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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

I'm working on kid #2, and my takeaway is this: "parenting science" is like "nutritional science." It's almost entirely bullshit, and little to no progress has been made in the field ever. There is no use paying attention to it, other than doing/not doing the obvious things. (Don't eat too many calories; don't emotionally destroy your kids.)

Your kids will turn out how they are going to turn out. Instinctively, you'll love them and want to keep them alive, so don't worry about that. Other than that, do what you think is right and hope for the best.

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This is wholly and categorically untrue. Parenting today is much different than it was 100 years ago. The way we approach children, discipline children, and help them grow into their best selves has changed a lot. And it is based on lots of research. It is also based on all of the work that therapists do with adults after their parents have messed them up so bad with their horrible parenting. Every child will be their own adventure, personalities makes parenting every child different. But to say that there aren't guidelines and that you should just do whatever comes natural is dangerous. Because beating children comes naturally to some people. Being passive aggressive or emotionally blunt with them can come naturally. Being an absent parent and not spending any time with them can come naturally as work gets in the way. If you are unsure then seeking professional help to make sure you have the basics covered is a great way to start.

Parenting is very much an art, but like all art, there is definitely a science backing it up.

Lets talk about the science then. Has it been published? Has it been reproduced? That second step is the bane of many psychology studies, in that the results cannot be reproduced, assuming someone tries at all. That is a signature step in the scientific process that is often not followed. We see a study and then blindly follow it as fact.

The argument is not that parenting has stayed the same. It's that there's no measurable improvement in results from all the changes. So the argument goes, the changes aren't worth much, so don't worry about it.

What about crime rates going down and teen pregnancy going down?

> "parenting science" is like "nutritional science." It's almost entirely bullshit, and little to no progress has been made in the field ever.

Your analogy is a good one, but it goes a layer deeper than I think you realize.

"Parenting science" is like "nutritional science" in that, based on what you can get out of the popular sources, it is almost entirely bullshit. It's also similar in that the science has continued to make progress, but you never really hear of it because very little of what's being discovered is the kind of thing that will sell books or attract advertisers.

I disagree with that characterization, for the reasons stated here: https://www.vox.com/2016/1/14/10760622/nutrition-science-com.... In my view, if you can't develop mathematical models and test them against properly conducted experiments, then your field is not a "science." Nutrition is not a science, neither is parenting, or anything else that relies primarily on observational studies and lacks a theoretical model to connect observations together into a coherent theory.

That is not to say that observational research may not be valuable. Both nutrition and and parenting could, in theory, be developed into sciences. But until then, the fields are just collections of (often unreproducable) observations. They cannot provide general principles for say raising kids, in the same way that fluid dynamics can provide general principles for building airplanes.

It seems like we part ways at the last point in that article, or at least, what you're saying here would seem to be at odds with it.

I'm inclined to agree with it, myself. It's true that these are messy problem domains, and that does make it harder to conduct and draw firm conclusions from scientific research. That inhibits progress, but it doesn't render the whole enterprise a lost cause.

I think this comment says more about your understanding of science in general, than about what science can tell us about raising children.

There is very solid science about how children develop, and what they need from their parents, and it is useful for parents to understand it.

Here are two good places for parents-to-be to start:

https://www.healthychildren.org/English/Pages/default.aspx

https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/for-families

I can recommend books too, but they're at home so I'll have post later.

You just glossed over all the hard, core problems of the field by calling them "obvious", and confusing the great questions of the field with answers for them.

> Don't eat too many calories.

How?

> don't emotionally destroy your kids.

How?

That's like saying "Just follow the law, and you'll have a good life."

Don't miss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption

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