Do Americans Overparent?

I'd just like to speak up for what I regard as the best of all possible hybrids (I was brought up by parents who used it and am still willing to recommend it): (a) you allow your kids all the freedom granted by the poor parents this article describes -- freedom to structure their own free time (give or take the odd piano lesson), to use their imagination, etc. -- but also take their concerns seriously, and operate on the assumption that when a kid asks you why you are doing something, that's an expression of perfectly legitimate curiosity, not a challenge to your authority, and that unless you're in some situation so urgent that questions can't be answered, you should of course answer them. And you have only a few very important expectations: that your kids should be decent people who make some sort of contribution to the world, the nature of which you properly leave to them to determine.

That, when combined with loving your kids to pieces, has always struck me as the ideal.

I'm a little bit skeptical of the results of this study (admittedly I just read the summary and not the details). Research summarized by Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate and by Matt Ridley in Genome suggests that parents' behavior has negligible influence on IQ after birth. I recall the statement that parents can affect their child's IQ more by the mother's nutrition and stress levels during pregnancy than by anything they do after birth.

That research, largely based on adoption studies of identical twins, might not have controlled enough for soecioeconomic differences, though.

Another disturbing feature of this article is the fact that America seems to reward a sense of entitlement and a self-perception in excess of one's actual abilities. Ambitious parents are just inculating their children with the (warped) values that are going to end up making them successful. You can't blame them for taking that path, but an interesting question is why these values are considered "virtues" that help make these children successful.

"Another disturbing feature of this article is the fact that America seems to reward a sense of entitlement and a self-perception in excess of one's actual abilities."

Reward? Hell, we elect them president.

jim w, i'm not sure why you think IQ enters into this discussion.

i happen to agree with both hilzoy and with constantine, so i simply thought i would note that the sense of entitlement that constantine references is quite likely (since we're at the early stages of careers of children brought up this way) to lead to many unhappy ends: there are still only 500 slots as CEOs of fortune 500 companies....

howard,

Below is an excerpt from the page three link where IQ is mentioned, and related to the verbal styles of parents. The problem with making causal conclusions from these correlations is that IQ has strong inheritence, so one might instead conclude that parents' verbal style is related to their IQ, and their IQ happens to be inherited by their children. Therefore, IQ would have nothing to do, per se, to the parents verbal style. I haven't read the rest of the study, so I don't know whether they've controlled for these things.

"Hart and Risley showed that language exposure in early childhood correlated strongly with I.Q. and academic success later on in a child’s life. Hearing fewer words, and a lot of prohibitions and discouragements, had a negative effect on I.Q.; hearing lots of words, and more affirmations and complex sentences, had a positive effect on I.Q. The professional parents were giving their children an advantage with every word they spoke, and the advantage just kept building up.

In the years since Hart and Risley published their findings, social scientists have examined other elements of the parent-child relationship, and while their methods have varied, their conclusions all point to big class differences in children’s intellectual growth. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, a professor at Teachers College, has overseen hundreds of interviews of parents and collected thousands of hours of videotape of parents and children, and she and her research team have graded each one on a variety of scales. Their conclusion: Children from more well-off homes tend to experience parental attitudes that are more sensitive, more encouraging, less intrusive and less detached — all of which, they found, serves to increase I.Q. and school-readiness. They analyzed the data to see if there was something else going on in middle-class homes that could account for the advantage but found that while wealth does matter, child-rearing style matters more."

thanks, Jim: i hadn't clicked the link, and was only referencing the material that matthew excerpted, which didn't make any reference to IQ, but i see your point.

I tend to agree with skepticism about a causal link between parenting style and IQ. I excerpted parts that I thought were a lot more plausible. You can easily see how parenting styles might have a causal influence on peoples' ideas about how to interact with authority figures and how this, in turn, would influence how kids do in school which, after all, is all about interacting with authority figures and only very marinally about how smart you are.

That research, largely based on adoption studies of identical twins, might not have controlled enough for soecioeconomic differences, though.

It is worth emphasizing that low-SES Americans almost never adopt children, so the applicability of these studies to issues of pure class difference is open to question insofar as there may be a broad "middle class parenting style" family of behaviors into which almost all the adopted twins were reared. That whole subject is a bit murky; what we really need to do is clone more people to get better research.

I would be extremely skeptical of the results of any social science study unless several other independent studies also uphold its basic conclusions. The conclusions that have been discussed seem just a little too pat. By nature, social sciences have to control for a lot of variables, making truly controlled studies difficult to accomplish. Similarly, whatever mean results or conclusions they present tend to include numerous caveats and large variances, and often tell us more about the author's biases than any real information. Thus, reading this study and inferring that you should alter your parenting style is probably a higly unsound course of action. Reading 20 such of these studies, all by different authors with different methodologies, and all coming to similar conclusions, is more convincing.

