Paul Graham’s thoughts, discoveries, and tricks on parenthood
unclepaul.io
unclepaul.io
It concerns something I didn't figure out until I was older, that children are brought into existence w/o their consent.
Now I don't believe this is* (edit: fixed) an evil or unethical act; it's simply an unavoidable facet of reality. However, it creates a debt to children so massive, that it can't be fully repaid in a lifetime.
In short, the debt between children & parents only ever runs one way.
Because of this, I have a permanent & total obligation to my kids' well being, while they in-turn owe me nothing for a lifetime of labor on their belhaf (which as a single parent - changing diapers & earning income - has been substantial).
It doesn't mean my grown kids should or shouldn't contribute to my welfare. It means that my responsibility is to continually tip the scales toward the outcomes they desire.
In our case we operate as one household & there are different obligations in play there. But the Original Debt indicates that any shortfalls (in labor, etc) be filled by me, unless & until more practical solutions are worked out.
My reward is that this really efficient mindset solves lots of problems in advance.
You can think of “duty” as more or less a smoothed out version of “debt-ity”.
I believe this to be the fundamental realization that would change the world for the better, if enough people had it. So many of the ills of the world can be traced back to childhood trauma and mediocre education.
I think we have been going through a few decades where mainstream parenting values have been mostly narcissistic. Parents seeing their children as indebted to them is both the norm and an abomination. I have some hope that more and more people are seeing things as you do.
Here's a hot take: In a generation or two, once the technology matures, we'll start seeing a lot of people opting (themselves or their children) into reversible sterilization, and it will soon become the norm.
My case would support your supposition because I was distressingly incompetent in my early 20s. I wasn't a prize at 28 (my first born) either but at least I was at a point where I could form better expectations for myself.
Past that, I find most young people today to be measurably more balanced & competent human beings than my generation was. I have strong confidence in their abilities to guide little people.
To be clear tho, even in my generation I was a terrible outlier.
On the contrary, it seems the breakdown of the strong family unit is causing most of the problems of society.
Either way, we're at a point where a lot of people are having kinds that they hadn't really planned for, or might not have wanted, or can't afford, or otherwise aren't able to give proper care to.
The average number of children that a woman wants in the western world is now about 1-1.5 higher than she will have on average, which means that women want more kids and choose not to for other reasons.
- In 2011, 45% of pregnancies in the US were unintended (as you note this is down from 54% in 2008, though it generally hovers around 50%) [1]
- About half of the unintended pregnancies come from women that were attempting to use contraception. [2]
- In 2001, 44% of US unintended pregnancies resulted in births.
- It is estimated that more than half of US women have had an unintended pregnancy by age 45
This still seems like a huge drain on society. And, of course, this doesn't even begin to consider the eastern and developing worlds that are much farther behind.
Also, this is not to argue that every unplanned pregnancy becomes an unmitigated disaster, I know there are many wonderful people that came from accidents. But I still think it would be a great milestone for humanity to reach a point where by default these things generally didn't happen.
[1] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-u...
[2] http://shriverreport.org/why-are-50-percent-of-pregnancies-i...
Sterilized people are much less likely to propagate their habits to the following generations.
So sterilization habit is unlikely to stick.
Second: we already have that. It’s called the pill.
I'm thinking more along the lines of something like Vasalgel/RISUG, basically a shot you get once or very infrequently, that could become a sort of automatic or default health procedure like vaccines.
What’s fascinating is that these are for men, and the reactions around that specific detail reveals a lot about us as a society.
What your parents sacrificed for you should be repaid in kind to your kids, not back to your parents. If you don’t have kids, pay it to society.
"It concerns something I didn't figure out until I was older, that children are brought into existence w/o their consent.
Now I don't believe this is* (edit: fixed) an evil or unethical act; it's simply an unavoidable facet of reality. However, it creates a debt to children so massive, that it can't be fully repaid in a lifetime."
I wonder, why does "my kid didn't consent to be born" mean "I owe him/her?"
Is the implication that being alive is a bad thing?
- From the principle standpoint, the alternatives saddle kids with unearned obligations, that are entirely the result of some adult's choices. This is unethical, while a better perspective is within reach.
- From a practical perspective, there are 2 alternatives (to the principle I espouse):
1) No one owes anyone anything. Good luck newborn. Or...
2) Kids are obligated to repay the debt of their own upbringing ("I raised you so you owe me"). I would hope the obnoxiousness of this thinking would be self-evident. Unfortunately, I've encountered it a lot. I've believed it myself to some degree.
However, I've not seen any evidence that this thinking benefits anyone in a meaningful way. Instead, I've seen it behind countless adults' efforts to belittle and devalue children - as part of misguided attempts to bully kids into some desired behavior.
It's terrible. We need to let it go.
> Is the implication that being alive is a bad thing?
Not at all. Some events are neither fair nor unfair but come with tons of responsibility.
Ultimately the question is who is the best fit to bear that responsibility and to what degree.
