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Comment by rhubarbtree | Hacker News Reader

Just a note for Dads doing more than their parents - it’s quality more than quantity. Be fully present with your kids more than trying to kill yourself fitting more hours in. That’s what matters.

Bad parenting tends to be more of the type that isn’t engaged. Kids don’t hate you for going to work. They are hurt if you come home and ignore them.

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If you’re a dad and live in the same house as your kids the time comes naturally… men have been purposefully fleeing it throughout history.

So its not a matter of “killing yourself to get more time” … its a matter of not abandoning your kids and wife to make time for your hobbies or whatever

Yeah, what's the point in technically spending more time with kids if half of that time you stare at your mobile phone.

Ture, but also, know that sometimes that just happens - the kids want to be solo, not talk, etc. Easy to kill yourself thinking you need to be perfect.

Any paper or citations on this? I don't believe it.

You should definitely follow your instincts here, but wanting researchers to show you how to raise your kids is a fools errand IMO. Put those highly tuned parental instincts to use!

Isn’t this the exact sentiment used by those who oppose vaccinations?

different advice is appropriate in different situations, believe it or not

Believe it or not, that's a useless fact when there's no obvious specific difference between the situations to make it relevant.

If you don't see a clear difference between the hard sciences of biology/chemistry/medicine and the opinionated "science" of parenting (prescriptive, no less), then you should check your eyes.

I see your point about different qualities of science, but the wording of "highly tuned parental instincts" is still bad. The instincts are the same in both situations, and they're highly flawed. Science should override instincts in lots of situations.

And if you ask basically any kind of science "how do I best accomplish x?", that science will have a "presciptive" answer, so I don't see how parenting science is any more prescriptive then chemistry.

Yeah, I'm a little skeptical as well. I remember dad being home, but not specifically focused on me. Sometimes seeing dad at home, doing his thing, was a great way of learning.

I think as kids we learned by example more than hands-on-taught.

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