"Sadly, I'm not enough of a totalitarian to actually think we should mandate "hands-off" parenting techniques, but maybe there's something that can be done."

This is all about college, right? You could overhaul the college admissions process to de-emphasize extracurriculars and "service-learning". At the extreme, one could have high-stakes college entrance exams, similar to the British A-levels, though that's probably a non-starter. With all this newfound free time, kids & parents might be more likely to choose out-of-school activities they find fun rather than the ones that will help them get into college and happen to be fun on the side.

Working-class parents raising their kids to be obedient, think of the family unit before themselves, not complain...sounds to me like we're training a service-industry army. Which fits in rather well with the economic direction of our country. After all, only when we raise our low-SES brethren to fulfill their destiny can we finally acheive service-industry independence!

operate on the assumption that when a kid asks you why you are doing something, that's an expression of perfectly legitimate curiosity, not a challenge to your authority

I think a kid's attitude will usually make it pretty clear which category his/her question falls into.

I wonder, how do immigrant kids fit into this?

Barbara Ehrenreich's (criminally out-of-print) Fear of Falling is centered on the interaction of middle-class identity, parenting techniques, and social change. It's the most explosive book on class in America I've ever read, and it's directly relevant to this discussion.

I think MY is right to focus on social attitudes, which are plainly inculcated (largely) by parenting (it's absurd to think that the Great Santini would raise a child with the same results as would Dr. Spock). And as he said, "shut up and do what I say" used to be the cross-class norm for parenting (changed largely by Dr. Spock, incidentally). I think hilzoy is exactly right about the optimal style (for most kids, obviously) - it's certainly what I'm aiming for.

One question, though, is which half of concerned cultivation gets you the big payback in adulthood. I'd like to think that it's treating children with respect and intelligence has a lot of benefits, while hyper-programming mostly leads to a lifetime of overscheduling, but that may be wishful thinking.

I will say that, while I think that a lot of what Society values is skewed, a "sense of entitlement" isn't necessarily any different from self confidence and standing up for yourself. Those latter traits should be rewarded, according to a lot of different ethical systems, while less savory aspects of entitlement are unhealthy byproducts.

One other thing - JP, as you may know, kids start asking questions long before they're capable, in any meaningful way, of distinguishing between curiosity and challenge. Parents' responses to these truly naive questions lay the groundwork for a lifetime of exploration or acting out.

Indeed, when witnessing low-SES parenting (both publicly and privately), I often wonder how much of the "shut up and stop asking questions" response derives from actual seen-and-not-heard attitude, from multiple-job exhaustion, or from ignorance. Kids ask a lot of questions, and no matter how much you know, they go beyond what you know all the time. It's gotta be frustrating constantly to be asked questions you can't answer by a 2 year old.

Matt seems to assume that society as a whole doesn't gain anything from "New School" parenting other than fewer kids, more stress for middle-class parents, and a less egalitarian society.

I disagree. The change from "accomplishment of natural growth" parenting to "New School" parenting strikes me as a sociological innovation that produces an improved product that benefits society through greater technological innovation and economic growth.

A society with lots of "natural growth"-parented kids will have lots of kids who know their place, don't overly question authority, and are good at following instructions (maybe good attributes for a workforce mainly devoted to basic farming and low-level factory work).

A society with more "New School"-parented kids will have kids who are creative, assertive, believe they have an answer that nobody's thought of before, etc. That society will have much greater technological innovation and economic growth.

Matt hints at this when he acknowledges that "The research shows that New School parenting produces 'better' kids -- kids more likely to do well in school and get good jobs," but he seems to think that's solely a function of internal social stratification (i.e., society rewards XYZ not because those attributes produce real social benefits, but because those measures allow elites to separate and elevate themselves, and more importantly their children, from everybody else).

I think the attributes fostered by "New School" parenting (creativity, assertiveness) produce real social benefits.

Thank goodness Matt is not enough of a totalitarian.

Parenting styles don't matter. Both middle-class and working-class kids are socialized by their peers, not parents. All these attitudes, language and whatnot, which kids allegedly learn from their parents, are actually acquired from the peer group.

That's why the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, and the battle of Iraq lost in your favorite summer camp.

Everybody knows this, and Judyth Rich Harris also proved it in her book "Nurture Assumption". Everything else is just mumbo jumbo.