Considering all possible scenarios, I think the wisest answer is this: The resources of upbringing should be provided by the parents, in total, unconditionally and in perpetuity.
Obviously, all parents need help with this.
And I get what he means. I have two toddlers and they're positively exhausting. But I've never before felt joy like this. They give my life very very clear purpose when before I was a bit lost.
Meanwhile, I'm pondering the apparent conflict. To that end, these are some of the points I'm considering.
1) Children aren't generally able to fully embrace faith on it's own merits until they are young adults. Until then, their faith is mostly proxied thru their parents.
2) Children have no practical ability to repay debts.
3) Faiths that teach pure service as a calling tend to extend it to parenthood.
4) The principle I'm advocating is a principle to family and to society.
More 4) In my experience, when a personal or societal principle appear to conflict w/ a religious principle, it's often due to an incomplete understanding of the principles in play. I found it is spiritually & ethically safe to allow those principles to co-exist in disharmony until greater knowledge reframes the conflict in a more solvable way.
More 4 tl;dr ver) There is great risk in pushing immature conclusions - much less risk in holding inconsistent ones.
However, what you have shared about the varna system is false. The original caste system - the varna dharma - simply means that at different stages of life and different people more naturally express ways of serving society - some are workers, some are business people, some are warriors, some are priests. The Vedas do not declare that this is fixed through one's whole life or even determined by one's lineage. A brahmin (priest caste) does not need to be born from brahmin parents, but people have distorted the varna dharma to mean that brahmins must be from a brahmin family, and that brahmins should be above others in status. All the casts are equal, but they are not the same.
The British further abused the caste system and perpetuated this false understanding of it for their own benefit. They encouraged the castes to remain fixed through one's life and be base on lineage. This is not the original way. The Vedas actually tell us that castes are fluid through one's life and not based on which family one was born into.
> That still lines up with the core tenets of Hinduism, that one chooses one's birth based on the ripe karmas.
Vedas says one is born according to his past life karma.
> The original caste system - the varna dharma - simply means that at different stages of life and different people more naturally express ways of serving society - some are workers, some are business people, some are warriors, some are priests.
If people were allowed to change caste most people would have changed to priestly caste as it is the most easy life one can have.
> A brahmin (priest caste) does not need to be born from brahmin parents
No father would want his child to convert to lower caste.
> The British further abused the caste system and perpetuated this false understanding of it for their own benefit.
I am not saying Britishers came as saviors, but they are the ones who setup schools to everyone, obviously for their own profit ,but still mass education happened only after their conquest.
> This is not the original way. The Vedas actually tell us that castes are fluid through one's life and not based on which family one was born into.
Assuming this is true, who has the authority to decide who should belong to which caste. Obviously the people in the highest caste will decide and they will try to main the power. Its simple as that.
> Vedas says one is born according to his past life karma.
It seems like there are some gaps in your understanding of Hindu and Vedic thought. Yes, you are born according to your past life karma, but the soul (in a body or in the other loka) always have free will – so you chose your karma – you chose to do actions that created future karmas to be resolved. By extension, you chose your birth. This is the full understanding.
> If people were allowed to change caste most people would have changed to priestly caste as it is the most easy life one can have.
You are misconstruing the abuse, misapplication and misunderstanding of the varna dharma with how the Vedas define it.
1. In the original varna dharma, there isn’t an “easier life” for one caste or another. Everyone does there dharma and that takes work. According to the Vedas one caste is not superior to another, they are equal but different.
2. Your natural abilities are the way that you choose your caste. One person has no interest or ability for the spiritual life, but they are good at business. Your natural abilities are chosen based on past karma, which you also chose.
> No father would want his child to convert to lower caste.
Of course that is so when in the abused and misapplied varna dharma. This would not be a problem if the varna dharma were applied as it is in the Vedas. A person of the priest caste would offer equal respect to the worker caste, for example.
> but still mass education happened only after their conquest.
Which has been very problematic. Education for all is good, but they have enforced Christian education and many other negative things. I am not arguing that before the British things were perfect – the argument here is how the Vedas defined the varna dharma system vs how it has been misapplied, both before and after the British. Please understand this – you originally stated misinformation about what the Vedas say.
> Assuming this is true, who has the authority to decide who should belong to which caste. Obviously the people in the highest caste will decide and they will try to main the power. Its simple as that.
Continuation of the misapplication of the varna dharma, against the teachings of the Vedas. The authority should be by one’s own volition and the community.
If the varna dharma is actually applied as it is outlined in the Vedas there is equality and justice for all. But it has been abused and used to keep certain people in power. That is not the way it is outlined in the Vedas. This inequality is wrong and against Vedic teachings.
> Which has been very problematic. Education for all is good, but they have enforced Christian education and many other negative things.
How is getting educated becomes problematic verses no education at all. I am taking about basic reading and writing ? Controlling the access to education and maintain the hierarchy of the society is the fundamental idea of the varna system. This is one of the important reason there were very few Nobel laureates and inventions have come from India in correlation with its population. By the way Britishers never had religion as part of education.
