Sorry kid, you're screwed. Oh wait...
I'm re-reading part of Freakonomics, and the chapter on parenting struck me as particularly interesting. Not only for myself (can I please let my childhood angst go already), but for any future children I might have (am I fit to be a parent, do I want that kind of responsibility, has my childhood doomed me to be a bad parent, etc). I found the chapter very comforting, on a variety of levels, but I want to share a particular excerpt.
The chapter has been discussing the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, a study which followed 20,000 american school children from kindergarten through 5th grade, tracking their test scores, as well as parental and teacher responses during interviews about the household and parenting techniques. Essentially a variety of factors were then analyzed to see if they were correlated with test scores.
Consider again the eight ECLS factors that are correlated with [higher] school test scores:
And the eight factors that are not:
To overgeneralize a bit, the first list describes things that parents are; the second list describes things that parents do. Parents who are well educated, successful, and healthy tend to have children who test well in school; but it doesn't seem to matter whether a child is trotted off to museums or spanked, or sent to Head Start or frequently read to or plopped in front of the television.
For parents - and parenting experts - who are obsessed with child-rearing technique, this may be sobering news. The reality is that technique looks to be highly overrated.
But this is not to say that parents don't matter. Plainly they matter a great deal. Here is the conundrum: by the time most people pick up a parenting book, it is far too late. Most of the things that matter were decided long ago - who you are, whom you married, what kind of life you lead. If you are smart, hardworking, well-educated, well paid and married to someone equally fortunate, then your children are more likely to succeed. (Nor does it hurt, in all likelihood, to be honest, thoughtful, loving, and curious about the world.) But it isn't so much a matter of what you do as a parent; it's who you are. In this regard, an overbearing parent is a lot like a political candidate who believes that money wins elections, whereas in truth, all the money in the world can't get a candidate elected if the voters don't like him to start with.
So, essentially, it no longer matters who my parents were, it only matters who I am (not that this is news). I don't have to worry about figuring out how to be the perfect parent despite my own crappy childhood. Assuming that a similar causality exists between personality traits and parental characteristics, if I want a mellow child, I should be a mellow parent. If I want an adventurous child, I should be an adventurous parent. If I want a kind child, I better be kind myself. And, you know what? I'm not half-bad, a kid could do a hell of a lot worse than to be paired up with me. Although, of course, correlation doesn't mean that a result is guaranteed. But it is kind of an interesting feeling of relief to hear that it isn't, in the end, some complex and hair-trigger job that requires constant monitoring and performance anxiety. Which, of course, is what I always suspected, given that the human race has managed to survive just fine without the parenting experts. Hee hee. Validation rocks.
BTW - I'm concurrently reading Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time, which is essentially a book on the methods of skepticism and rigorous thought (skepticism not to be confused with cynicism). It's a nice symbiotic pairing.
The chapter has been discussing the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, a study which followed 20,000 american school children from kindergarten through 5th grade, tracking their test scores, as well as parental and teacher responses during interviews about the household and parenting techniques. Essentially a variety of factors were then analyzed to see if they were correlated with test scores.
Consider again the eight ECLS factors that are correlated with [higher] school test scores:
- The child has highly educated parents. ++
- The child's parents have high socioeconomic status. ++
- The child's mother was thirty or older at the time of her first child's birth. ++
- The child had a low birthweight. --
- The child's parents speak english in the home. ++
- The child is adopted. --
- The child's parents are involved in the PTA. ++
- The child has many books in the home. ++
And the eight factors that are not:
- The child's family is intact.
- The child's parents recently moved into a better neighborhood.
- The child's mother didn't work between birth and kindergarten.
- The child attended Head Start.
- The child's parents regularly take him to museums.
- The child is regularly spanked.
- The child frequently watches television.
- The child's parents read to him nearly everyday.
To overgeneralize a bit, the first list describes things that parents are; the second list describes things that parents do. Parents who are well educated, successful, and healthy tend to have children who test well in school; but it doesn't seem to matter whether a child is trotted off to museums or spanked, or sent to Head Start or frequently read to or plopped in front of the television.
For parents - and parenting experts - who are obsessed with child-rearing technique, this may be sobering news. The reality is that technique looks to be highly overrated.
But this is not to say that parents don't matter. Plainly they matter a great deal. Here is the conundrum: by the time most people pick up a parenting book, it is far too late. Most of the things that matter were decided long ago - who you are, whom you married, what kind of life you lead. If you are smart, hardworking, well-educated, well paid and married to someone equally fortunate, then your children are more likely to succeed. (Nor does it hurt, in all likelihood, to be honest, thoughtful, loving, and curious about the world.) But it isn't so much a matter of what you do as a parent; it's who you are. In this regard, an overbearing parent is a lot like a political candidate who believes that money wins elections, whereas in truth, all the money in the world can't get a candidate elected if the voters don't like him to start with.
So, essentially, it no longer matters who my parents were, it only matters who I am (not that this is news). I don't have to worry about figuring out how to be the perfect parent despite my own crappy childhood. Assuming that a similar causality exists between personality traits and parental characteristics, if I want a mellow child, I should be a mellow parent. If I want an adventurous child, I should be an adventurous parent. If I want a kind child, I better be kind myself. And, you know what? I'm not half-bad, a kid could do a hell of a lot worse than to be paired up with me. Although, of course, correlation doesn't mean that a result is guaranteed. But it is kind of an interesting feeling of relief to hear that it isn't, in the end, some complex and hair-trigger job that requires constant monitoring and performance anxiety. Which, of course, is what I always suspected, given that the human race has managed to survive just fine without the parenting experts. Hee hee. Validation rocks.
BTW - I'm concurrently reading Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time, which is essentially a book on the methods of skepticism and rigorous thought (skepticism not to be confused with cynicism). It's a nice symbiotic pairing.