A lot, maybe most, of the socialization is done by peers, but I do think parents have a major effect too. As mentioned earlier, the adoption studies that have attributed a predominant influence to peers probably did not compare adoption into families with widely varying socioeconomic levels.

And, considering how much effort I put into parenting three kids, I certainly hope it has some effect.

I can't say how many times I've seen this concept argued on the internet. Lot's of poeple are outraged by what they see as middle-class over-involvement in their children and are conversally all romantic about "natural" child rearing. I think the contrast strikes at some kind of american achetype. The spoiled rich vrs the noble savage, kind of like the running theme through the Oru Gang comedies.

But I think the important part is not that middle-class parents are driving their kids all over the place, but that middle class parents are holding, playing, and talking with their young children way more than lower class and poor parents. I think there has been plenty of study on this and that this is indisputable. Plus we have all seen differneces at the grocery story, right?

And the other thing that is indisputable is that poor children start school less prepared than middle-class children. I believe it is becasue middle-class children have much better language skills. It talks in that article about voicabulary differences between the classes, and I have seen studies showing that middle-class kids are spoken to way way more, schokingly more. I have also seen a study that says this more verbal, more responsive environment positively affects brain development. We know for sure that if you never talk to or hold your kid, they will never learn to talk or relate to people and will have very low IQs. So why wouldn't talking and holding your young child more raise IQs? But the IQ stuff doesn't even matter when you are talking about school, becasue the basis for success in school is literacy and middle-class kids start more literate and it stays that way.

And about poor kids being more happy? That sounds a lot like a romantic myth. It is certainly way less well studied than the connection between a responsive environment and verbal and social development.

And Matt, you are a chicken hawk on this subject. You have no children and I'm pretty sure you were raised in the middle class style and have reaped all it's benefits.

It has effect on the personal relationship between you and your kids, but not on how well they do in school. Just relax and enjoy your family.

"Both middle-class and working-class kids are socialized by their peers, not parents"

On average, I believe young children from birth to age three are almost exclusively socialized by their parents. And from 3-5, to a large extent by their parents and parent surrogates. All the really big brain development goes on at this time.

hilzoy:

Raised as I was among the hippies of California's North Coast, the child-rearing environment was more or less as you describe-- emotional support, curiosity and a love of learning instilled by parents, combined with a fairly unstructured, self-directed childhood.

And guess what? The kids for the most part turned out great. Tiny little places like Mendocino High School sent a couple dozen kids to the Ivy League each year, where they often ended up doing better than their overprogrammed peers from big upper middle class suburban feeder schools. More to the point, a lot of the kids ended up being really interesting, creative people with whom you'd much rather work or hang out than some soulless prat from Sunnyvale or Blackhawk.

Maybe the counterculture was onto something after all?

All you guys, which is true for your kids as well, could have been swapped at birth and would still turn out just the same.

When it comes to being born to a different class, provided there is no criminal neglect, the only difference that counts is different peer group, and not having chattier parents.

As a middle-class, "new school" style parent with 4 kids ranging in age from pre-teen to 3 months, I'm acutely aware of the tradeoff of the kids being challenging now so as to hopefully develop future success. My kids negotiate, talk back and argue constantly. It can be exhausting. But it's worth it to see them develop those skills (which, curiously, my kids don't yet seem to express outside the home -- they only argue/negotiate with us so far). They also have an awesome sense of entitlement. But I think it's sensibly channeled into a sense that they are entitled to be happy. If that comes through being successful than thus famous or rich, I believe they feel they can accomplish that. That's the American Dream though, right? I grew up with a sense that I could accomplish anything that I was willing to work for and I want that given to my kids.

You can make the flip-side case that it's reasonable to grow up knowing that there's a place for you somewhere -- an appropriate job or role -- that you need to prepare yourself for and then find. I sense that this attitude seems more popular in Europe (where college attendance rates are lower, incidentally) and is certainly not inconsistent with happiness.

But consider the case of 2 children destined to become middle management somewhere someday. The "new school" parented child may have dreamed of being CEO but discovered somewhere along the way either didn't have the ability or drive and settled for mid-manangement. The "old school" parented child may have learned early on that there was much more likely a place in mid-management and prepared herself for it.

Which child is happier long-term? On average, which child reaches greater heights of success?

Obviously, I'm going with "new school" for the latter and maybe also the former (although it may not make a difference). Also obviously, I don't consider this parenting style so exhausting that it stopped me and my wife from having 4 kids.

