ps. you REALLY ought to make your children wear their seat-belts in the back of the car, freedom be damned. ;)
If your children know how to break the filters, and they wouldn't get in trouble for doing so, then I retract my statements.
>ps. you REALLY ought to make your children wear their seat-belts in the back of the car, freedom be damned. ;)
This is not a fair comparison, you are legally obliged to wear a seatbelt in the car. I would not drive my adult friends around if they refused to wear their seatbelt.
Also, what kind of weird country do you live in where there even is such a thing as legally mandatory vaccines?
As someone who actually does mainly employ this technique because it is generally more effective (especially with very spirited children), this is a delusional statement.
For one thing, children don't always respond in good faith, and some (especially those who are verbally gifted) will try to manipulate the process of dialogue.
It's also a bad idea to give them a false impression that something is up for negotiation when it is not.
It is up for negotiating, though. If you don't treat them as a rational being _always_ then you never treat them as rational. You don't get to choose when their rationality applies. If you do choose then you're the one who gives "them a false impression that something is up for negotiation when it is not".
I do not give false impressions because I tell my children when I am giving them an option or an explanation.
When they are young, you require certain behavior of them so that they can develop healthy habits. Things like "eat your vegetables", "wash your hands" or "don't take your younger siblings toys out of their hands" are mandatory because it is important for children to develop habits of health, hygiene, and pro-social behavior.
I may use positive as well as negative reinforcement, but you cannot expect such behavior out of small children purely through negotiation.
When they are older, you grant them more autonomy but require behavior of them as a consequence of the fact that they are your dependents. As a parent, I am both the owner of the house they live in and their legal guardian. That means that I have latitude to set restrictions on their behavior so long as they are a) residents in my house, and b) my legal wards.
When they are old enough, they are perfectly within their rights to seek emancipation. The goal, of course, is to set bounds that are both sufficiently liberal and sufficiently reasonable that the (older) child will have no desire to seek complete autonomy prior to the age of majority.
You are. By choosing when they get to choose, you're creating a cultural hegemony that they aren't conscious participants in.
Your goal as a parent shouldn't be to socialize them into the norms, values, and beliefs of the dominant social group. The only thing you gain by this is replicating society.
> you cannot expect such behavior out of small children purely through negotiation.
You misunderstand, I do not argue for negotiation because you shouldn't negotiate. You carry no stake in your child's future, in this sense they're only themselves. If they are only themselves, then there is nothing for you to negotiate about.
> and their legal guardian
Please understand that I do not care about the actuality of your legal status. My concern isn't in what is but in what ought. I am purely interested in your[0] limitation of their potentiality for "pure reason", as Kant would put it.
[0] I use and have used the word "your" rather carelessly. I don't mean you because I don't know you.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you're saying here.
> Your goal as a parent shouldn't be to socialize them into the norms, values, and beliefs of the dominant social group. The only thing you gain by this is replicating society.
What do you think should be my goal?
For my part, my goal is to socialize them into the norms, values, and beliefs that I hold. In part I do this for their benefit (so that they can be autonomous adults) and partly to shape future society. But perhaps most of all I share impart these values and beliefs because I value and believe them. No parent can help but to impart their values and beliefs. The only question is whether you do so consciously or not.
> You misunderstand, I do not argue for negotiation because you shouldn't negotiate. You carry no stake in your child's future, in this sense they're only themselves. If they are only themselves, then there is nothing for you to negotiate about.
Again, my apologies, but I really don't get what you are trying to convey. What does this have to do with compelling young children to eat their vegetables or restricting a teenager's access to lurid content on the internet? Perhaps you have different examples in mind?
> Please understand that I do not care about the actuality of your legal status. My concern isn't in what is but in what ought. I am purely interested in your[0] limitation of their potentiality for "pure reason", as Kant would put it.
I have a moral obligation to help mold the plastic elements of my child's psyche (much of which is admittedly not malleable) to serve their best interests and the interests of the society into which they will enter.
