Comment by ericmcer
2 years ago
Kind of cool, but the conclusion was completely backwards.
The final line of the study was "So he is our collective responsibility. They all are.", but the entire study was about how the home environment affects your outcomes. I guess their conclusion is that if an individual does a bad job raising their kids, it is societies fault.
I think the core message is that a child's life is strongly determined by his family life/environment, it's not just a personal choice to succeed or to fail.
So if we want people to have better outcomes, we need to help better family lives/environments (and lives in general) to break the cycle, and not just give them basic education. Also, the family is just a group of individuals that probably themselves have come from poor conditions: this means there's hope of breaking the cycle.
Where in the data does it indicate that it's possible to "break the cycle"?
In the presentation it talked about college, even a short amount, can give better outcomes.
But the presentation was more of an overview of the issue, and I don't think it's fair to argue that, because it doesn't go deeply into every data point, that it's not valid. It more about bring awareness to the issues, and grounds for further research.
It shows that family/environment influences life outcomes (it should be obvious); it's not conclusive (in establishing causation), it does show a correlation. I really think it's almost obvious this is true, but it's important reinforcing with data nonetheless.
So you can break (or weaken) the cycle if you improve those conditions, and this improvement propagates.
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It also begs the question of nature vs. nurture. If researchers won't take this seriously, then nobody should take their findings seriously. It's almost impossible to untangle, "single-fatherhood leads to bad outcomes because kids need a father figure in the house" from, "single-fatherhood leads to worse outcomes because the type of person who would abandon their children is likely more impulsive and less conscientious than average and those traits are heritable."
Fair point in theory and I'm not familiar with the literature, but I'd guess at least some researchers have studied ways of controlling for this: eg, looking at cases where father dies early and mother does not remarry, single mothers who adopt or do artificial insemination, etc.
Yes, my (limited) understanding of the literature is that this is exactly what they do. You don’t see the same single-fatherhood effects when looking at the children of widows, for example.
Responsibility doesn't imply fault. For example we all have a collective responsibility to protect and improve our environment, even though none of us created it and none of us caused any of its problems.
I think the idea is that "only support your family" harms everyone. The example, Alex, has 2 kids, works manual labor to earn poverty wages, and is depressed. Which one of the types of teen do you think his kids will be?
The common refrain is "then he shouldn't have had kids" but unless you're going to create an authoritarian state people will always have kids (and restricting kids went awfully for China anyway).
Convincing people that their problems are outside of their control and that the only way to solve them is to vote a certain way is also a form of authoritarianism. If you aren't to blame for your own life that implies you have no control over it.
Saying that problems are completely outside of someone's control or completely their own fault is a false dichotomy. Reality is usually somewhere in the middle, especially in studies like this one on teenagers. Everyone's situation is shaped by a mix of personal choices and the world around them. It's not just about blaming people or the system; it’s about seeing how both play a role. Voting is one way to make a difference, but it’s not the only way—people have a lot of ways to shape their lives.
> Convincing people that their problems are outside of their control and that the only way to solve them is to vote a certain way is also a form of authoritarianism
Yes, systemic poverty can only be solved politically. That is just the nature of a systemic problem. I am pretty sure encouraging people to be active in the political process of which voting is a small but important part is the opposite of authoritarianism.
> If you aren't to blame for your own life that implies you have no control over it.
Yes. Bitter pill to swallow but that is the reality. We are mostly defined by nature and nurture and we can't choose with which genetics we are born with or our upbringing and if we will have adverse childhood experiences.
The circle of influence most people have over their own life is very tiny, especially the lower they are on the ladder.
The ideology of personal responsibility is propagated to justify the current status quo and block political change that would help poor people.
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Statistically most people born into poverty stay there. Do you think most of them aren't trying? Conversely, do you thing most people born wealthy have to put as much effort into staying wealthy?
There are a number of systemic barriers, one of the big ones mentioned in this demonstration is education.
If we had equal baseline access to education, housing, healthcare, and food... then sure, if people stayed impoverished I might begin to agree with you.
We're not even close in our current state so "you're in control of your own life" is a completely ignorant argument.
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Being born into a situation where your problems are minor is a great way to be ignorant of how systemic issues affect people.
If a child shows up to school every day unfed for breakfast and without lunch money, right-wing states have decided that somehow their kid not having food is a motivational issue for the parent. And their solution for when a distracted, hungry student is unable to focus in class is to bring back corporal punishment and post religious texts in classrooms.
If it were merely a motivational issue for parents, then the child would already be fed. The political situation that made the most sense for the school district in which I grew up, which is a bright red area that is also a public education stronghold, was to dip into the budget to ensure that all kids got breakfast and lunch if they wanted it. That way it can't be framed as a political issue.
The issue was never about the benefit, it was about the race and class of people who received it.