> It seems like there are some gaps in your understanding of Hindu and Vedic thought. Yes, you are born according to your past life karma, but the soul (in a body or in the other loka) always have free will – so you chose your karma – you chose to do actions that created future karmas to be resolved. By extension, you chose your birth. This is the full understanding.
This is same as saying you don't choose your varna/caste.This is just another way of saying you are born in to lower caste and have to do the back breaking job because for your sins in the previous birth.
> In the original varna dharma, there isn’t an “easier life” for one caste or another.
A priest life is much easier than a farmer or manual scavenger.
> Your natural abilities are the way that you choose your caste. One person has no interest or ability for the spiritual life, but they are good at business. Your natural abilities are chosen based on past karma, which you also chose.
Not true. Its very explicit. Even if it assumed true, once education is denied and fathers occupation is enforced on the children's for all the generation's how does one will have the time to find out and grow their natural abilities ?
> A person of the priest caste would offer equal respect to the worker caste
If education is not restricted based on religion, then one does not have to seek privilege or validity based on birth.
> The authority should be by one’s own volition and the community.
The enforcement is not by community its by the kings as preached by the vedas. The kings enforce varna system by denying education, owning property based on the caste or enforce fathers occupation over their childrens. Naturally kings have the incentive to avoid competition and hold on to their power.
> By the way Britishers never had religion as part of education.
That is utterly, laughably, ridiculously false. I can't believe someone with even a modicum of intelligence would say that.
If you don't believe in karma that's fine, but whether you believe in it or not doesn't mean you continue to state false things about the Vedas. One can have a correct understanding of something without necessarily believing in it. But your understanding has been incorrect this entire thread, where I've each time pointed to the difference between what the Vedas declare in contrast to what people have done. This difference you can't seem to grasp.
> That is utterly, laughably, ridiculously false. I can't believe someone with even a modicum of intelligence would say that.
Citiation please. Britishers primary goal is colonization. Missionaries came much later and they did not interfere with the education system.
How many times do I need to repeat that the Vedas do not say this? Apparently you will never understand. According to the Vedas, one's varna dharma is independent of one's family. I've said this in every single post in this thread. The Vedas declare that one's varna dharma does not depend on in which family one has been born. One's varna dharma according to the Vedas is not dependent on one's family.
I suspect based on your username (John) and your use of "Britisher" that you're a Christian in India, which is likely why you continue to spread ignorance and idiocy about the Vedas.
Yet, every time you have been wrong((https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/a/4104). What vedas says about movement of varna is that it is permitted only if it is accepted by other community which is not practical due to the incentive structure i have already explained in my previous reply. The varna conversions are cited only in the stories from the hindu holy books, it is never an independent choice. And the rules are entirely different when it comes to the highest varna in the hierarchy(i.e priest). The priest must volunteer himself to change if he feels for 16 years he has not done the duties according to his varna(NOTE: The pronoun "he" is used intentionally. Because women is considered lower that the bottom of varna system) . Now do you see why the movement b/w varna never happened and not practical.
> I suspect based on your username (John) and your use of "Britisher" that you're a Christian in India, which is likely why you continue to spread ignorance
I am born to Hindu family, but i am an atheist turned antagonistic. My motivation is to make logical conversation and convince that getting rid of varna system is better for India and not undo the progress.
> your use of "Britisher" What do you mean by this ?
This is just an idea you made up.
It has no more grounding in reality than some old rule from the Bible that nobody follows anymore.
Like one of those old rules, it's just an arbitrary assertion.
When we make moral assertions we need to be just as scrupulous as scientists who can only properly assert something when they have evidence. And for the same reasons.
It's a matter of intellectual hygiene.
I understand that many parents love their children immensely. But there is a gap between that, and the moral imperative you are asserting.
You can spend a lifetime helping your children if you love them that much, and that is perfectly rational. But it does not create this universal moral imperative.
> This is just an idea you made up.
I'd agree that it's a bit on the melodramatic side and it'd be fair to call it arbitrary.
However, I offer that the sentiment behind it is honest.
It works against the common assumption that kids owe their parents for their upbringing (If you feel I made that up then I can't help you here).
I propose that common assumption leads to no beneficial outcome and that it's main purpose is to demean & degrade kids (children & adult) - to bully them into some sort of compliant behavior.
That's the core behind the principle. If there's fault in my overall reasoning, this is where I'd recommend you look.
No doubt about that. I think the sentiment behind it is that you love your kids greatly.
> I propose that common assumption leads to no beneficial outcome
I agree, but your principle is pretty similar to the one you are criticizing. They are two sides of the same coin. Neither principle is grounded in empirical reality. Both can lead to bad outcomes.
> If there's fault in my overall reasoning, this is where I'd recommend you look.
