Centuries of Childhood
resobscura.substack.com
resobscura.substack.com
the article is not directly making that claim, but i feel it does imply it.
but does that really matter?
what we really need to look at is how different parenting styles affect children growing up. there isn't enough research on that because the effects are subtle and hard to see.
it took me a few decades to understand how my childhood affected me, and how i spend most of my life searching for the love that my parents could not give me.
i have had the opportunity as a young man to observe different parenting styles with friends, like lovingly involved dads but also the crying out method of putting a baby to sleep, which to me intuitively just felt cruel.
there is a lot of insecurity by young parents, so we tend to look to others for help. our own parents of course and our community. but in this modern times we also have access to examples from other cultures as well as history, and i find it only natural that we use those examples to support our beliefs. just because counterexamples exist, doesn't mean those examples are wrong.
the counter argument is rather, if attachment parenting were wrong, then we should not find any historic examples of it at all. of course the same is true for the opposite, which is why the truth is that we simply do not know enough yet about what is really the best way to raise children. more research is necessary. personally i feel that going with your own intuition is a safe approach.
Compare to "what is the best way to walk" and then studying gorillas. We might learn something, but we obviously should not--heh--ape those evolutionary relatives. We've had more than enough time to develop our own separate-possibly incompatible--situation and needs.
That said, sometimes you might want to take a chance and not wait for the results of an experiment to be known. ChatGPT calls this a "temporal dilemma".
...also, closer to us, definitely don't study the bonobos
Along those lines... the other day there was that discussion about the play-based childhood from decades ago, and I feel sometimes people were romanticizing it -- I don't think the increased rate of physical bullying and pressure for fitting in were mentioned enough (though there were some mentions). Personally, I think I'd rather not have been born in the 60s. The Internet is directly or indirectly responsible for like 99% of my knowledge (speaking English included), which in turn is responsible for so much in my life that's different and better... If I look back to the folks my age in my home town (which I think I'd never have left), I don't desire their life AT ALL.
* Unlike for behaviors and social conventions, I don't think we have so much freedom with things like diets. Humans do have some hard dietary needs...
I find the memeset quite dehumanizing. "Savages", even putting aside the baggage that term carries, are as fully human as the "civilized", and as such, are as fully capable of the heights of humanity and the full plumbing of the depths.
While I admit I have not seen the movie the author is talking about, it sounds to me like it reeks of the "noble savage" memeset. I'm sure there are wonderful parents in the more primitive cultures (I think I can use that terminology in this context, it just refers to their technology usage and not humanity), but the primitive cultures also used to let unwanted children die by exposure... and there was worse, too. Because they're human, and as such, as prone to the heights and the depths as the rest of us. The modern "civilized" world has all the heights and the depths too; the civilized world is just somewhat better at hiding the depths where other people won't see it.
(Anyone who wants to complain about the terminology for "noble savage" is invited to take it up with the rest of the world; I'm just using the common name given to it. If it is not clear, I am dripping with contempt for the meme and have no interest in defending it in any form, name included.)
- A call to return to a primarily agrarian culture.
- A claim that prehistoric humans were somehow in more harmony with nature and their community.
- Focus on small, tribe like communities.
- Avoidance or downplay of any modern advantages like medicine or logistics.
While some may - as this thread make out - fall for that archetypal trope; some of those elements are indeed worth studying
For example, scientists don’t place a huge effort on documenting the peoples of Papua New Guinea for some weird Exoticism. They genuinely provide unbridled access to effectively untouched (from western influence) and highly diverse groups. This access in turn is breeding ground for anthropologic, historic and psychological theory development and empirical studies
Don’t fall into the trap of immediately disregarding genuine areas of research due to previous experience with these “noble savage” admirers
To go further with this example: western doctors and researchers immediately began to force PNG groups to stop their burial rites after finally discovering Kuru (deadly prion disease) was being caused by some of their rites (consumption of brain tissue after death)
You can both be an advocate for smaller cultures in undeveloped areas without fetishising it and still support modern medicine, science and logistics
The reality is that nobody wants to completely go back to the past. Nobody is protesting the use of soap or brushing their teeth.
The real question is in which areas do we reject modern technology? We should evaluate modern technology not as fanboys but as mature humans. People think that the Amish are hypocrites because they use diesel generators instead of bringing electricity into their homes. But their relationship with technology is mature: they decide as a community which tech to use and which to avoid, instead of being fanboys who think the only thing better than tech is more of it.