This hypothesis would be much stronger if they could show that within either group, achievement was positively correlated with more intensive use of the parenting method characterized as "middle class." There are so many differences between these two groups that zeroing in this one in particular is ridiculous.

Lareau's book "unequal childhoods" is awesome in its details of the different child rearing styles. My kids whine like Paul Reber's do and it is pretty clear that this is a result of the "concerned cultivation" child-rearing; something I didn't even suspect until reading the book. Even if, like me, you think Lareau's conclusions are unsupported, Lareau's book is definitely worth reading. Read "the Nurture Assumption" first though.

I agree with MY that there is a status competition trap going on, but their is no evidence of any real benefits to the kids to all of this status competition. A professional soccer career is a pretty stupid goal for an American to have.

Here is bobo brooks take on Lareau's book:

For the past two decades, Annette Lareau has embedded herself in American families. She and her researchers have sat on living room floors as families went about their business, ridden in back seats as families drove hither and yon.

Lareau's work is well known among sociologists, but neglected by the popular media. And that's a shame because through her close observations and careful writings — in books like "Unequal Childhoods" — Lareau has been able to capture the texture of inequality in America. She's described how radically child-rearing techniques in upper-middle-class homes differ from those in working-class and poor homes, and what this means for the prospects of the kids inside.

The thing you learn from her work is that it's wrong to say good parents raise successful kids and bad parents raise unsuccessful ones. The story is more complicated than that.

Looking at upper-middle-class homes, Lareau describes a parenting style that many of us ridicule but do not renounce. This involves enrolling kids in large numbers of adult-supervised activities and driving them from place to place. Parents are deeply involved in all aspects of their children's lives. They make concerted efforts to provide learning experiences.

Home life involves a lot of talk and verbal jousting. Parents tend to reason with their children, not give them orders. They present "choices" and then subtly influence the decisions their kids make. Kids feel free to pass judgment on adults, express themselves and even tell their siblings they hate them when they're angry.

The pace is exhausting. Fights about homework can be titanic. But children raised in this way know how to navigate the world of organized institutions. They know how to talk casually with adults, how to use words to shape how people view them, how to perform before audiences and look people in the eye to make a good first impression.

Working-class child-rearing is different, Lareau writes. In these homes, there tends to be a much starker boundary between the adult world and the children's world. Parents think that the cares of adulthood will come soon enough and that children should be left alone to organize their own playtime. When a girl asks her mother to help her build a dollhouse out of boxes, the mother says no, "casually and without guilt," because playtime is deemed to be inconsequential — a child's sphere, not an adult's.

Lareau says working-class children seem more relaxed and vibrant, and have more intimate contact with their extended families. "Whining, which was pervasive in middle-class homes, was rare in working-class and poor ones," she writes.

But these children were not as well prepared for the world of organizations and adulthood. There was much less talk in the working-class homes. Parents were more likely to issue brusque orders, not give explanations. Children, like their parents, were easily intimidated by and pushed around by verbally dexterous teachers and doctors. Middle-class kids felt entitled to individual treatment when entering the wider world, but working-class kids felt constrained and tongue-tied.

The children Lareau describes in her book were playful 10-year-olds. Now they're in their early 20's, and their destinies are as you'd have predicted. The perhaps overprogrammed middle-class kids got into good colleges and are heading for careers as doctors and other professionals. The working-class kids are not doing well. The little girl who built dollhouses had a severe drug problem from ages 12 to 17. She had a child outside wedlock, a baby she gave away because she was afraid she would hurt the child. She now cleans houses with her mother.

Lareau told me that when she was doing the book, the working-class kids seemed younger; they got more excited by things like going out for pizza. Now the working-class kids seem older; they've seen and suffered more.

But the point is that the working-class parents were not bad parents. In a perhaps more old-fashioned manner, they were attentive. They taught right from wrong. In some ways they raised their kids in a healthier atmosphere. (When presented with the schedules of the more affluent families, they thought such a life would just make kids sad.)

But they did not prepare their kids for a world in which verbal skills and the ability to thrive in organizations are so important. To help the worse-off parents, we should raise the earned-income tax credit to lessen their economic stress. But the core issue is that today's rich don't exploit the poor; they just outcompete them.

Leaving the economic and social rank parts aside, the thing about the much greater vocabulary freaks me out. I'm surprised no one else has picked up on that.

Matt, you do have a big brain, fascinating post. What's troubling is that the difference in parenting style just highlights that we aren't the middle class society we think we are (or perhaps that we once were). I wonder what happens when an upper middle class family practices the working class parenting style or for that matter, if poor families practiced the upper middle class style?