I mean, to be clear, I think the fault in your reasoning is to try to create a universal moral imperative based on an emotion you feel about your own kids. There is a gap there. That is not a justified move. Universal moral imperatives would have to be better grounded than that (just like scientific claims have to).
If so, my response is that rules too often suck at promoting positive behaviors and that absolute guidelines suck even more.
Also, you did propose a rule and an absolute guideline. It's puzzling to me that you seem to think you didn't do that.
Specifically, you put forward the moral precept that parents have a "permanent and total" obligation to their children.
Life is a beautiful miracle with a extraordinary low probability that any one person would be born let alone survive.
As parents we (in partnership with whatever natural or supernatural being coordinates nature) bring that gift to our children. The rest is spot on. We owe it to them to make this a better world.
... but indebted sounds so negative.
The catch is, even if we are to see the parent-child relationship as business, then the "debt" lies entirely to the parents.
In the good occasion, that does not happen, and the relationship is healthy. And if you, yourself, put yourself in debt of your children, it doesn't seem bad things come out of it. It's you making the decision for yourself, after all. Not inflicting it on someone else.
Such attitude makes it significantly less likely to have kids in the first place: why would a potential parent want to get in debt?
If we want to decrease population of humans, then spreading "parents owe to their kids" attitude is one of the ways to accomplish that.
That might depend on how much value they place on their own life and upbringing.
>If we want to decrease population of humans, then spreading "parents owe to their kids" attitude is one of the ways to accomplish that.
Some things are what they are. This is the reality that's left when the harmful & unproductive assumptions are stripped away. I believe you are right that some less courageous folks will be discouraged when faced with this.
That's okay too. Folks who opt out of parenthood shouldn't be thought less of.
But to think people will not have kids because of the "debt" philosophy is unrealistic. The truth is, most people would not even have sex at all, were it not for the massive instinctive drive. It's that much of a hassle to find and hold a partner, even more so have kids, and that's not even taking your relationship with your kids into account. If one is daunted from having kids, their train of thought will not even reach the debt part.
If you add the idea of "getting into debt to your children" to the mix -- it tilts the balance to "let's postpone having kids until later" (that "later", usually, does not arrive).
The perspective of life as an infinite gift gives parents some justification for authoritarianism which some will abuse. The perspective of being forced into it gives children some justification for entitlement which some will abuse.
I think it is harder to get children to not abuse a free pass and I think that parents have a better claim overall. But parents using it is a terrible practice that will backfire. Parents need to earn respect and compliance without relying on the trump card of 'i made you'. It is up to the children to decide what obligations they have towards their parents later on. And this should mostly be a function of raising considerate and capable people with maximal possible buy-in.
I agree that the bulk of children's debt is to society and their own children. But this requires a sense of fairness to notice the debt and the capability to repay it. Parents have a crucial role to play in developing these.
Either way, I think the entire debt concept is toxic, creating guilt on either side. You're family and you help each other in many ways and nobody really has a debt to another.
I've noticed this in myself. As usual though, he has a hack for this as well: I have some hacks for sailing close to this wind. For example, when I write essays, I think about what I'd want my kids to know. That drives me to get things right. And when I was writing Bel, I told my kids that once I finished it I'd take them to Africa. When you say that sort of thing to a little kid, they treat it as a promise. Which meant I had to finish or I'd be taking away their trip to Africa. Maybe if I'm really lucky such tricks could put me net ahead. But the wind is there, no question.
If anything having a kid has helped me focus, by cutting out a lot of extraneous noise in other parts of life.
For the record I plan to have kids (because kids are awesome), but want to push it off as far as humanly possible. It's basically a sign that you've retired/don't have anything that important left to contribute other than steady-state levels of productivity.
[1] I think having Fuck You Money is the best way to prevent kids from lowering your risk appetite. But attention is still a zero sum game (even with nannies helping to offload some of the work), so money won't save you entirely.
I have far fewer material things, a very basic house, and not very nice cars, but an equally important shift is your financial mindset on helping your family's stability today as well as into the future.
Re-reading this, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Wish I could reword it, but it's how I feel, I guess. Maybe it'll help someone out there. Having kids is tough!
I very much believe in the ego depletion theory (though I know, it's not been reproduced) - the more choices I have to make in a sub-arena, the more fatigued I get, and the lower self-control I have. I've just admitted to myself that I am poor at time management, so I've outsourced a lot of things to my personal assistant (whom I would never hire in the past given my income bracket). We have a housecleaner service despite the fact that I'm perfectly capable of cleaning the house, but in doing so I just pile up more tasks that I really don't want to do.
I've had these discussions with other people in my income bracket who say they can't afford to get help around the house, but they drive Teslas, have super nice clothes, buy expensive TVs / electronics, eat out a lot, go on posh vacations... it's about what you prioritize your money towards. I spend a huge amount of my money on my family and their needs, and I want for very little in my personal life.
