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Comment by eesmith | Hacker News Reader

There's a strong bias error.

If 1% of kids are successful, even with a poor parenting strategy, then one out of every million 3-kid families will have successful adults.

The approach described appears to be a "Authoritative" approach, using the definition at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting_styles

"Authoritative" is different than "Authoritarian".

Thing is, we also see authoritariana families (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_parenting lists "tiger mom", "American stage mother", "Japanese kyōiku mama", "Jewish mother (stereotype)" as examples) which also have 3/3 successful adults.

How then do you decide which approach to take, if you only look at the successful cases?

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There's much more than one in a million successful 3-kid families, so it's pretty likely this is not a fluke.

Sure. That's because most families do not have poor parenting strategy.

My point was that even with poor parenting, there can be a 3-kid family where all three kids are successful.

That doesn't mean the parenting strategy should be widely replicated, given that there are more generally successful methods.

Could you be more specific about these generally successful methods? If it is so simple, why are people looking for new/other strategies?

I already linked to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting_styles which goes into far more details than I can provide, and with additional links.

Who said any of these 'generally successful methods' were simple?

Losing weight is - in principle - a matter of eating less and exercising more. If it's so simple, why are people looking for new/other strategies?

The author of this piece is also the author of a book on how to raise children. There are oodles of these sorts of books, with all sorts of different and conflicting advice.

I see no one has followed up on my implicit argument that the definition of "success" in the original article is itself a problem.

Do you think the author's children are not successful? According to her Wikipedia entry, they are: CEO of YouTube, Professor of Pediatrics and researcher, and co-founder of 23andMe.

I have not read her book to tell what she defines as successful.

Google Books preview says she regards "success" as something akin to "passion". 'I think it's time we define "success" as "passion".' (p74)

She uses it in the context of a career, of a child soloist at Carnegie hall, "personal success", "all walks of life", "at Stanford" and "citizen of the world."

Looks like pretty standard upper-income white-collar class American aspirations.

I still regard it as like a diet book - there's a bunch of these things, and lots of different audiences.

Still, certainly having the money to get an M.A. at Paris-Sorbonne University, be married to a Stanford physics professor (and sometimes department chair), and to live and raise children in Palo Alto .... probably didn't hurt.

> Do you think the author's children are not successful?

I believe the definition of success should be questioned.

> standard upper-income white-collar class American aspirations

There's no particular reason to privilege this point of view. The three people I named in my first comment on this post did not meet this standard, but I'd much rather emulate their accomplishments than be the fastest rat in the race.

I'm not disagreeing with you.

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