> I use and have used the word "your" rather carelessly. I don't mean you because I don't know you.
Of course, no offense taken.
There is clearly a continuum between infants and adult roommates, but as the person who pays the internet bill, I decide what the default DNS server is. Those old enough to be bothered by that are welcome to choose a non-default DNS server.
To argue that this is somehow immoral because children shouldn't have their default DNS provider dictated to them is asinine, an argument most likely to resonate with teenagers without kids of their own.
Sounds like one of those with highest quality of life, gini and longest life expectancy countries. Yuck!
As children get older, you of course give them more autonomy, but so long as they are your dependents, you have both an obligation and a right to set reasonable boundaries on their behavior.
I certainly explain the rationale, and when possible try to persuade rather than force behavior where possible, and also let them make bad choices so they can learn from the experience, but they don't always possess the rational capacity to think about the long-term consequences or the ability to deal with those consequences when they occur.
I require my children to brush their teeth, because a failure to do so would result in both poor health consequences for them, and a great deal of expense for me.
As for restricting access to lurid content when my children are given internet access? Absolutely. I say this as someone who had unfiltered internet access as a teenager. They do whatever they want once they get their own internet access.
I think that's the parent poster's point. You had this kind of access. Do you think you're worse off now because you had this access as a teenager?
I've never been in a position of much authority over a child, so I can't speak from experience on the side of the parent, but from my experience as a former child, my expectation is that often if a child (in the sense of age, not just "offspring regardless of age") disagrees with a moral claim and instruction made by a parent (especially one endorsed by much of society), that talking about it can go fairly well, as far as the parent's goals/beliefs are concerned. The parent is more experienced in life, and often better able to compose arguments, and that combined with even a small amount of claim of authority, can I think go a long way.
Of course, there are three main types of disagreements of this kind that I can see: 1) The child believes that an action is permissible (or simply safe), and the parent believes (perhaps knows) that it is not. In this case, it seems reasonable that the child be more willing to default to the parent's perspective, because if the child is right, less is lost if they comply than is lost if the parent is right and the child does not comply. 2) The parent believes that something is morally obligatory, but the child does not believe this. Again, for the same reason, it seems like it would make sense for the child to be more likely to default to what the parent instructs. 3) The parent makes an instruction for sake of convenience which they believe is permissible, but the child believes to be impermissible. In this case it seems more reasonable for the child to resist the instruction more thoroughly. If sufficiently strongly convinced (i.e. if they have a strong enough degree of belief that they are correct) it may be appropriate for the child to refuse, even under risk of punishment, or, in extreme cases, even flee and seek refuge with others.
I guess there is another case, which seem less relevant: 4) The child believes that something is obligatory, while the parent believes that it is not obligatory, and instructs the child to not do it. I don't think this situation happens enough to be all that relevant.
However, there is also the possibility of a combination of some of these cases. If the child believes that an action is morally forbidden, while the parent believes it is morally obligatory, then this is indeed a difficult situation. If they cannot reach an agreement, then the only thing left to determine what happens is power, but this is not what determines who is in the right. If the child is correct, then they are in the right to refuse as best they can, and if the parent makes them do the thing, the parent is in the wrong. If the parent is correct, then they may be in the right to make the child comply, provided that they means that they do so are commensurate with the severity of the moral issue, and also not more forceful etc. than is necessary.
This all seems straightforwards to me.
When someone has practical authority over you, it is generally appropriate, insofar as is compatible with acting morally, to act in accordance with their commands-in-the-area-in-which-they-have-authority, but if their commands contravene what is morally required of you, then one ought to do what one is morally required to do (tautologically), not the commands to the contrary.
If you are in authority over someone else, you not only have an obligation not to command them to do anything immoral, but if there is something which they believe to be immoral, but which you do not believe to be immoral, and it isn't critical that they do it, out of respect for the possibility that you may be wrong, and also out of respect for their goodness (If something is morally permissible and not morally obligatory, but one incorrectly believes that it is impermissible, as long as one believes that it is impermissible, one should not do it. If you tell someone to do something not-morally-obligatory-nor-supererogatory which they think wrong, and they do it, then you have caused them to behave poorly, which is something you should not do.) it is generally better not to ask that they do it.