I see it this way: I'm an entrepreneur, getting to do my thing. That's enough for me. I don't need nice stuff or to go to foreign lands; all the clothes I wear are free from vendors or cheaply purchased at Old Navy / Goodwill / etc. My family emotionally supports my self-employment, which is more than anyone can ask for in this life. They deserve everything else.
I've worked with a lot super smart folks that are older and, thinking back, their kids were old enough to not be a constant concern, or they never had kids. They seem to have both the energy to be focused at work and also a lot of knowledge that someone a few years out of college doesn't yet have. I've also seen this when one parent is a stay-at-home parent, allowing the other parent to be more engaged with work.
Obviously we should be compassionate to people with young kids at home and not hold it against them, because civilization requires a certain number of people to procreate.
Don't most successful people have kids (just like anybody else)?
Also, many people just don't take care of their kids. There are many mono-parental families out there.
> Don't most successful people have kids (just like anybody else)?
I imagine both those things are true.
> Also, many people just don't take care of their kids. There are many mono-parental families out there.
I became a single parent when my wife developed mental illness (which was like getting 5 more kids). In my case self-employment allowed me to be present a lot more often than most single parents can.
Nevertheless, the overriding truth is that nearly every sq inch of modern western society is stacked against single parents.
I really don't think this is true statistically. Plenty of outliers with kids, as far as kids go.
Moreover, argument is not true, especially for men. Many men leave most of care and career sacrifice on their wifes. They may be slightly inconvenienced by kids here and there, but actually spend equal or even more time in work then before. (Cause home isore boring and wife less friendly now)
Reality might skew a little in tech because of some high profile successes that occurred while founders were absurdly young.
Not slowed down by children: Albert Einstein, Joseph Stalin, Goering, Speer. (I happened to read about that period a lot).
Bill Gates, Musk also have children, but I don't think business owners are remembered that long. Plus, Elon Musk is not active father. More if sponsor from what I heard. The "remembered after 100 years" basically limits me to politicians making massive changes. But if you check those who won Nobel prize, they have plenty children too. And writers have them too.
Seriously, career of males are not much harmed by children. It used to be an advantage even
Musk was born I'm rich family for that matter. And was not hold back by kid at all, cause he was not spending hours with them or something. Ha had nanny.
That's a pretty blinkered perspective. For the large majority of people, your children are the most impactful thing you contribute. Say you have 2 kids. You marginally reduce your contribution to care for them but in return they contribute two whole lifetimes worth. Way more than you would ever add to your career.
Of course there's prudence in planning, but there are other ways to define your success and contribution other than your immediate economic utililty.
When I first became a parent I thought it would be great if I could just stay home with my kids all the time and not have to go to work. I thought that would be better for them and me, and concluded that's what I'd do if I ever had fuck-you money. Then when they got old enough to have conversations with (3-4 yo) I realized that they really engaged with conversations about things outside their daily lives, which for better or worse can be very routine. If I wasn't going to work I wouldn't have much to tell them that they don't already know. And again for better or worse, young kids and teens tend to see anything that happened before they were born as ancient irrelevant history, so I'm not sure that telling stories about the glory days of past contributions would have the same impact.
Lastly, if you'll pardon a bit of good-natured snark, while
> Empirically, people with kids almost never achieve outlier levels of success
is certainly true,
> Empirically, people almost never achieve outlier levels of success
Is almost equally true!
That's ridiculous. Do you have any way of backing that claim up? If you're using the word "empirically", you should have.
J S Bach had 21 children. Karl Friedrich Gauss had 6 children. Warren Buffett has 3 children. Rembrandt van Rijn had 5 children. Isambard Kingdom Brunel had 3 children. Charles Dickens had 10 children. Charles Darwin had 10 children.
The only one of those I picked on the basis of knowing about their children was Bach; the others were the first super-eminent people in their fields who occurred to me that I didn't know were childless.
Some very rich tech people: Bill Gates, 3 children; Larry Ellison, 2 children; Jeff Bezos, 4 children; Mark Zuckerberg, 2 children. (I just picked some rich tech people and checked whether they had children; no deliberate cherry-picking here.)
The most recent Nobel prize in physics went to Jim Peebles (3 children), Michel Mayor (3 children), and Didier Queloz (haven't been able to find out, so maybe none?).
I'm not going to spend ages looking up stats for every area of human achievement, and maybe it turns out that all these people had children after achieving success (lots of us non-outliers, after all, wait to have children until we're reasonably secure financially), but at any rate it certainly doesn't seem as if highly successful people are unusually likely not to have children at all.
people with kids almost never achieve outlier levels of success
Given how much of parenting advice/writing is written by and for moms (rather than dads), and given how much of it is (separately) written by and for people who are both extremely anxious and not very analytical, reading pg's thoughtful and joyous takes on being a parent makes me want to be a parent, too.
Either way, seeing someone write about parenting and reference fatherhood is always a fresh breath of air.
(In a way, I guess I have tasted what it can be like as a woman in engineering, with everything written for "him".)
