Teenage Pregnancy in England: Do Parents’ Educational Expectations Matter (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Teenage Pregnancy in England: Do Parents’ Educational Expectations Matter (2014)

paa2015.princeton.edu

22 pointsgokhan27 comments

> according to one expert, strict mothers usually have more successful children

No word as to whether they are happier or less happy. Not that happiness is everything, but it's definitely part of the equation. Especially ironic not to have this mentioned given the source: HappyLifeReport.com

Actually a pretty fair point. The doctor whose disciplinarian parents forced him into it and is miserable is practically a stereotype.

I'm not a believer of the "Tiger mother" stereotype, but I do believe that parents need to be strict, in that they set proper limits, follows their own examples, communicate consequences, and always, always, follow through on all commitments (whether it be a punishment or a promise to the child). This (imo) sets a high trustworthiness bar in the parent/child relationship, and gives room for that relationship to grow.

"Disciplined" may be a better word - it requires a high amount of willpower to pull this off, but it's part of what you signed up for.

What if you are simply not a disciplined person with lots of willpower? (Then your kids are likely to also be undisciplined). This is not a hypothetical question. You can't send the kids back, and you might not know what kind of parent you're going to be until you have one or even more than one kid.

You can delegate their education to someone disciplined and with lots of willpower, if you're up to it. Mind you that, though you made a non-hypothetical question, this is a hypothetical and speculative answer. I'm not suggesting that you send your kids to military school. But it's interesting to think that a lot of parents might have already faced this problem in the past and that that might have been their solution to it.

I guess in that case you could explore other options - sports, cadets/scouts, martial arts etc could all potentially help a child develop discipline and willpower to some extent.

You end up with shitty kids? This is the world and life. Not sure what your question is.

Frankly I think the influence of this stuff can be overstated. Plenty of examples of people with middling parents who turned out fine or people with great, involved parents who really went off the rails.

http://paa2015.princeton.edu/abstracts/152988 possible link to the original study (rather than just the clickbait version :P). Looks like it's pretty targeted to teenage girl behaviour and pregnancy rates.

"The effect is half as important as being born to a teenage mother. In addition, larger effects of parental expectations on teenage pregnancy and motherhood are found for teenage girls under-performing at school than for those performing above the mean of the academic achievement distribution." ...which is, you know, interesting, but wayyyyy more targeted than the assertion of the article that is at the top of this thread.

OK, we've changed the URL to that from http://hangover-cure.co.uk/strict-mothers-have-better-childr....

The only problem is now half the comments won't make any sense.

You'd be surprised at how much readers can figure out when there's a trail left in the thread.

Much better, thanks. This article is really poor.

If the study reflects a reproducible effect, it could be genetic, i.e., the strictness of the parents and their kids are simply reflections of similar inherited traits.

I was amused when the "tiger mom" articles came out, and wondered about trying to be such a parent myself. I quickly realized that I don't have the self discipline and emotional stamina to pull it off, whether I think it's a good idea or not. For this reason, telling me that it's how I should raise my kids is a moot point.

not to mention how happy these 'better children' are, the prevalence of anxiety and depression across all samples - strict environments without nurture do not end well

Strictness and nurture are hardly in diametric opposition, but they may be difficult for some people to balance. Some parents have more self discipline, set a better example and better compartmentalise and in doing so are able to have it all. In other cases (Economic and social factors all contributing, but a lot of it will be the individuals character and own upbringing) discipline will get mixed up with capricious behaviour based on the parents mood and in contradiction to the parents own behaviour. It is this more chaotic version of 'strictness' (the beginning of the abuse spectrum perhaps) which is likely to contribute to mental health issues later in life.

I think currently there is an additional difficulty that has arisen with the infantalisation of a generation of adults who are uncomfortable with a proper adult-child sepearation and would rather befriend their children for their own emotional needs. The problem with this is (unless you are unfathomably charismatic) you cannot be all people to someone. A friendship relationship is one of equals and probably not what the child needs as it undermines authority which is the basis of discipline.

Just some personal thoughts on the matter (from the UK).

It's not a magic formula. Look what happened to Todd Marinovich [1] whose Tiger Dad basically screwed him up for life.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Marinovich

"he was arrested in 2004 for skateboarding in a prohibited area"

He was 35 years old and still getting into teenager trouble.

Emotional development is so critical, and often "success" does not really include anything other than vague hand-waving toward "happiness," which far too many people equate with financial and/or professional success. What about qualities like perseverance, steadiness, calmness, empathy, warmth, flexibility, or kindness (just to name a few)? These are things that can be taught and encouraged.

I'd add a few more to the list of things that I think Tiger parents miss: independence, creativity, and relaxation/meditative/reflective

Eh, I never developed any motivation to do anything beyond fear of my mother and now I have no motivation and still haven't found any in a decade since escaping.

So this study totally vindicate the "Tiger mother"[1] types?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_mother

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Hymn_of_the_Tiger_Mothe...

I don't think strict is at all synonymous with "Tiger Mother," though I'd guess Tiger Mothers are very much a subset of strict mothers.

I expect "strictness" is something of a proxy for things like inculcating self-control, delayed gratification, and limit setting, while smallish effect size could be because the reverse side of the "strictness" coin might be a proxy for less good (potentially borderline abusive) things.

It purports to but I wouldn't be entirely surprised if there were a third factor influencing both things, and the article says nothing about controlling for any external factors. Also numbers like 4% aren't exactly overwhelming. And the sourcing leaves something to be desired. Happylifereport?

I'd also wonder if there's not a realistic limit to this. At some point, I'm guessing it is possible to be too strict?

Related: I was the custodial parent and not very strict. My kids are mostly productive and happy adults. I can't ask for more.

I see an obvious flaw with this. If success is restricted to success at school, children of strict mothers are indeed more "successful" because they spend way more time on homework than the average student.

I wonder whether this "success" translates to those children being more disciplined as grown-ups.

I read that as "Bitter Children," which seems equally likely.

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