That is literal survivorship bias there. I know multiple stories of deeply unhappy/unstable foster children, no matter how much stability, love & care they were given ( I knew some of those foster parents ).
The latter claim is perfectly valid to make when 100% of survivors have trait X; you are correct in implying that it would be invalid to say having trait X will guarantee a survivor.
I am not a native speaker, but to me he clearly suggests with takes that it should be possible for every case.
Consider the idiom it takes two to tango. Now, one of the two could be a quadriplegic, or a dog, or maybe they both come from a severe religious cult which has forbidden dancing and just can't bring themselves to do it.
That's fine; the meaning is that two are necessary, not that two are sufficient.
It takes two to tango is about the tango going to happen, not the minimal required circumstances for it to happen if all other stars align.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_takes_two_to_tango
The meaning of this expression has been extended to include any situation in which the two partners are by definition understood to be essential (...).
more generally, when someone says something you find incredulous, consider processing that internally, and then decide if saying "huh, now i know" is not a better reaction to "no way, maybe you're wrong."
But to the topic at hand, the logical implication is that "to do it" => "takes surprisingly little time" (that is, doing it implies you took surprisingly little time)
Not "taking surprisingly little time" => "to do it" (that is, taking surprisingly little time implies you do it; after all, you might have taken surprisingly little time to do -something else-).
Same as the above; the implication is that "success" implies "(at least) a surprisingly small number of adults were involved", not that "(at least) a surprisingly small number of adults were involved" implies "success".
I find it helpful to use formal logic to explain stuff like this. If I make a statement that p => q (that is, p implies q), and that statement is true, it does NOT necessarily follow that q => p (that is, q implies p) is true (it may or may not be; it is independent from a formal logic perspective). It is necessary to evaluate q => p separately, in which case we may find it to be true, OR we may find q =/> p to be true (that is, q does not imply p; or put another way, the fact q is true tells us nothing about whether p is).
As an example, "My shoes are wet because it is raining", p = it is raining, and q = my shoes are wet. p => q means if it is raining (p), my shoes are wet (q). But it does not also follow from that that q => p; that is, just because my shoes are wet (q) it does not mean it must be raining (p; I might have, after all, been out watering the lawn). Thus, q =/> p.
For the tango example, p = a tango is possible, q = there are two people. p => q, but q =/> q (that is, two people does not imply a tango is possible).
In this case, p = foster child is successful, and q = a number of adults (sometimes a surprisingly small number) were involved with them. p => q, but q =/> p.
Saying "it takes a surprisingly small number of emotionally stable adults to help kids " is emphasizing that it does not require a large number of stable adults and therefore a small number is sufficient. How many does it take? Surprisingly few. A few suffice. How else can you read this? You're surprised that a necessary number is small? But it's always necessary to have at least 0 stable adults and that's as small as possible - you can't get surprised that it's small! Instead you must be surprised that the sufficient number is small.
I'm not making any comment on the number of adults; I'm just responding to the original argument that "well, I know foster kids who haven't been successful, who had supportive adults", and the ensuing argument, to further explain why that isn't a negation.
The "surprising" modifier here makes the object something that needs extra context, what's surprising here is that the number is small and not large. If bio mom and bio dad and foster mom and foster dad and all the extended family and most of their teachers are distant, but their track coach is emotionally invested (thanks, Buzz), that's, surprisingly, sometimes all that it takes.
Yes, if no one's invested, that's not enough, as you'd expect. It does leave the possibility that everyone is invested and it's still not enough.
The family that adopted them was wealthy. They poured enormous amounts of time and resources into raising those kids. One turned it all around and works for Google, the other ram away and hasn’t been heard from in 20 years.
Same birth mother, born two years apart, she was an addict.
Anyway, you're not wrong about the chaotic environment that is child rearing— the other side of this coin is sets of identical twins with differing sexualities, eg: https://kinseyinstitute.org/news-events/news/2019-07-26-twin...
I’m not religious, but the saying often attributed to Christ saying, “forgive them, they know not what they do,” is probably totally, 100% accurate. I would add we don’t really know why they do what they do either. Christians want that to mean specifically about the crucifixion, but I believe whoever wrote that down was trying to say something more general about human experience.
I know from personal experience, just how much which kids you sit next to from 1st-5th grade, as they are often the same in the US, can influence your life in extreme ways.
All this says to me, we should probably go easier on everyone, even the “worst” of us...
http://www.econtalk.org/michael-blastland-on-the-hidden-half...
The amount of variation in the human condition would completely negate any conclusions from a sample size of two, however close the conditions.
It's also really easy to explain how one kid does well and the other doesn't, look at any life situation. One kid falls in with bad friends, one does not, one has a hobby that takes them somewhere, one does not, one gets a DUI the other does not, one has an amazing Hockey coach, the other does not, one takes a risk and wants to be a rock start, the other does not etc. etc..
Actually, controlled experiments on this could be a lot better than N = 2, and the small-N problem dwarfs the positive features of the experiment here.
2. Same mother doesn't mean same fathers. Success comes down to IQ. One kid could have been lucky while the other drew the short stick.
I think it arguably more likely that acceptance into the education system comes down to IQ due to antiquated practices in attempting to derive intelligence. Being within the education system is the sunny uplands to networking and generally better opportunities.
Its possible that almost every child has the potential of a "good enough" IQ and that nurture reigns supreme over the supporting cast of genetics. To separate the two within nurture there remains environmental factors such as an interpreted narrative of favouritism which can lead to downward spirals.
You can just as well say that success comes down to height, or country of birth, or combined wealth of uncles. There are so many other factors at play.
I definitely respect people who adopt, but they risk of just adopting someone else's problem is too high for me.
Eventually they adopted a 100% healthy local child after 5-6 years of legal nightmare as it's pretty complex navigate through all requirements plus wait your turn.
The above isn't always true, but if you didn't investigate the agency deeply you should assume it is. This is why international adoptions are so hard, many counties have caught on and given up on giving the few kids who do need real homes help.
You have to be kidding me. Do you know how many kids are literal orphans in sub-saharan Africa?
Meanwhile, we literally sell babies with impunity which we euphemistically call "surrogacy."
Moving is hard on children, not so much on infants, much more so on teens.
But the idea that parents ought to be prohibited from moving is a truly radical idea.
They were drug impacted, but its weird how research goes in cycles. Crack babies were going to ruin America's capacity for caring for all these children. Then it was said that Alcohol is the only drug that effects babies in the womb. It was called the "Crack Baby Myth" but now things are changing again.
Finally they were separated in the system.
At first we were like “that’s horrible”
Now. We just wish it had been done a lot sooner.
Some people are hell bent on self destruction, and will take everyone down with them.
It took 7 years for our adopted daughter to finally realize and know we actually do love her.
The first sentence is saying that a stable adult is one necessary component. The second sentence is saying that the stable adult is the only necessary component. They are totally different claims with very similar wording.
Frankly, the original statement that 'it only takes one or two' should be rather obvious, it's called 'parenting' and it usually implies a couple of people who have a bond with a child.
That said, we all know every kind of person from every walk of life who ended up being in every kind of scenario.
There's a lot of randomness in humans.
That doesn't take away from the fact that a couple of 'good parents' and a decent community + school is almost assuredly the best path.