I might be wrong. I used to get a little frustrated by how men are treated as parents though, and I've come to think it's no one's fault today. If some old lady congratulates me for spending time with my sons (something I do every day and while it is nice, I don't want people to think it's remarkable and novel), I shouldn't assume it's condescending or rude; it's more likely that her husband rarely spent time with their kids and/or her father never spend time with her. She could be totally sincere.
Similarly, there could be very little written for us because in much of the world and recent history, raising kids has been largely placed on women. We might need to start writing if we want to see that change.
Again, I could be wrong. I think about it quite a bit though. Being a 'single dad' was a real eye opener about how men and parenting are perceived in society.
It was a deep and profound eye opener for me to (1) notice how most of the writing about the stuff I did all day was written specifically for people without Y chromosomes
but more importantly
(2) it made it much more clear to me what it must be like to be a woman who wants to be or is a part of a male-dominated field. Even though I was already aware of the concept of gendered literature as it pertains to a field of endeavor, wow, was it a totally different experience to have it apply directly to me and to my feelings. I used to be a bit cavalier about this - acknowledging that it was a real thing, but downplaying its significance.
No more. The kid is now 25, and we talk gender politics every other week :)
Almost any book on raising young children (say birth to 5) would be written with the assumption that diapers, feeding, play arrangements, and what we might call "very early childhood education" were the responsibility of a mother. Many early children's books would feature mothers as the ones taking care of young children too, and that grated on me a bit.
To be fair, there's a flip side to this which is almost as bad. By the time my child ended up at a (co-op) nursery school, I of course got huge karma from all the other stay-at-home mothers there for doing precisely what they did. That wasn't comfortable either, but at least it was an ego massage.
A couple of decades later ... it all seems like water under the bridge now compared to the deeper gender politics that we still face, and I am only glad that it made me pay attention to what I had previously assumed was a trivial thing.
Yeah. Stuff that is written in an affective style drives me crazy. I want to scream "Stop trying to make me feel the emotions, and get to the point already!" I find it rather hard to read.
For certain people, PG talks their language in a way that few others do. Not that others couldn't, but at the moment, very few do.
I learned to say "I love you." It still gets an "I love you, too" nearly twenty years later by default. If I don't fuck up, I expect it will work on my deathbed. It probably helped that I often add "and am very very proud of you" when I've thought it's a good thing to say. Most recently by text across two thousand miles in the midst of a pandemic. Because I was. YMMV.
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#### scratch https://scratch.mit.edu/
#### tynker https://www.tynker.com/
#### blackly https://developers.google.com/blockly/
####star logo http://education.mit.edu/starlogo-tng/
#### alice http://www.alice.org/index.php
#### kodu form microsofts https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/confirmation.aspx?i...
#### android app inventor http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/
#### kids ruby http://kidsruby.com/
#### Lua programming language https://www.lua.org/
Hardware programming for kids
Crumble https://redfernelectronics.co.uk/crumble/
BBC Micro:Bit https://microbit.org/
CodeBug http://www.codebug.org.uk/
I am an advisor
I am glad I am not alone I thinking that BASIC is still a great language to teach young kids to program. I love how there is not a lot of boilerplate (for example the parenthesis for the print call in python and indentation).
At the moment primary school age (5 to 10) children in the UK seem to learn some flavour of Scratch. And then (in the UK) they also tinker with boards like Crumble or CodeBug or BBC Micro:Bit (which use blockly or MS MakeCode or something a bit like Scratch).
I don't know what the next step in progression is. I'm curious about what HN readers would think good stepping stones would be? Direct to Python, or something else then to python?
BBC Micro:Bit https://microbit.org/
Crumble https://redfernelectronics.co.uk/crumble/
Codebug http://www.codebug.org.uk/
I think if they're looking at the js behind the blocks in blockly that python isn't a very big step.
I cannot really imagine someone teaching me a programming language. Half the fun was trying to "get it". I think that if I had had someone teaching me BASIC back then, it would half felt like trying to solve a Sudoku with someone watching over your shoulder and telling you which numbers to put.
- Spend as much time with your child as possible and let them roam free. Just have a loose eye out and don't overprotect everything, children are really not that fragile. This includes letting them eat dirt and play with pets without worrying too much
- Children observe/copy/improve (and wil let you know when they are not interested in stuff). It's really fascinating to watch. Keep that in mind when you want them to learn something
- Let them play with other children without worrying that it'll be bad for them. Also don't be scared to hand your toddler over to some other family member to hold etc...noone will drop them. Humans intuitively understand how to care for babies/children
- Do research and base stuff on that (name bias and praising effort vs. ability are the only two that seem interesting on a quick glance)
That's all I got so far. And there's a certain set of values I want to teach but I believe the best way of doing that is by living it (be decent to people, be critical of yourself/don't take yourself too seriously, always stay curious about life, value freedom highly).
