasonably healthy kids can start a sport in the sixth grade and make Varsity in High School, there's not much advantage to most sports to start at age 4. Music lessons and certain sports on the edges are the outlier here (ballet and gymnastics for example.) But then again, my brother started band as a teenager, taught himself the piano, and away he went. Not every pianist needs to start at the age of 2.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats