Less Wrong Parents

Let me say what irritates me about this comment.

It is generally well known that the eager new parents tend to overthink everything and overdo everything they can think of (stroller type? formula vs breast milk? daycare amenities? nursery wall color?).

Nice strawman here. What exactly was your probability estimate that LW readers with kids are going to discuss the rational nursery wall color?

As mentioned in the discussion and in the quoted book, there is only so much a parent can do to affect the way their offspring grow up.

Assuming this is true, there is still a question how much exactly is the "only so much". It could be still significant, and might be worth doing anyway.

It turns out that optimal parenting is not that hard.

Well, this needs a better argument than just a link to a book on Amazon. For the beginning, any argument would be better than none.

Yes, children get genes from their parents, so any hypothesis of "parents do X and that's why their children do Y" gets an alternative explanation "parents and children share a gene G; it causes parents to do X, and it causes children to do Y". It is good to be suspicious about the first explanation. But also about the second one.

For example, if the "parenting quality waterline" would actually very low, such as 99% of parents doing it wrong and getting random (that also includes very good) results, and 1% parents doing it right and getting mostly great results, it probably would not show in most statistics. Why? Simply, if the author of the research does not know what is the thing that those 1% are doing right, they would just split the sample along some other, mostly irrelevant axis... and then get the result that really, that axis is mostly irrelevant. (More generally, a difference between A and B will appear strongly if you divide people to A group and B group, and will be hidden if you divide people to groups containing a similar ratios of A to B.) The confusion would be to equate the "parental role" with what was being measured.

Provide a happy, supportive and occasionally challenging environment, make time to enjoy the little ones and don't sweat the minutiae.

Couldn't a LW group for parents help with this? It is not supposed to be a group for Straw Vulcans.

I am not sure if I am not reading between the lines too much right now, but it seems to me like a connotation "thinking about something too rationally = being obsessive and spending a lot of time (for diminishing returns)". Well, ain't necessarily so. We can also speak rationally about saving time. About making a smart decision once, and then following it. (Which could be better than deciding every time again and also better than acting on the whim.)

If you find parenting not fun, you are doing it wrong.

And the group for LW parents will make is less fun, or...?

Sorry, that whole argument did not contain much more information than "guys, that topic is boring, shut up". The downvotes were well-deserved.

The last time this book was discussed on LessWrong there seemed to be a large mindkilling effect, and the same thing appears to be happening now.

I suggest that the reason for this emotional reaction is that there are at least two different ways of pattern-matching the result that "parents don't affect life outcomes," one of which is obviously true and one of which is obviously false, in other words it is a deepity.

Of course parents can't change their child's IQ or height.

On the other hand, of course parents can change the experiences their child absorbs, which make up the substance of life and provide the basis for learning new things, understanding the world, and finding a place within it.

In one reading, things like the color of the baby's room are irrelevant minutiae.

In a different reading, the color of the baby's room is part of the fabric of her life and will be involved in her first memories. To call this minutiae feels reductive.

The useful takeaway message is that we shouldn't feel anxiety about the types of things that modern advertising is trying to convince us are important, but I would suggest that we shouldn't be feeling anxiety about our babies anyway and anxiety should be addressed as its own separate issue.

Is this from real data?

I would think that the behavior of parents has a massive impact on the way the children grow up (but indeed, not the material stuff that so many parents fuss so much over), considering how strong of a correlation there is between the parents' belief systems and behaviors and their children's.

I'm not much compared to even a small survey, but from my small sample I've noticed a possible strong correlation between the way parents respond to questions / handle "problematic" behavior / do anything to "educate" their children and the intelligence, rational behavior and open-mindedness of the children later in life.

The most salient example (but not the most statistically significant) is that everyone I talked to about this who were on the higher end of the intelligence scale had clear memory of their parents responding "I don't know, let's find out" to their curiosity when they were a child, while everyone else I talked to had no such memory.

I think looking into actual pedagogical research results and how to best behave towards children would probably be very high expected utility / value of information if maximizing your child's chances of not being stupid is something you care about.

At the very least, a parent can affect the environmental factors that the book mentioned in the parent post mentions (I haven't read the book, only the abstract) by carefully selecting a good initial environment with these things in mind in the first place.

Obviously also worth looking into is alternative forms of education. Public schools are far from optimal both for social and intellectual development.

If any of this is of interest, I can try to help with some research on it.

It is generally well known that the eager new parents tend to overthink everything and overdo everything they can think of (stroller type? formula vs breast milk? daycare amenities? nursery wall color?).

This list strikes me as a good example of why a LW listserv / shared research about this is useful. Yeah, stroller type won't make much of a difference, and nursery wall color won't either. About half of important life outcomes are heredity, and you've missed the opportunity to change that.

But breastfeeding? We're talking ~8 points of IQ, here. Breastfeed your children, and do it for as long as you can stand.

EDIT2: hmm, I didn't mean to whine, guys, but I'm happy that this comment is above the troll level again.

Now it's at +6. (What about having a feature that hides and disregards karma scores for posts less than 24 hours old?)

You may be right, but you didn't provide any evidence to support your claims. I think that's why you're getting downvoted. You should edit your comment to offer some evidence.

Interesting - I can't relate to that that much, but I notice people report different experiences and have different assumptions about parents, I wonder which is more common ... I guess this calls for a poll!

So how much do you think this describes your childhood?

My family is horribly fucked up [pollid:198]

I spent most of my childhood in excruciating suffering of some kind [pollid:199]

f I tried to tell my parents about it they called me mean names [pollid:200]

(I agree with your conclusion, by the way!)

By the way, there is no contradiction -- even the selfish whiny attention whores with no sense of proportion can be sincerely hurt by things you consider trivial.

Several Internet people have reported that if someone doesn't tell you "My family is horribly fucked up and I spent most of my childhood in excruciating suffering of some kind, and if I tried to tell my parents about it they called me mean names" it means you don't know them well enough yet.

It would seem that nobody knows me. People who by this standard are, in fact, known or have the possibility of being known without making up lies have my sympathy.

Moved.

I think you're being oversensitive -- if I said the NYC Swing Dancing Club had two babies, I don't think anyone would bat an eye.

Keep in mind that the NYC community is a physical tight-knit community in a way that LW or even a swing dancing club isn't. (I live in SF and expect a great deal of cooperative parenting if and when the LWers there start breeding en masse.)

Amused that Saliency of all people is getting accused of being phygish.

Nobody said the babies are the property of Less Wrong. But they are presumably part of the community.