My own experience is this: (1) kids meticulously observe what their parents do in their "natural" state and get interested in that, however, (2) kids develop sort of "not for me" or even outright repulsion for things parents what them to excel at.
So the best way for kids to get interested in X is just to do that yourself all the time and let them approach you with questions while never let them feel that you are way too good at that. One technique is to do Conway style "blunders" while teaching something to kids. This apparently makes them feel that there is room for them to come in, contribute and think independently.
You have to be very good to pull off that kind of move.
Only one really bit into it & he largely eclipsed my ability by the time he was 18.
The others found their own skill sets, mostly with stuff I suck at.
Edit: Interestingly, one is training as an electrician which is tangentially related to my skills. However, he came to that totally on his own.
His learning is best aided thru support, not influence.
I share a hobby with my great grandmother. I was never interested in it when my parents were involved with it, but on my own I still think of grandma when I’m making plans. It was just something she did, often while we were visiting.
Does he really not get regularly lectured on morality by other adults? I certainly do, and I get a tiny fraction of such lectures compared to my wife...
older women who would be uncomfortable telling men that they are "doing it wrong"
Differing standards for moms and dads. I get kudos for doing anything with my kids. She gets told she is parenting wrong
I wonder where the culture is so different, or if this is a case of people reading into (ugh) "resting bitch face"
My two points are related. I recall hearing comments like that when my spouse and I had one infant child, and I remember taking them more personally, because it's easy as a new parent to feel like you should be doing more. Now if I hear someone comment on something I'm doing as a parent, it's just conversation, and I think the primary difference was my confidence in my own parenting ability.
It's too cold for shorts.
You're pushing that shopping cart wrong.
You need to wash your car.
That's a lot of ice cream in your shopping cart, maybe you should try eating something else.
Regularly - when the critic feels the object of their derision is out of earshot.
Parents presume what feedback they get and they're usually right.
The behavior of many adults isn't that far removed from the behavior of your average toddler. As a society we seem to have come to accept this as fairly normal though.
He's a billionaire, so he's surrounded exclusively by sycophants.
VC playbook: build a portfolio of rapid growth companies, spread a bunch of cash around; expect most to fail but one or a few are huge successes in a short time frame; repeat.
Parent playbook: no real repeatable systems, slow organic growth, everyone succeeds, likely no unicorns, one-and-done.
You cannot engineer and scale parenting.
Here's a guy who thinks of his kids as products. And things he does and they do as features.
This pretty much applies to most advice doled out by the super rich for consumption by the to the general public.
And then there are some tweets which are very situation/environment specific, like for instance the one about walking to school alone:
10 yo asked when I'd let him and his 7 yo brother walk to school by themselves. I told him the task was not to get himself to school safely, but to get his brother to school safely. I could practically hear his brain struggle to assimilate this paradigm shift.
All of my class mates and I walked to school alone from first class on (6 yrs of age) simply because we used to live in a smaller town where that was no problem. I'd even think that a parent driving their elementary school kids to school would have been looked at funny by the other parents.
Or this one:
Explained to nervous 7 yo that me being on the floor above is the same as me being in the next room, just rotated 90 degrees. After trying various objections, he had to agree.
While it might be true topologically, of course there are just practical every-day considerations why the are not exactly the same.
So, yeah, I find a lot of the tweets entertaining, but not as deeply insightful than some other commenters here.
Is this a problem anywhere outside the US? (I’m sure there are a few exceptions)
I started with Basic too when I was a kid, but if I were to teach my child programming now in 2020, I would choose Python as a first language. It has many graphic tools, and it looks even more beginner-friendly than Basic.
Getting that little triangular turtle to draw the shape of my house, simply by telling it how far to move and which way to turn, ended up being a life altering moment.
I don't know if it's possible to enthrall children with it these days. The graphics must seem absolutely bland and boring compared to many things children these days get to tinker with.
A couple years later I started messing around with QBasic & that really pulled me in even tho it took me a long while to learn even the basics.
Computer classes in school (until high school at least) seemed to have been generally be taught by teachers slightly less computer-literate than more advanced pupils in their class.
I quickly typed in code to draw a recursive tree and ran it. His reaction was "What?!?! You mean Logo is a programming language like the Pascal I learned at the university?"
Very sad.
The real shame is that there's not a good Beginner's Lisp yet, but when lacking one of those, BASIC is pretty easy to learn, and more importantly is pretty easy to teach.
I think it's very easy for an existing programmer to forget that even the simplest high level concepts like looping and functions are not familiar to a child. These things are just not optional in python. If you want to make a loop, is has to be a high level one.
I would much rather teach a child "if" and "goto" for them to make their own control flow constructs. Later on after they realise that they are making these things manually all the time then they will learn to value of a function or a for loop and how it simplifies their life.
I think it really helps internalise these concepts.
Literally all the best programmers I know started with basic.
https://parenting.stackexchange.com/Which tool do Hacker News users recommend for reading everything ever written by a Twitter user in chronological order?
https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Apaulg%20min_faves%3A200&...