I'm with Hemingway-- the rich are different from you and me because they have more money. I suspect in that case, the rich kids would be as successful but less neurotic and the poor kids would still end up on the short end of the stick but would be less happy.

Clearly we need to offer early childhood education for the poor and working class-- these guys have framed it brilliantly, spend the money to prevent future crimes.
http://www.fightcrime.org/index.php

On the other end of the income scale, you could reduce the overachieving arms race if elite schools used an admissions lottery. Say you started this year, you'd determine the GPA and SAT of the lowest scoring student who was admitted last year, then any applicant this year who scores above that gets his name put in the lottery pool.

I wonder about this all the time, because my wife just gave birth and I'm going to be looking after our daughter during the days when my wife goes back to work next year.

I'll tell you this, it's extremely difficult to hold and talk to my kid when I'm exhausted from work. But I have a flexible work schedule and am not always exhausted. When I have the energy for it, there's nothing I want to do more than hold my girl and talk to her, play her music, dance with her. So far she seems to like it pretty well, and is ahead of the game so far in terms of physical health and verbal response. Lucky us, and lucky me for having the time to help the process along.

I think I'm pretty normal in this regard. I think most people would do the same if they had my flexible hours, a reliable partner like my wife is, and reasonable freedom from fear of the bills piling up. It becomes harder to treat your child like another human being when you are tired, afraid, and insecure.

So, liberal pouty pants that I am, I'm in favor of increased mandated family leave, more day care centers, a longer school year, more after school activities, more library programs, all that stuff. Spend all the rich peoples' money on it. That'll even things up right nice.

This is all not very reality based. The most important advantage rich parents give their children is better genes, the next most important is a better peer group. Varying fads in child rearing techniques are not very important at all.

What is missing from this discussion is how *wealthy* families tend to raise their children.

In the lingo of the trade working class parents tend to employ the "authoritarian" style of parenting, middle class parents tend to employ the "authoritative" style of parenting, and wealthier parents tend to employ the "indulgent" style of parenting (which is to say give kids both nurturing and freedom). (There is also the indifferent style of parenting, which is generally synonymous with bad parenting.)

One should in my view take a good deal of social science and its taxonomies with a grain of salt (no parent is wholly consistent in the style of parenting they employ [my generally indulgent mother had her limits and her weird pet peaves and issues {my sister and I were generally allowed to watch anything on TV from about the age of seven but for some no doubt strange reason forbidden from seeing that network nuclear holocaust flick "the Day After"}]).

On the other hand, isn't it interesting that there seems to be a bias among social scientists (including the pop psychologists and Professional Advice Givers) not only against the authoritarian brand of parenting but also against the indulgent brand of parenting (which is correlated not only with some kinds of risk taking often regarded as bad but also the kind of risk taking often regarded as good). If there is anything to this stuff, you have to think that any number of our most successful people in business, politics, the arts and science - our innovators and leaders - were the products of indulgent parents (whatever their class).

"This is all not very reality based. The most important advantage rich parents give their children is better genes,"

Funniest two sentences I've read all week.

Anyway, I find the idea that upper-class children are more assholish, but that being a jerk in today's society, very interesting.

This was an interesting NYT article, and I read the long version. Since I have a 4 & 6 yr-old, here's my take on it:

Some of the "new school" stuff is more important than others. Talking to them, interacting with them, explaining things to them, allowing them to negotiate... all that is good & useful. The tack we're taking is that we don't want to raise brats, so there's always an element of "you get what you get and you don't throw a fit", teaching manners and politeness, and forcing them to do things they don't want to do (right now, it's getting the 6 yr-old to read a new book, not the ones he knows he can read).

In any of this, there'll never be one "right way", but if you're trying hard and spending time, it'll probably work out.

Also, I always get annoyed when people, like MY in this post, discuss equalizing differences by lowering the performance of one group. We should always strive to have everyone learning at higher and higher levels. Anything else will harm our standard of living.

James B. Shearer, I have noticed both here and elsewhere that you have a tendency to show up in threads and make announcements that are unsupported to the point that you seem to expect everyone else to take you as an authority, broad, lacking caveats or measurements of precision, and somewhat condescending (they assume that no one else has considered the issue in the way you have).

Now, it could in fact be the case that you are more knowledgeable than everyone else on this (or some other) topic. But why would you expect anyone to believe you?

Also, I'm sleep-deprived and stating things less diplomatically than I normally would, sorry.

Hank,
That sounds great and all, but didn't you turn into a mega CEO super villian? I would not mind passing along some of your energy, but I am seriously trying to avoid raising a super-villian. Although, perhaps a super villian is better than an ordinary villian with moderate self-esteem.