I personally don't make the same tradeoffs the Amish do. But I do make tradeoffs. Saying that modern tech is universally good is just as chronologically snobbish as saying that the olden days were universally good.
And progress isn't a straight line. You can reject parts without rejecting the whole.
1) His strongest examples of child death causes are highly local.
ex: Labor caused deaths. The opportunities for kids to work new, dangerous jobs are local to that region. They're also local to many other regions but the driver is corporations that are headquartered in that region. Going back decade by decade, those corporate presences are less and less.
ex: Health caused deaths. What we know of historical child death rates comes times/places when human population is the densest (when records are better). Groups outside of this metric include per-European indigenous people - people who's death rate skyrocketed when Europeans appear in their lives. To be fair, I can't find data on child deaths for per-discovered indigenous people. But absent two massive drivers of disease death, lower death rates seem like a thing that would be.
The author's piece isn't poorly written but I think it's value about explaining how things really sucked for kids in some places, 150 years ago. As far as ideal childhood environments go, we need to look outside of the areas he's considering.
(one potential ex): https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288...
ref: I spend a lot of time thinking about Euro/US lives from my birth back to 1800, because genealogy.
Tangential, but I find it harder to take this person seriously knowing that they take Emily Oster seriously. Oster's book about parenting is one of the dumbest things I've ever read.
> In the book [Expecting Better, 2013], Oster argues against the general rule of thumb to avoid alcohol consumption while pregnant, contends that there is no evidence that (low) levels of alcohol consumption by pregnant women adversely affect their children. This claim, however, has drawn criticism from the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and others.
I don't have any strong opinion on the topic of the claim[0], but the way it is reported as having "drawn criticism from [Some National Organization Specializing in Arguing the Opposite of the Claim]" in my experience pattern-matches in favor of the claim.
So beyond that, what's exactly so controversial about her books?
--
[0] - Like everyone, I've had "zero alcohol while pregnant or breastfeeding" message drilled into me for decades, and that's my prior, though I've personally heard an experienced gynecologist, widely respected in the region, giving pregnant women allowance for a small glass of champagne for New Year's Eve...
Public health guidelines targeted at non-professionals need to be simple. Same idea behind telling somebody who just wants a retirement fund to park their money in a managed portfolio, then ease those investments into safer stuff close to retirement. You could totally explain things in more detail, giving them more options and better opportunities, but most people are likely to not understand enough to safely do it. (I probably explained it incorrectly, which would reinforce my point of the general public's ignorance.)
And that's how you lose their trust. Just telling me to do simple X when it's clear to me from my own experience that sometimes not-X is better for me will make me think your overly simplifying and that your advice is not to be trusted, no matter your credentials.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40121328-cribsheet?ac=1&...
It's a book for neurotic, middling-IQ soccer moms who obsess over things that don't matter. Utterly vacuous.
Too late to undo it now, but lesson learned.
Much like nutrition and sociology, research can be politically fraught, have lots of data points, etc. But that's neither here nor there, either research is high quality or it isn't, including in the domain of economy.
Children become most like whoever they spend the most time with. So, one of the best things you can do is just be the type of person you want your children to grow up into -- and spend time with them.
But this is not a binary thing, but a gradient. Your children will also learn from the other people they encounter, and care must be taken to make sure the community and school they reside in is also one that exerts the influence you want it to (e.g. look at the parents of the schools you want to send them off to, because it will be a look into what sorts of kids your children will interact and grow with).
There is also an emotional component -- which either you know how to handle or you don't (or will learn in the process). Perhaps this is the most important one, because if you neglect it, your children may fit into society and your ideals, but they will be deeply troubled and unhappy.
Keeping vigilant, present, and aware of your children's emotional state (and helping them deal with such) is a vital -- often neglected -- part of parenting. The other one would be keeping an eye on their health. There are numerous chronic health issues that could pop up that would greatly influence the way they see and experience life -- such as inherited diseases like celiacs, neurodivergence, etc. -- that must be accounted for. But also fitness, good nutrition, and the rest that guarantees your children won't be living life handicapped.
Other than that, no. Much of the "parenting books" have been very harmful, and more than useless. Most books that get published are not published because the info is true and wholesome, but because someone thought they would be commercially useful. You're better off talking with other parents who you respect about how to deal with specific issues. So what I've written above is a decent start.
She is an economist who wrote a book that misrepresents, ignores and twists science what does know about childrearing and then presents that with a high level of confidence.