OTOH, your info about "best" vs. "everything" is of interest, too.
This is rather binary (and naive) distinction. There is a lot of room for creative work in any field.
Most people in science and engineering can think of equally (if not more) clever and thought-provoking sentences, but PG's carry more weight because of who he is. We still live in a world where thought-leading is dominated by who has the most attention.
In software, to invent and make something work, you spend maybe 10% of the time actually inventing/creating things, and for the remaining 90% of the time, you try to "instantiate" your creation, which involves lots of drudgework, code bureaucracy (and sometimes real bureaucracy), dealing with irrelevant crap (e.g. tooling issues) and debugging.
I suspect he thinks it’s the former, when, of course, it’s the latter.
The strength is in being able to select the first eigenvalues.
After all, the only real thing is the thing itself. A textual description of the thing is not the thing, Cecil’s lost his pipe. So then it falls to you to describe the thing well. To a man standing in front of ten cars, if you say, “the black one” he knows which one. If you say, “it is a motor vehicle made by Mercedes, noted for their three point logo, that is currently painted black” you have more data but not more information.
All the capable people generalize. That is where predictive strength comes from.
> ... between jobs that involve being outside (gardener, railroad worker) and those that don't (office worker, bus driver, ...)
> ... between jobs that involve creative expression of your emotions (artist, musician) and those that don't (office worker, bus driver, ...)
> ... between jobs that involve saving people's lives (firefighter, doctor) and those that don't (office worker, bus driver, ...)
In the above, "office worker" includes desk jobs like programmer, startup CEO, and secretary. To people in some careers, those all sound pretty much the same.
A less extreme version of that third example would be jobs that are more people-based (in a meaningful way e.g. perhaps including travel agent but not barista) and those that aren't, which would be a very significant split for some people.
----
As a separate point, and probably a bit more pendantic: I think that even "making new stuff" can mean two different things. If you look at manufacturing e.g. building cars, you typically have a split between interesting design jobs and the factory floor where stuff actually gets built but the job is pretty boring and maybe sometimes even low skilled. Computer programming, even low-level implementation, is more analagous to design in manufacturing (then the "creating" is the trivial file copy of the executable).
But again, to some people that distinction is important and they would rather be building something physical with their hands (plasterer, carpenter, etc.), even if it's to someone else's design, rather than doing something that doesn't involve fine motor skill even if it's "creating" software or car designs.
(I just checked with my kid if he knew what innovative is and he answered it mostly right, but he's 13)
I'd say it is more about discovering what's already there :)
Anyway, the thread related to this dichotomy is great: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1250840771751809024
Watching cocomelon videos helps but this behavior makes me really wonder how people have 2+ kids. Even one kid is a handful for us.
Eating in front of TV is bad for nutrition in general and especially bad for the kids, as multiple studies prove: almost no TV before 6 is a good rule of thumb.
As others comments are hinting, kids know how to regulate themselves regarding food intake, and no kid will let themselves starve, so you can offer a plate with the main course and a small dessert, your kid will eat the main course when she is hungry. Also we found that allowing them to come and go out of table was hard on our sense of properness but helped our kids to eat the complete dish. After a few months, there were able to stay at table for the duration. We also found out that industrial food for children is disgusting, and that nothing beats homemade to open the appetite!
Feeling (and being) overwhelmed is normal, if possible go see a professional to reassure you.
Sources: experience with my kids, reading a lot a studies, and a psychiatrist wife
Keep up!
Let me ask you though, what's the simplest plainest programming language for a preteen that won't have any patience for dealing with syntax?
This thread changed my perspective on teaching my kids to code. I won’t.
1. Didn't he had already a personal website?
2. Why is he teaching Basic over Scratch?
3. Will it scale to Kubernetes one day?
1. Someone else made this site in order to centralize all of Paul's relevant parenting content in one place.
2. PG prefers the text-only purity of Basic.
3. Who cares.
Scratch is too mainstream for Graham.
1. electrical circuits (switch, button, battery), no reading necessary, and purely physical. 2. gcompris (computer skills + you can simulate circuits so it connects to 1.) 3. Scratch 4. something textual (e.g. Basic but maybe Python or JS)
I like the texts and also the concept as a whole. Discovering old tweets is very cumbersome on twitter.com. So this site really meets a need that Twitter itself doesn’t.
I guess it's halo effect? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
I actually worry a lot that as I get "popular" I'll be able to get away with saying stupider stuff than I would have dared say before. This sort of thing happens to a lot of people, and I would really like to avoid it
would probaly talk less or at least narrow his focus.
replace artists with parents and re-read https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
If you think his observations are mundane, then why not just move on to another link, hopefully one that you're interested in?
HN loves to question the bonafides of everyone/everything; if you're sick of these comments, why do you take the time and effort to comment?
I replied in a perhaps futile attempt to discourage a comment which has spawned an almost entirely mean-spirited sub-thread.