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Comment by Eric_WVGG | Hacker News Reader

What makes you think most have a desire to raise their kids with future-proof values? What makes you think that most have a desire to raise their kids? These are absurd and (I hate to use this word) privileged assumptions.

And I attest that the Simpson/Huxtable thing is valid. Huxtable (and Ward Cleaver and etc) were a fiction that our culture accepted as truth. Homer is an obvious fiction whose message is "that thing we accepted as truth was a lie." In that respect, Homer Simpson is much more real than Dr. Huxtable or Ward Cleaver or any myth that parents are simply by virtue of having functional reproductive organs competent.

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>What makes you think most have a desire to raise their kids with future-proof values?

History.

>What makes you think that most have a desire to raise their kids?

Statistics.

> privileged assumptions

I think you've got a bit of hatred for this subject.

>Simpson/Huxtable thing is valid.

Fiction is merely an analog for the truth; in this case, a very minor, small part of the reality of parenting. No, Homer is not a good parent model. His character is more of an allegory for cynical irony than the reality, which is that a vast majority of parents - fathers - care very deeply for their children and want to see them survive whatever the future brings.

Anything less is the very apathetic, solipsism, we've been discussing.

"history" "statistics" oh bravo you just said a pair of words. Here, I'll do the same thing: "History. Statistics." Now who's right?

"hatred for this subject"? Sure. I know a lot of people who had shitty parents. I know a pair of brothers who committed suicide because their father molested them. Many of my friends hate their folks. My own are terrific, incidentally. When I say those are privileged assumptions, that's because I have been reminded numerous times that I had a privileged upbringing.

Which, by the way, entailed parents whose life philosophy was hands-off, which further points out how vapid the notion that "parental controls would fix social media" is.

History: you only need to look beyond your own sphere to see that historically, yes, a majority of all parents, ever, have cared for their kids and wish for them to have a better future.

Statistics: if it were not so, we wouldn't have survived as a species, let alone been to the moon and been given the 'privilege' of iPhones, et al.

Privilege: oh look, you used a word.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it doesn't account for how Facebook et al.. could have existed in the first place, or why there could be anything wrong with it.

Facebook exists. Parents let their kids go on it. Kids go on it happily. By your logic, since parents obviously care for their kids, and parents let their kids go on Facebook, Facebook is good for kids, parents and society as a whole. Statistics? Over a billion people signed up to use Facebook. Statistically, you're wrong and the people who like Facebook are right.

You lost the argument as soon as you tried to play the privilege card.

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