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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?
As a new parent with a 3-month old baby, I'd be interested in this too.
My totally unscientific intuition, sort of based on how heritable everything is, is that as long as you don't totally fuck up (feed him, don't keep him locked up in a dark room, have him socialize with other children and adults) it doesn't really matter/whatever an upper-middle class person would naturally do is fine. My wife initially fell victim to tons of the baby gear marketing, but once you realize that your baby is equally happy in the $50 generic amazon swing as he is in the $300 fancy swing, you kind of apply that lesson to child rearing writ large.
It's probably more important for his happiness to make sure he breathes through his nose than it is to play Bach by his crib while he sleeps or put him in one of those Russian math programs. We'll try, as much as possible, to avoid a burnout-inducing, intense middle school/high school, although that's hard where we live because a lot of our neighbors are that type. In my job I see plenty of kids coming out of grueling East Asian-style schooling and it absolutely puts them at a long-term disadvantage.
Hopefully the kid will be interested in something and we can nurture him to go deep in that direction, and hopefully it's as straightforward as just exposing him to a lot of things and seeing what he likes. The main thing I'd be at a loss over what to do is if he was just passionless and wanted to watch esports all day or something because I'm not like that and it'd be hard for me to understand and intervene.
Probably if you are hell-bent on raising a chess prodigy you should teach him chess early but that and related things seem like totally pathological goals to shoot for with your kid.
Are we the same person?
But after the neighbor boy showed up wearing a LGBTQ pin my wife has gone from a a huge fan of how diverse our local public elementary school (look at all those refugee kids in the playground) to saying we need to gear up to get the kid in the hyper conservative evangelical private school twenty miles away.
Hm? That sounds like the opposite - OP is going to choose cheaper swings; your wife is going to choose fancier school.
Probably should have made it clearer. It's a different train of thought. Wife has gotten over the baby expensive things, but unfortunately is shifting to future expensive things.
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That's interesting. The article about S Korea posted here a couple weeks ago seemed to also about this -- a pathological fear of not being the most excellent with the most excellent child leading to millions of people failing to form intimate relationships or have kids at all.
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As the parent of a 25 month old it makes them very angry to not breathe through their nose for about the first year! Just a heads up!
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