[0] Hald, G.M., Malamuth, N.M., & Yuen, C. (2010). Pornography and attitudes supporting violence against women: Revisiting the relationship in non-experimental studies. Aggressive Behavior.36, 14-20. doi: 10.1002/ab.20328
[1] Ybarra, M.L., Mitchell, K.J., Hamburger, M., Diener-West, M. & Leaf, P.J. (2011). X-rated material and perpetration of sexually aggressive behavior among children and adolescents: Is there a link? Aggressive Behavior, 37, 1–18.
[2] Victoria et al. (2016). Identifying the routes by which children view pornography online: implications for future policy-makers seeking to limit viewing report of expert panel for DCMS. Technical Report. Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
Isn't that a biased selection? It's a bit like finding that swimmers are more likely to drown or vice versa.
The way that first citation is worded makes me question the validity of the source. Looking into it further it seems like the researchers went in there with the answer and looked for supporting evidence for it:
>A meta‐analysis was conducted to determine whether nonexperimental studies revealed an association between men's pornography consumption and their attitudes supporting violence against women.
Keep in mind that these are fields that are very close to a lot of bs science. If you look up the first author on the study the first keyword that appears is "gender studies". All of this kind of stuff has to be looked at with extreme skepticism, especially when it's a politically charged topic.
How is it a biased selection? Study 10-15 year olds, and ask about their porn use. Those who say they intentionally view violent materials are more likely to report aggressive behavior. True, this doesn't mean porn causes sexually aggressive behavior - but that's not the claim being made anyway.
>If you look up the first author on the study the first keyword that appears is "gender studies". All of this kind of stuff has to be looked at with extreme skepticism, especially when it's a politically charged topic.
I agree, and the field does have other problems too (in particular, the variation in how "pornography" is defined between studies) - but to call it BS science needs more than just an accusation. Homeopathy is BS, but that doesn't make the scientists criticizing it BS scientists, nor does it discount their research because the topic is politically charged. Malamuth, for instance, is a highly respected sociologist/psychologist. Either way, there's plenty of stuff out there for this, both "for" and "against". Open Google Scholar and do a search for "pornography and violence" or "pornography and attitudes on women", and select whatever date you want (after 2010, or after 2015, etc.)
It's important to remember that science does not prescribe "oughts", it just makes it harder for people who hold certain "oughts" to hold their views consistently.
Children certainly aren't property, and they certainly are people. Immature, 'work in progress' people.
Our autistic son is a person, and not property. At the age of 17 years, he also has a reasonable command of language.
The only reason he can talk today is because we spent years using various techniques to strongly encourage him to learn language. Most of these were positive reinforcement: do this thing and you'll get something you want. Some were negative reinforcement: if you do this other thing, then you lose something you want.
This was an enormous and draining work. At the age of six, he was evaluated by a world class group of autism experts in the SF bay area, and we were told, point blank, that he would never speak.
It's true that this is a special case, but it's meant to clearly illustrate the underlying truth: to have positive outcomes, most children require variable amounts of coercion.
More to the point: I agree that it's relatively easy for most people and many children to work around DNS based censorship. I think it can be useful in some cases, but not as many as its proponents believe.
It's still a useful tool.
Because it's a special case it doesn't actually illustrate this "underlying truth". I think this kind of coercion tries to normalize kids, to make them more like parents think all the other kids are like. However, it's quite common that parents, for some reason, don't seem to understand (remember) what kids are actually like. Coercing a child can backfire disastrously. It can make them dependent on you and thus unable to deal with life later on. It can make them reject you and rebel against you and the values you try to teach them. What I'm trying to say is that this isn't predictable. There is no straightforward "children need coercion" type thing. If my parents had tried to be as controlling as many people in this thread seem to be, then I would probably never have spoken to them as an adult.