Socioeconomic status sure seems to have an impact on outcomes, so I think it depends how broadly you define “raising children”. But I think looking at just the most extreme individuals and trying to glean lessons isn’t going to be helpful because those outliers require extreme scenarios to be generated. If we use proficiency at playing soccer as an analogy, you really want your kid to be good at it, but it’s not really important for him/her to be Ronaldo. Being Ronaldo probably requires all sorts of random, extreme stuff that isn’t really relevant to being good enough to play semi-professionally.
This is true. I probably should have started another post, saying that there’s basically very limited statistical evidence in pedagogical literature. It’s all mostly just shooting in the dark.
In America the person is a legal adult at 18. As a parent you are legally responsible for the raising that child to 18. There is no legal requirement for a child after age 18 to care for, listen to, or even stay in contact with a parent. That relationship between an adult child and the parent is voluntary on both people’s part.
- Raise your child to be a self sufficient adult at 18.
- Give them as many tools to be successful as possible with the training and awareness of the pros and cons of the tools you give.
- By 18 you as the parent need to recognize the voluntary nature of the relationship. You can continue to provide support with that understanding.
- Realize each child is different and may require different methods or levels of investment to assist them in bringing them to their preferred level of success.
Summary: Have a plan. Realize you will most likely need to deviate from the plan. Accept that the measure of success that matters is the child’s perspective not yours.
Good parenting is a paradox because it seems to allow kids grow up to be themselves without determining who they are.
This is the nature of love, which is empowering and supportive rather than controlling.
The major danger with the “parenting” craze, in my opinion, is that the desire to protect a child can cause supportive love to inadvertently turn into controlling objectification. All under good intentions, the child comes to be treated like an investment project.
Here’s a similar question for you Colonel. What is the right amount of time to spend working on your GoActuary posts?
My understanding is that individual parental decisions don’t matter that much as long as they are not extreme. Cosleeping and letting them cry it out both work fine.
Socioeconomic status matters more in terms of your neighborhood, family connections, security, etc., which are part of raising kids but not parental decisions exactly.
I usually wait until I accumulate 10 or so posts in my mind and then I log on for 5 minutes to post them all at once and then log off so as to minimize my time on here.
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The trouble is all the things are correlated with one another. Any time you’re studying these different decisions you’re controlling for socioeconomic status, although the types of people making those decisions might be largely determined by socioeconomic status (or really other variables entirely, but that are also correlated). So we can only really tell the extreme things, like the positive effects of reading to your children.
I would think that there should be a lot of variance of many of these decisions within a given socioeconomic group. Especially over time. Once the study comes out that reading to your kids is really helpful then maybe most wealthier families do it. But before that there should have been a lot of variance of reading time.
Freakonomics (page 158) has already published a study that says reading to your kids is not correlated with test scores.
However (page 157), having a lot of books in the house does correlate with test scores.
(WFH does have its advantages. Walked into the next room and pulled the book from the shelf. (But, I’d have this book in my cubicle at work, so…))
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Not quite 100% accurate.
Microsoft Word - BehavLegalAgeofMajority-1.rtf (wustl.edu)
In two states (AL and NE), it’s 19.
Y’all might find the age of majority for several countries of interest in the linked document above.
ITA. I think that too many parents don’t realize the benefits of the idea of a “right to failure” . . . that is, it’s okay to be wrong (how should one respond in this case?) and that a lot of things in life come about through trial & error (success-on-the-first-try is a terrible expectation to place on kids).
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Fuck them kids, I am going all in for myself
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Thank you. I did not know that.
Absolutely. Unless you have they never have to work money, letting your kids try and fail, letting them get chewed up by the system a little prepares them for the real world of being just another adult trying to make their way.
Dad! Is that you! Did you get your cigarettes?
disclaimer
This disparaging of my father is not factual and was said for the purposes of humour.
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This is how it feels, that the manual is for a different make and model than what I have.
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Just wait for the next 399… the manual ought to work for maybe 1 of them, if you’re lucky.
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The key is to diversify