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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

I love this article. Parents today spend more than twice as much time today with their kids today than fifty years ago: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/11/27/parents-.... Fat lot of good that did the last couple of generations.

Parents spend too much time apologizing for prioritizing their careers, and it’s particularly unfair to women. Studies repeatedly fail to show significant and durable results from different kinds of parenting styles. But you know what is shown, in study after study, as highly correlated with children's’ long term prosperity? Parental income.

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>Parents today spend more than twice as much time today with their kids today than fifty years ago

That's a good point but there's some detail missing here: how are the kids being raised. Historically, kids were raised within a tribal or quasi-tribal structure. When you have grandparents, siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts always around, room to play and explore, you don't need parents to be there 24/7 hovering over you. You learn independence as well as a way to interact and negotiate with others.

What this looks like is the worst of all words. The kids are abandoned to a set of nannies and managed activities, while the mother and father live their own lives.

> Historically, kids were raised within a tribal or quasi-tribal structure. When you have grandparents, siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts always around, room to play and explore, you don't need parents to be there 24/7 hovering over you. You learn independence as well as a way to interact and negotiate with others.

Mostly untrue in Western Europe for more than 500 years[1] and very much untrue in North America, to an even greater extent, since after WWII especially, but also before. Relatively late marriage and forming a new household upon marriage has been the norm in Western Europe since the 1500s in the North Sea region. North America was different in having earlier marriage because of labour scarcity and land abundance but nuclear families rather than extended family households were the norm in every decade and century among European descended peoples and those who assimilate to their culture.

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

The larger point was that though kids don't need their parents hovering over them and planning their activities, as it happens now, they still need a community - whether that community is are immediate or close relations, or a tribe, doesn't matter. If a kid has 6 siblings, you almost don't need parents to be anything other than income providers since the kids will socialize and raise themselves. The alternative of a parent living their own life, and abandoning kids to a nanny and a set of structured managed activities isn't that great. The nuclear family is perfectly fine too. That was also a reality throughout a lot human history.

This mother describes the worst of all worlds. She's not involved in the lives of her kids. The kids are shuttled between her and her father. The nanny and her preschool teacher are the primary caregivers. It just isn't great. The fact that she wrote this article in the nyTimes to pat herself on the back for what a great job she's doing for society (Hint: She's not that important and society will survive without her) - is distasteful.

The quasi-tribal group doesn’t have to be actual relatives. Stay-at-home parents (mothers, really) in the neighborhood often played this role, even after WW2.

You seem to think that because a family moves into their own house they do not get support from relatives? This is obviously completely false, and until ~50 years ago most people lived near their relatives, who would obviously help out a lot with raising a child.

Geographic mobility in the USA has been declining for decades but it’s still probably the most mobile least rooted nation in the Western world. Whether you’re talking about immigrants from abroad or internal migration from the North to the Sunbelt and South or post WWII migration to California, the Great Migration of Southern Blacks to what’s now the Rustbelt or before that Appalachians and Okies to the West Americans are extremely mobile. Most people live near their family still but a culture where the professional classes move away from home for college and probably move again for their first job will have a lot of people living nowhere near any family. Even apart from the professional classes people from economically depressed classes join the military in droves and they move where they’re sent and often settle there after their enlistment.

What's the definition of a child's long term prosperity? Is it grades or does it take into account emotional/physical well-being? And do those studies go into adulthood?

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f239/63aabbc3053bba4c5a5e68...

> This research examined the association between parenting style and life satisfaction in adulthood (N=112). Participants responded to an online survey, called the Parenting Style and Life Satisfaction Survey, which included questions pertaining to parenting style experienced in childhood, parenting style used in adulthood, and levels of life satisfaction. A chi-square test was conducted to determine if there was a relationship between parenting style experienced in childhood and the adult's own parenting style. Analysis of variance tests were conducted to determine how parenting style experienced in childhood was connected to life satisfaction in adulthood and how the adult's parenting style was related to their life satisfaction. Correlations revealed that there were no statistically significant relationships between parenting style and life satisfaction. Results were interpreted and implications were discussed.

Is life satisfaction the correct metric?

Yes, because that is how we determine whether or not someone needs help in the first place. If you have a better alternative, I invite you to elaborate.

What else do you suggest?

Can you tell me a more important one?

Long term prosperity generally means earning potential. That affluent parents beget affluent kids isn’t really a mystery.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19833853

https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-136-6-915.pdf

> Taken together, the results of these analyses suggest that ma- ternal employment early in a child’s life is not commonly associ- ated with decreases in later achievement or increases in behavior problems.

> negative findings associated with employment during the child’s first year are compatible with calls for more generous maternal leave policies.

The other one says a similar thing. They both seem to say that for the first year or two having a stay at home parent is beneficial, but beyond that it doesn't really matter.

These seem like significant and durable results on how to raise a child beyond parental income

Why is it particularly unfair to women? Is a man's place in the home? TBH I see a lot more grousing over men prioritizing their careers in the advice columns and popular media today while women are exalted for going into the same soul crushing rat races (ie in this article) that men are told to spurn for the more important things in life.

Please don't post generically about classic flamewar topics. It leads to lower-quality discussion and kills curiosity.

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