There is nothing politically or scientifically incorrect about saying that parents who educate their kids raise more successful children.
It is both scientifically and politically incorrect to say that parenting doesn't matter, only the color of the child's skin.
It is just all around incorrect to say that groups of people raise worse kids intentionally due to culture. Children raised by uneducated parents surrounded by crime are worse off due to their environment, and their culture is a product of that environment. It is only by the collective will of society (e.g., promoting enlightenment ideals over the objections of the superstitious masses, which happened longer ago in some places vs. others by political chance) that this changes. It is politically incorrect to blame people who are in these situations instead of bringing about the change to fix it.
Whether or not this argument is valid or sound, this is not a politically correct argument to make because the conclusion is not politically correct:
> 3. Any improvement in capability must be due to environmental changes over the past 10000 years(nurture) as nature has not changed
Claiming that the environment is significantly responsible for how kids turn out is going to draw a lot of ire from those cultures (and subcultures) who consistently turn out lower performing individuals.
In effect, the argument that kids turn out better in a particular environment is equivalent to the argument that some cultures are inferior.
Hang on, what are you actually arguing for? I thought blaming politics on genetics was what you were upset about in the first place.
Are you actually saying it's immoral to say that the circumstances of a person's upbringing can affect their adult behavior? Because that goes way beyond just misinterpreting the article.
I don't have have reliable scientific evidence either way, but my speculation is that the vast majority of differences in outcomes between kids can be attributed to: genetics, nutrition, parental wealth, and education (in that order). I've found no reason to believe that "hav[ing] an active role in your child's life" (versus hiring good nannies and teachers to do the same), has much long-term impact on kids. Sometimes, when I'm cynical, I think it's a kind of moralistic conventional wisdom that's mostly perpetuated as a way to keep women "in their place."
I looked at your links, but I'm still not sure I buy it. All of these seem to quote the same study, and it doesn't involve any child under 3, which is actually where a lot of early childhood development happens. That's the time when a child who's left alone in a room will basically turn into a vegetable.
I do agree that there's no magic formula for being a great parent. The baby Beethoven phenom, best color to paint your baby's room, etc are indeed useless. But that's good parents who actually care trying to read studies and be better. These parents are involved, and care. Not all parents are like that.
From your second article:
"In fact, the study found one key instance when parent time can be particularly harmful to children. That’s when parents, mothers in particular, are stressed, sleep-deprived, guilty and anxious."
This sounds like exactly the kind of thing that would happen less with older, more established parents.
On the other hand, if the parents can't hold a job, or are addicted to drugs, I think you'd be hard pressed to say that doesn't have an effect on childhood outcomes. If anything, parents who are criminals are more likely to have children that are criminals.
If you want to say criminality is genetic, that's a fair argument. But I believe it's more likely to be about class/race/means, and is a set of learned behaviors.
I think there's a limit to how good parenting can affect outcomes to the positive (genetics). But I also think bad parenting can't be ruled out. And none of these studies talk about sub-par parenting.
No, women (and men) are not “incorrect” for having been misguided by their upbringing. Children aren’t to blame for the way they were raised, they have no choice in the matter. Those who influenced them in that way are the ones who are incorrect.
Didn't listen to the podcast, but if the thesis is borrowed from Judith Rich Harris[0], then the GP's claim is still valid. To wit, parents' parenting practices have limited impact on their children (vs. peers and genetics) but their success and income do (via genetics and the influence of wealth over peer environment).
The author points out something he may not have even intended: that parenting might not matter at all, despite the raging discussions about which parenting style is better.
In fact, lots of research on twins and adopted children suggests that parenting matters very little in shaping a child's personality and skills, while biology and peer groups matter a lot. Identical twins turn out quite similar regardless of whether they grow up in the same family, while adopted siblings are as different as any random people. (Check "How the Mind Works" by Pinker for a great overview.) People have a hard time accepting this, since most would like to believe that they have a power to shape their children, but this does not make it any less true.
> the Immigration Act of 1965... didn't just abolish racial quotas, it also created preference categories for science, math and engineering-trained immigrants to come over.
Ah, so Asian immigrants to the US are far from an unbiased sample of their original populations! This explains a lot more than bitter fights over parenting.
On the average it may be 100% right, but of you zoom in, you will see a bunch of problems.
For example:
- kids turning out really poorly if they have bad parenting. Magnitude matters too.
- I suspect the data is not capturing kids that literally died (is the fentanyl crisis over? Are those kids counted?)
- some parenting groups likely have lopsided outcomes (Ie kids from yougest parents may turn out badly, while those from older parents may not be impacted at all)
In conclusion. Outcomes are strongly tied to genetics up to a breaking point, where if the "parenting" variable is so deficient, things go bad, fast.
My contention is that parenting doesnt matter at all on average, except that when it does, it's the main determinant for outcome.
And further, i posit that this parenting variable is increasingly worse over time.
The notion that parents have much to do with how kids turn out is a myth: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/blueprint/201809/par.... It’s just something old white guys said in the 1960s without support, like Jungian archetypes and things like that. Somehow it’s become part of the unexamined truth of society.
This is fluff. Corrleation, causation and so forth. There is actual academic research on this kind of thing. The fact that responsible, motivated parents raised responsible, motivated kids is largely genetic rather than a result of their parenting techniques.
The studies seem to be confusing causation and correlation. They seem to assuming that there must be an environmental cause for the differences in people's IQs. This may seem like a stupid assumption to make, but a lot of people in the social sciences take this as a given, even though the weight of evidence is strongly against it.
Perhaps I have missed something, but I would expect that, if they did not have ideological blinkers on they would be saying things like:
"We are taking particular care to separate environmental and genetic factors here by including adopted children, [identical] twins reared separately, other children raised by other than biological relatives".
But I see none of this at all here.
You may be interested to read "The Nurture Assumption" for a detailed analysis of the effect of parents on their children. The basic conclusion is that if you do not seriously abuse your children you don't affect them much one way or the other. Steve Pinker's book "The Blank Slate" is also relevant.
No, the consensus of scientists who actually study this is pretty strong, and supports the parent's post. Jayman has collected a nice sequence of citations on the matter, most of which are peer-reviewed:
> Anything related to income will be (statistically speaking) associated with intelligence and other personal traits (perseverance etc). Any of this will be obviously correlated with your kid's SAT --- it's called genetics.
Title is an obvious statement of fact that anyone would also just naturally expect, that either genes or nurture have correlation to where children have similar behaviour to their parents.
Within the article maybe what would have been more interesting statement and for the title is that "Global data set suggests socioeconomic status does not play a role in children’s language development".
Otherwise it reads like an onion article or something.
"Study shows that children's skin color correlates with their parent's skin color".
Of course there have been. It also doesn't change the fact that children raised by good parents tend to turn out better. It's a numbers game just like most things in life.
It is both scientifically and politically incorrect to say that parenting doesn't matter, only the color of the child's skin.
It is just all around incorrect to say that groups of people raise worse kids intentionally due to culture. Children raised by uneducated parents surrounded by crime are worse off due to their environment, and their culture is a product of that environment. It is only by the collective will of society (e.g., promoting enlightenment ideals over the objections of the superstitious masses, which happened longer ago in some places vs. others by political chance) that this changes. It is politically incorrect to blame people who are in these situations instead of bringing about the change to fix it.
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