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Do specific parenting choices really make a difference for how people eventually turn out?
@gog posted a comment fairly deep in the thread about courtesy, which seemed worth discussing further. (https://www.themotte.org/post/812/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/176067?context=8#context)
The obvious: misery is bad all on its own, regardless of whether it affects future earnings. So, for instance, Aaron Stark’s childhood was bad (https://youtube.com/watch?v=su4Is-kBGRw) and his parents should feel bad, even though he eventually turned out alright. It sounds like Aella’s childhood was bad and her parents should feel bad (https://aella.substack.com/p/a-disobedience-guide-for-children is not about her childhood specifically, but is the kind of discourse she and others with similar childhoods end up in. FWIW, “my parents are too violent, maybe I should escalate to breaking windows” sounds like an absolutely terrible plan), and it’s debatable whether she turned out alright or not.
Also obvious: It’s possible to prevent children from learning basic things like reading by never reading to them, teaching them, or exposing them to reading culture, not having books at home, not reading or writing oneself, etc, as has been common historically among impoverished households. There seem to be a fair number of children on the margin, who can learn to read just fine with proper instruction and interesting materials, but fall off with poor instruction and boring materials (c.f. Los Angelas whole language program). There also seem to be a fair number of people who will learn to read with just the Bible and an adult who will eventually, somewhat irritably answer their questions.
Contentious: given a certain genetic makeup, family environment, and baseline level of things like nutrition, how much difference do things like daycare, schooling methods, or specific actions make?
Does teaching a child to read at 3 vs 6 matter? Does teaching them algebra at 9 vs 16 matter? Does it only matter under certain circumstances (such as a future mathematician needing to learn math early, or a future world class musician needing to learn to play an instrument early)? Do the children of the sorts of people who like cramming them full of Math and Culture and Literature end up with a richer inner life than if their parents hadn’t had time and energy for that?
I’ve read a lot of fairly surface level articles and reviews about this by people like Scott Alexander, Brand Caplan, and Freddie DeBoer, but mostly forget the details. They tend toward saying that most things work about as well as other things, but some situations are miserable or waste a lot of money and resources, and wasting billions of dollars making people miserable for no reason is probably bad.
I was homeschooled, and am now teaching public school, and sending my daughters to public preschool. Several of my friends are homeschooling or planning to once their kids are old enough, and more are stay at home parents than not, despite being generally lower middle class. I don’t have anything against homeschooling, it just isn’t pragmatic given my personal financial situation and the personalities of my older daughter vs husband and I. This might change as she gets older, she’s still in pre-K, and when I try to teach her something, she tends to argue with me about it.
My general impression on the ground, as it were, with two children and teaching 600 elementary children, is that there is not necessarily any One True Way that will work for every child. And that there are children who are thriving in the large elementary school, and children who are miserable there. Their autism program, especially, seems very stressful for everyone involved, like placing it inside a very large elementary school was probably a bad idea.
Both my daughters seem pretty happy with their publicly funded daycare/pre-K. Two year old is always waving bye to everyone and seems pretty happy to see them. Four year old talks about liking the playground, some friends, and learning to write her name. We bought food from the school cook, and it was quite good. Gog’s preschool did sound pretty unfortunate.
Is there any useful way to systematize any of these observations? Any high leverage changes people are able to make but don’t?
A year and a half ago Scott wrote an ACX post about why his writing had changed from the way it was 2013–2016, and it prompted me to think about the kinds of pieces I would rather read from wizened psychiatrist Scott rather than young buck Scott. One of these is his current thoughts on shared environment and the effects of parenting. Another is the state of social science research on spanking; that would give him a chance to apply his thoughts on shared environment, and it’s culture-war-adjacent enough to examine the effects of bias but outside the current focus of the culture war.
Aella’s descriptions of her own childhood make for somber but thought-provoking reading. As an evangelical Christian, though not a parent, I wonder what went wrong to produce the kind of abuse she went through. One possibility: maybe evangelical parenting advice is particularly difficult for parents on the autism spectrum to apply. Aella has described herself and her father (but not her mother) as on the spectrum. Evangelical advice focuses pretty heavily on responding to the child’s heart and will. Young children especially wear their hearts on their sleeves, but if you struggle to notice emotional cues you may miss the point where you have been severe enough to discipline effectively and you may see obstinance where there is none.
It’s also interesting that, in spite of all that, Aella writes positively about her homeschooling experiences and negatively about her brief time in public school.
I hope he does revisit this. Now that he has children of his own, something along these lines might be on his mind. He wrote very negatively about his own experiences attending a fairly good public high school. I wonder what alternatives he would consider if his own children experience something similar.
I've spent a lot of time in conservative Christian homeschooling circles, and encountered families similar to Aella's, though it didn't necessarily come out until years or even decades later, and some I haven't kept in touch, so I still don't know how things really were. It seems like there are families who fall into a feedback loop of thinking they should be the Best, Most Righteous family, so they decide to adopt some disabled children from another country and homeschool them, despite not really having the right personality for this, and then get super worked up when the children turn out to not also be the best and most grateful, who will know how much personal space they need and when, despite so much expense, effort and sacrifice. Or they go become missionaries in Africa and bring their families, then get super worked up about their wife (who is on malaria medication while homeschooling multiple small children) not being the Best and Shiniest. St John in Jane Eyre somewhat captures this. Very intense, very smart, rather interesting -- much too intense to have small children around all day every day. The homeschooling part probably goes better when the father is the more intense parent, ad the mother is going along with it out of belief.
Large public schools do seem like pretty awful places for children with autism as well -- very loud all the time, bright artificial lights, no privacy, very few choices, very strict schedules, lots of transitions through bright, loud hallways every day. I can see how she wouldn't like that either.
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