RavenSky
The Doctor's Wife
The articles he has posted DO address "the point". You, on the other hand, almost never do.
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Upstairs Downstairs: How Children Get Raised, by Social Class
- Thread starter lpetrich
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The articles he has posted DO address "the point". You, on the other hand, almost never do.
J842P
Veteran Member
I think you are conflating parental involvement with parents forcing their kids to do all sorts activities. The distinction you are making is orthogonal to parental involvement being discussed in the OP. The experiments with the monkeys point the extremely biologically plausible effect that early socialization is important in the development of social animals.
Did you completely miss the part about the monkeys in the OP? Conditioning has been shown to be at least as important if not more so than genetics when predicting the success of children.
It's an animal study which by appearances hasn't been replicated. Applying unreplicated animal studies to humans is always tricky. But I wouldn't dispute that poor early socialization may be detrimental. However, the animal study implied that the reason for any hypothesized long-term deficit is due to the mother being out foraging. (The researchers could just have easily cordoned off mother and child for a time for the same result.) But experience informs us that there are a sundry reasons why a mother may neglect her child, e.g., postpartum depression. To say that poverty, at least in the US, is the cause for any long-term effects belies the many governmental benefits given to new mothers and that career-oriented women may cut short maternity leave. Also, where's the father?
ronburgundy
Contributor
I am not making any claims that require any evidence, merely pointing out that none of your evidence comes within light years of supporting the the claims you are making, and fails to provide any support at all to the claim that providing a minimum income for all people would have a net positive impact. In fact, the only data you presented relevant to that question refutes that hypothesis by showing that people who do get unearned income spend less quality time with their kids than fully employed working class parents.
You are leaping across a chasm of unreasonable assumptions that ignore many other facts in order to get from your cherry picked "data" to your faith-based conclusions.
ronburgundy
Contributor
Did you completely miss the part about the monkeys in the OP? Conditioning has been shown to be at least as important if not more so than genetics when predicting the success of children.
It's an animal study which by appearances hasn't been replicated. Applying unreplicated animal studies to humans is always tricky. But I wouldn't dispute that poor early socialization may be detrimental. However, the animal study implied that the reason for any hypothesized long-term deficit is due to the mother being out foraging. (The researchers could just have easily cordoned off mother and child for a time for the same result.) But experience informs us that there are a sundry reasons why a mother may neglect her child, e.g., postpartum depression. To say that poverty, at least in the US, is the cause for any long-term effects belies the many governmental benefits given to new mothers and that career-oriented women may cut short maternity leave. Also, where's the father?
Your valid point speaks to this not only being a non-human primate study about complex social behaviors of the sort which humans and other primates markedly differ, but also that the experimental nature of the study means it has little clear implications for naturally varying differences in parental neglect. If the study just observed natural differences in foraging time then its similarly meaningless about cause and effect as all the human data he cites. If they actually did a controlled experiment and directly manipulated access to resources for randomly assigned groups of primates, then it has high internal validity but no external validity for generalizing even to natural variance in primate parental neglect, and even less to human parental neglect.
Going from "Monkey offspring turn out worse if you don't allow their parents to interact with them." to "Therefore human offspring will turn out better if you give their parents free money." is a extremely unscientific leap of faith rife with numerous logical fallacies.
untermensche
Contributor
It's a cycle.
Those that were neglected neglect.
But it doesn't have to be attention from the parent.
The rich neglect their children as well, maybe the most. But they have the resources to ensure that somebody attends to them.
The OP is another example of the interconnection between genes and experience.
Genes alone are meaningless. To have fulll expression of genes you need adequate stimulation at critical stages of development.
I agree about the cycle but note that it's not society that's causing the problem.
untermensche
Contributor
If children are neglected because parents have to work how is that not a societal problem?
Parents working is totally a social construct.
In the US mothers get 3 months of unpaid leave.
In nation after nation mothers and even fathers get fully paid leave for much longer.
A society either shows it concerns for the young with it's policies or in the case of the US shows it's disdain for the very young with it's policies.