I think there is more science to support the effects of responxsive environment on development in a childs early years, than there is good sociology on the effect of parenting styles in the elementary years. That stuff about driving kids around and kids playing thier own games and being whiny is interesting but doesn't really prove anything. So it would be great if we could recognize that we are talking about two different things when we are talking about parenting styles. We are talking about effect of brain development in young children and much more nebulous socialization effects that stretch through out lifetimes.

Effect of child rearing styles in first three years, as well as later in life is this: Zero! Behavioral genetics proved it in study after study. Those studies that disagree did not control for genes. Already mentioned Rich Harris wrote a book about it ten years ago and nothing has changed since. David Freakonomics Leavitt's analyzes of large amount of publicly accessible data supports the same conclusion.

*analysis*

But, reality shmeality, what's more interesting is if Matthew, next time on bloggingheads, asks Mickey Kaus about his opinion on child rearing.
Mickey likes them snakehandlers homeschooling their kids.

washerdreyer asked: "But why would you expect anyone to believe you?"

Because I have a track record of (at least relative) accuracy?

This sort of post by MY irritates me because I think he knows perfectly well that genetics is important but is pretending otherwise because as he said in another post "... And if pretending to be a devout Sunni Muslim is the price I need to pay for protection, then why not.".

theCoach:

Well, yes, but I'm a supervillain with a progressive work environment! Haven't you tried the hammocks?

A society with lots of "natural growth"-parented kids will have lots of kids who know their place, don't overly question authority, and are good at following instructions (maybe good attributes for a workforce mainly devoted to basic farming and low-level factory work).

Except of course that the former era when "old school parenting" was common everywhere also saw enormnous economic growth and technological innovation.

Re; Both middle-class and working-class kids are socialized by their peers, not parents.

However, many children nowadays do not have "peers". They may at most have one sibling, who is probably years older or younger. And at young ages especially there well may be no children of the same age within any reasonable distance for them to have as playmates. This is one big reason parents find themselves so inovlved with their kids these days. They can't just send them out to play with the other kids because there may be few or no other kids.

I don't remember if the connection between these parenting styles and the KIPP style schools was made but essentially they have succeeded by placing the kids in a very controlled authoritative classroom environment AND programming their free time by making the school day longer and giving them tons of homework. There is no talking back going on at these schools but there is also no time for hanging out with friends in unstructured time. All their time is structured. What type of adults these kids will be is a big question as what their performance in college will be when they are met with hours and hours of unstructured time.

This seems to point to the belief that progressive styles of education are ineffective to kids from poor families because their home lives are not preparing them for that type of interaction with adults. Personally, though I haven't been able to become totally comfortable with the fact that we should have two different types of schooling based on your SES.

"Effect of child rearing styles in first three years, as well as later in life is this: Zero! Behavioral genetics proved it in study after study."

Bill you seem upset. You also seem to believe that white middle-class kids are genetically more intelligent than everyone else.

I had to take a class in behavioral genetics from a leading proponent of the heritability of IQ, Arthur Jensen at UC Berkeley. I was really astounded at what looked to me like tight, tight research proving the extent of heritability, and the fact that the opposing camp mainly seemed to make impassioned arguments, not conduct scientific research. I recall reading a lot about race differences in IQ. Psychologists call this the nature-nurture question.

BTW, Asians beat whites hands down.

As a school psychologist, I notice the biological and emotional issues that affect the IQs of children I test. For example, good nutrition and essential fatty acids. I've seen kids go through "vision therapy" with an optometrist and their IQ goes up. I've seen kids experience trauma, divorce, being picked on, and it drains their energy-and IQ. This, of course, is on the nurture end of the equation, not nature!

Laurie Roberts

How genetically determined can IQ be if nutrition, glasses, or divorce can change it? I believe in what you are saying, by the way, about the changing IQs. I have personal experience, plus I've read all over the place how diffferent groups IQs have changed over time.

So, genetic determinists, over to you....

cw

PS. The children of a social group (asian immigrants) that really really values education does better academically than white kids? Hmmm....

Um, no offense Laurie, but what are you trying to say?

First para: IQ is inherited, and anyone who says otherwise is emotional.

Second para: Without a diet rich in salmon and olive oil, the love child of Einstein and Curie would be a dolt.

Maybe it was due to my parents' authoitarian style, but: Huh?

Dammit, cw....

Hey Benny One-Note?

