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Comment by hosh | Hacker News Reader

The Let Grow organization that wrote this article and help advance legislation protecting parents, advocates for a parenting style that lets kids grow into resilient, independently-thinking adults. This is more than just protecting parents or preventing unnecessary breakup of families.

From that lens, the question I have is, how does this kind of parenting style help poor families?

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Advocating for laws that promote reasonable childhood independence benefits families where all the adults have to work more hours to get by, leaving their kids in safe but unsupervised situations more often.

This parenting style doesn’t necessarily save parents time.

For example, to implement this: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288...

It means involving toddlers into helping in small ways (and having to pay attention to the toddler’s capacity), even if that help initially involves many mistakes.

People who are barely treading water may not have the resources to do something like that, being too exhausted.

Further, you are mistaking safety for well-being. There are situations where overall mental and emotional well-being comes from the confidence built on taking calculated risks. You can only do that when the family and community has a solid social safety net.

To think that protecting poor people’s ability to parent grossly misses the point of this.

I think you’re finding arguments in what I’m saying that I’m not actually putting in there. That’s fine! I respect your point of view.

You are right. Thank you for respecting it. I was trying to convey that the frame in which we are approaching this is off, so the arguments I brought up falls outside of what you are saying. I have a bad habit of not indicating that I am changing the frame, so that can lead to confusion, and often to the experience that I'm talking past other people.

poor families have less resources/time to provide for continuous supervision for their children. so they use this parenting style by default. what helps them is that this style gets legal protection, so they are not targeted for letting their kids run unsupervised.

This parenting style isn’t exactly the same as unsupervised parenting. It is still very mindful, and can still require a lot of thought and effort on the part of the parent, something that poorer families might not have the time, energy, or resources to execute on.

How is this differentiated from neglect due to just simply being too exhausted to parent?

what is the point that you are trying to make? that this law won't help children of poor families because they are most likely going to be neglected anyways?

that would be a bold claim to make. sure, being poor means less resources, but it does not automatically lead to neglect. even a very busy parent can be mindful about their children in what little time they get to spend together. what matters here is quality, not quantity.

letting children run around alone is not and should not be an indicator of neglect. therefore such a law does help poor families as it reduces the chances that they will be harassed for letting their children play unsupervised.

there are enough other ways for eg. teachers in school to observe and notice when children are actually being neglected.

the primary problem is that we are applying our middle class standards to what should be proper parenting, and that is wrong. parenting in poor families is naturally different, but that does not mean that poor parents can't make the effort or be mindful about their childrens upbringing.

> a parenting style that lets kids grow into resilient, independently-thinking adults

> how does this kind of parenting style help poor families?

I am not sure what you mean.

People here seem to think that this parenting style means to let kids roam around unsupervised, and that is all there is too it. But it is not exactly the same. It still requires time, thought, and energy on the part of the parents.

Example: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288...

Poor families may not have those resources.

What differentiates this parenting style and neglect due to being too exhausted working multiple jobs just to make ends meet?

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