You assume it's because they have to work, yet you admitted neglected kids neglect as parents.
untermensche
Contributor
It is mainly due to a society that does not care about the very young or working people.
We should have the best maternity leave and best free daycare system in the world. We are the richest nation on the planet.
But we have one of the worst.
We have a crappy social services system.
Which leads to bad outcomes all over the place.
Society is a contributing factor for neglect and maintaining the cycle of neglect.
Our (Western) society is often insular; many children are raised primarily by their parents as opposed to a society where children are raised communally. This is especially true for children that have little or no contact with their extended family for various reasons. In a more communal society, the impact of neglectful parents is mitigated by the presence of other guardians and caregivers in the child's community.
As untermensche has pointed out, some societies also lack an adequate social services system that could relieve economic pressure on parents and provide support resources for parents. Social services can provide income support for single parents; social workers can connect drug-addicted parents to rehabilitation; the healthcare system than provide therapy for parent struggling with mental health problems. If a government neglects to provide those services then it is fair to say that it is part of the problem.
Really, it's just silly to ignore the genetic confounding.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/the-adoption-paradox/409495/
It's like we all know the answer but are scared to shit to say it.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/the-adoption-paradox/409495/
It's like we all know the answer but are scared to shit to say it.
Society can't raise a child more than the parents permit.
Except the biggest problem isn't a lack of resources, it's a lack of a long enough time horizon in deciding what to do.
Of course society can: in some cases society even goes so far as to deny parents any say at all in how they child is raised.
Besides that, your response is not relevant to the comment you quoted. Parents in a communal child-rearing community are likely to permit those carers to raise their children, not only because they themselves would be socialised to accept such an institution but because they don't want to or are unable to raise their own children.
I couldn't say what the 'biggest problem' is, and it's not relevant, anyway. There are many contributing factors to various antisocial behaviours, and some of those factors are societal.
It's also unclear what you mean by "a lack of a long enough time horizon in deciding what to do". Who doesn't have enough time and what don't they have time to decide?
untermensche
Contributor
The cycle of poverty.
Troubled poor adults have troubled poor children.
Genes has nothing to do with it.
Put any human into a situation of constant stress and they will break down.
In any organism genes are only part of the picture. The organism is always a combination of genes and exposures during critical times of development.
Cover the young kittens eyes at the right time and the cat will never see.
Troubled poor adults have troubled poor children.
Genes has nothing to do with it.
Put any human into a situation of constant stress and they will break down.
In any organism genes are only part of the picture. The organism is always a combination of genes and exposures during critical times of development.
Cover the young kittens eyes at the right time and the cat will never see.
What explanation would you offer on why the IQ of adopted children closely approximates with their biological parents (whom they never met) rather than with their adoptive parents (who raised them to adulthood)?
lpetrich
Contributor
What evidence is that? How does one measure "IQ" anyway? I'm sure that we've all run into numerous IQ tests over the years, but how does one relate one IQ test's numbers to another?
Also, how does one account for the
Flynn effect? That's a clear case of environment affecting IQ scores.untermensche
Contributor
Two brains developing in the exact same womb and being exposed to the same stimulations before birth.
There is evidence newborns react differently to their mothers language than a foreign language.
Cognitive development begins, and maybe goes very far, before birth.
Environment of the developing brain during critical stages explains it, as environment explains many things.
Genes alone explains very little.
And of course the range of IQ is an artificial scale. It is taking something that differs in small ways and exaggerates it numerically, abstractly.
There really is not much difference between a person with a 100 IQ test score and one with a 110 score.
I could put you in a room with both and you could not tell the difference by more than chance.
When you get low and when you get high you can see some apparent differences.
But most humans as far as functioning within a personal setting excel or lack traits, like personal relationship building, and poise, and manner, and leadership, that no IQ test can measure.
On one hand lack of money makes it harder to survive and thrive. On the other hand lack of innate intelligence is more likely to be associated with poverty, and makes it harder to survive and thrive. Does the second point make the first point less true or accurate? I'd argue no, and so it's a red herring where this thread is concerned, unless either of the points are actually the debate in question. I'd argue though, that it's hard to deny both factors.