If people are 100% genes and peer groups, why do IQ scores vary radically within families across time? Did working class kids born in the 1910s somehow sneak their kids into Andover Day School, resulting in the 10-20 point increase in IQ between grandparents and grandchildren?

Oh, and please provide your massive, indisputable, 100% consistent evidence regarding the children of the wealthy being raised in slums. I'm sure you have a fucking library of studies like that. Not just middle class whites swapping twins, with a few "white trash" examples for local color.

Yes, obviously middle-class children are taught to better navigate the organizations and institutions of today's academic and professional world. But I think that this is almost a pure product of socioeconomic status -- among which are parenting, children's peer groups, and access.

My evidence is admittedly anecdotal. I have four brothers, and each of us grew up in quite different parenting and economic contexts. When I was going through elementary through high school, my family lived on foodstamps and welfare checks. Because my parents were constantly doing wage-work, I was raised with a largely unstructured, hands-off approach where I was left to develop my own creativity but was given encouragement whenever possible.

My "peers" were other working-class kids (though we called ourselves "lower-class" without batting an eye back then). As a matter of lived reality, the middle class world was experienced as alien. That included schools, hospitals, sit-down dinners, birthday parties for rich kids (being able to throw a big birthday party pretty much automatically made you "rich"), supermarkets -- really anything besides the backyard. For me and my young friends it was almost impossible to feel it was our place, and the temptation to retreat to our own world was always present.

The phenomenology of these children appears to be lost to the social sciences, but I suspect it is very important to how working-class children develop and come to grips with the professional and academic world. I just have to wonder how prevalent that real phenomenon of alienation and permanent outsiderness haunts these people at job interviews, professor's office hours, administrative interactions, etc. Hell, I interviewed for a law clerkship with the DA the other day and felt echoes of that.

By the time my family's financial situation improved I had made it to college on grants and financial aid. My mother enrolled my younger brother in private school, went to parent-teacher meetings, actively monitored his school-work, and basically entered the "New School" mode.

What that indicates to me is that parenting-style itself is an obvious product of socioeconomic status. There are parents out there who would love to be involved in the PTA and soccer games but are working several jobs at once, night shift, etc. If you think parents who are middle class professionals are working just as hard as parents who are working two or three jobs just to make rent and feed their families, and that the only difference is income, I can only say, try working nightshift or driving long-haul. There's no comparison when it comes to free time with family, lack of stability, and energy reserves.

If there is a working class deficit when it comes to interacting with the major organizations of society I suspect it is because the working class is the most disconnected and alienated portion of society, and their socialization tends to take place if at all through TV, printed materials, and other shared culture. I don't see how parenting style has much to do with changing that -- how do you parent your child to be savvy with bureaucracy and office politics when neither you nor the child has any access at all? When that entire sphere of public life is experienced as radically foreign?

oh, and to see what I thought was a particularly potent characterization that intangible factor of disconnectedness, see the episode of the Wire where they take the experimental school children to Ruth Chris for dinner.

I do not say that changing your social class does not significantly influence your children's life outcomes.
Just that acquiring different parrenting style will not have the same effect.
In order to take advantage of class differences, (future)parents should _not_ expect to see any benefit just from rearing their children the way rich people do, they should become rich themselves.

Benny-

So you're saying that the size of your parent's bank accout determines IQ?

ps. I called you bill earlie. Sorry.

Benny-

You did say that peer group rules all, excepting genes. I'm sorry if that's not what you meant, but you said it repeatedly. The upshot of that would be that, within a family, the only way to change IQ is by changing peer groups. But how would poor Italian-Americans in NYC (for instance) manage to improve their kids' peer groups such that their grandchildren are 10-20 points "smarter"?

That result happened, in many distinct ethnic groups, and none of them bused their kids to Greenwich. Something happened to raise IQ across generations, and it was neither change in gene pool nor change in peer group (except to say that most of them were getting smart at the same time - the cause IS the effect?). I don't care at the moment whether it was parenting style or bank account. The point is that, once that's true, your argument goes to hell. And we can get back to the discussion we were having.

I'm sort of surprised that no one it talking about the conclusions of the article as it relates to what we need to do to narrow the achievement gap. The NYT piece concludes with some questions on whether or not middle-class parents would fund the much higher priced schools needed to promote good learning outcomes in lower SES kids.

I would bet the answer is no. Because I do think that middle-class parents (I'm one) would have a hard time giving MORE money to schools that their kids DON'T GET TO GO TO.

It was interesting when they talked about how once the schools got a reputation as "good schools" they had to figure out how to keep the already achieving kids out. I think middle-class parents would have a really hard time being told that they have to PAY for good schools to create MORE competition for their kids, and BTW your kids can't go to them. But if you start letting in higher achieving kids the gap starts all over again, so....then what?

I'm not saying that's right, or that's how I feel, but I think the politics of it would get very challenging very quickly.

JoyousMN:

It was interesting when they talked about how once the schools got a reputation as "good schools" they had to figure out how to keep the already achieving kids out. I think middle-class parents would have a really hard time being told that they have to PAY for good schools to create MORE competition for their kids, and BTW your kids can't go to them.

But the whole point of these anti-authoritarian parenting schools is that they are designed to benefit one type of child. And while I wouldn't expect competitive, selfish parents to understand that, I think that 14 hour school days 300 days a year (or whatever) just might not strike them as the best thing for little Owen. Indeed, our local, low-performing elementary just became and "Advanced Academy" or something, and there's no way in hell my kid's going there. 10 hour days of remedial reading for someone who learned to read before kindergarten? No thanks.

Ok, Hank. Sounds good. We do not even have a Swing Low Sweet Chair-iot around here, so I had forgotten.

btw, I run a little football picking service, The Coach's Hotline.

I posted above two different sides of the nature-nurture question that I've had experience with. Sorry I was confusing, JRoth. I'm fascinated by all of these issues and was trying NOT to write 70,000 words. Everybody has parenting opinions, but I'm not sure many others commenting have studied intelligence in grad school or give children IQ tests for a living, like I do.

I was making the point that there actually is tight research about race-based differences in IQ, because some writers way up thread had referenced behavioral genetics without much back up. I strongly resisted this idea personally, remembering when the black kids were bussed in to my elementary school in 2nd grade in Virginia. I saw how friggin ripped off they were, going through school with me all those years and ending up working in hospital food service while doors opened to me left and right and I made way more cash. I hated the idea that somehow they were to blame, because they were less able. But when I finally took this class from Jensen, I have to say their research was tight and I couldn't find any valid refutations. I also noticed Jensen was not a prick about this, not condescending or bigoted. A scientist researching facts.

Then I was briefly sharing a few facts I've observed in the 17 years I've administered IQ tests. Nobody claims IQ is 100% heritable, and a few things I've seen affect it include nutrition (kids need more protein than they seem to usually get, fatty acids benefit brain function). Another thing which I've seen increase IQ is vision therapy, not glasses. The point about stimulation, verbal interaction, # of books in the home was already made and these things DO increase IQ.

Another observation I'll make, based on my experience in schools with these natural growth kinds of kids and the indulged ones, is that these "middle class parented" students are not per se better adjusted or more successful or smarter. As a school psychologist, I've gotten a LOT of referrals for intervention with kids that sound like some of the posts above (sorry)-they argue about everything and that's GOOD?? They have a sense of entitlement and we're supposed to believe that bodes WELL for them? I thought in reading some of the comments above that there's a confusion among the authoritarian/authoritative/indulgent parenting styles. I strongly believe that giving kids too much say increases their anxiety and is abdicating the adult role. Anxiety lowers IQ. I wouldn't encourage my kids to "speak up for themselves" (argue) and think it's ok because it'll make 'em smarter. I want my kids to be GOOD at accepting direction. For Pete's sake, that doesn't mean I'm raising them to be sheep or that they're going to be stupid.

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THANK YOU GRUP..

I run a little football picking service, The Coach's Hotline.

good comment :)

thank you

Sohbet thank you

I think I'm pretty normal in this regard. I think most people would do the same if they had my flexible hours, a reliable partner like my wife is, and reasonable freedom from fear of the bills piling up. It becomes harder to treat your child like another human being when you are tired, afraid, and insecure.

A society with lots of "natural growth"-parented kids will have lots of kids who know their place, don't overly question authority, and are good at following instructions (maybe good attributes for a workforce mainly devoted to basic farming and low-level factory work).

Another disturbing feature of this article is the fact that America seems to reward a sense of entitlement and a self-perception in excess of one's actual abilities. Ambitious parents are just inculating their children with the (warped) values that are going to end up making them successful. You can't blame them for taking that path, but an interesting question is why these values are considered "virtues" that help make these children successful.

i happen to agree with both hilzoy and with constantine, so i simply thought i would note that the sense of entitlement that constantine references is quite likely (since we're at the early stages of careers of children brought up this way) to lead to many unhappy ends: there are still only 500 slots as CEOs of fortune 500 companies

thanks

have you thanks

I wonder, how do immigrant kids fit into this?

Interesting and very informative article

Good comment.Thanks admin.

Thanks
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