Same thing with work. We have age-based workplace discrimination laws precisely because a class of workers who are over the age of 50 have been discriminated against due to their age and in lieu of other concerns. Those problems are outside of their control. Most people with 20+ year careers are unemployed for reasons that have nothing to do with performance, and they can't help what age they are.
This isn't authoritarianism. It's basic common sense.
Basic, simple logic, says not all of someones problems are in their control either.
I think social and individual expectations are a big part of this. Why is Alex depressed? If they had 20k more a year, would they be happier, or just 2 steps ahead on and empty hedonistic treadmill. Alex now has a new mustang, but is still depressed and fails as a parent.
I think it would be interesting to see the relative impact of a 2 parent + low risk home vs income, and I think there is a lot lost when people assume every variable reduces to income.
What about Alex when they have low income, but a healthy home life? What about Alex when they have higher income, but a shit home life?
Money actually does buy happiness, despite what the wealthy would like you to believe.
It is very likely that yes, he would in fact be happier with an extra 20k a year.
You don't know he'd have a new mustang; that's just you projecting. He might put the extra 20k a year into savings for his kid's education - I know that feeling like I'm setting my kids up for future success makes me happy.
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I'm not sure who you know that makes $40k and has a foot on a "hedonistic treadmill"
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I don't think that "fault", which I take as implying blame, had anything to do with the presentation. I interpreted it as very neutral in that respect. Maybe I'm misinterpreting it?
I do think it touches on how everyone is exposed to adverse outcomes, whatever category they are in. And I agree that it's a collective responsibility, although the presentation does a poor job of arguing the "collective responsibility" point.
If a society has a trend line of poor home environments then I think the society is in some sense at fault for fostering poor home environments. This doesn't and shouldn't take away from the individual's responsibility for raising kids.
But home environments exist in a specific social context that effect how people think they should foster a good home environment. We've lost a lot of societal knowledge and experience around good family structures since probably the 60s. As a society we have definitely encouraged, especially the lower income bands, to outsource it to schools and institutions. That is going to have an effect.
Under President Johnson, government funding began to incentivize single (predominantly black) mothers not to marry the father of their children. IMO this had disastrous effects on our urban centers. Before the social welfare solutions of the Johnson era, 25% of black children were born without two parents. Now the number is nearly 75%, and the effect on young men has been tragic, in a way that affects the whole community.
The take-home for me was that as parents, or future parents, here are some things we can do to make the child have a greater chance at success. None of these are doorways to success, but they make it easier for success to happen with those conditions present, as well as the inverse.
There is a difference between fault and responsibility
In health care, sometimes we help the body fix the problem, and sometimes we "just" treat symptoms.
It's ... probably not a good idea for the government to try to fix families. Any interventions must be very carefully considered.
But some of the symptoms can be helped out relatively easily.
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I also think the author(s) may have a different perspective on responsibility, fault, and blame. I feel like blame is something that our minds do for us so we can stop thinking about a problem - to fix things you have to look past the blame.
> It's ... probably not a good idea for the government to try to fix families. Any interventions must be very carefully considered.
The government has been actively working to break families for years through economic policies that encourage single mothers to raise children on their own: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-biggest-root-cause-of-crime...
I think the conclusion is: Think about how you can help in reducing this problem
The point is that, as a society, we should do more to help kids who are having a rough time.
Another point is that if you're not thriving as an adult, it could be because of the experiences you had when you were a kid.
I honestly think that the sorts of experiences that break kids are things like parents breaking up, not 'not having the newest toy' or 'not going on vacation'. In the sense that material poverty can cause family stress, I completely agree. I fully support programs to feed kids, provide medical insurance, etc. I even support it for adults. I'm just not sure how any of that at the end of the day is going to fix daddy cheating. Unless you're suggesting a crackdown on prostitution and/or making adultery a crime again (in which case sure! as a social conservative, I'm down)... but good luck getting that passed today!
I can see it either way. They could've left the conclusion up to the viewer.
Yeah, I'm tired of being told that it's all our responsibility, but we get none of the agency. My mother was a teacher in the inner city. There were kids our whole family fell in love with, and frankly, my mother knew what was best for them, and for a few would have been willing to even take them in. But, alas, they had to go home to their abusive parent. I am in no way advocating for forced separation, but it's hard to experience these things first hand and then be told it's all our responsibility.
I mean.. I agree that we are responsible for each other. However, for other things in life I'm responsible for, like my car, my property, and even my government, I am given a direct say. Imagine if you were forced to take responsibility for a car, except you were never allowed to drive it and it was made freely available to every teenage boy at the local high school. What responsibility could you possible have? What does it even mean to say you're responsible for something you have no control over?
A good priest once told me in confession when I confessed feeling upset that I couldn't help the homeless, the destitute, etc, and he properly identified the problem was that there's only one Saviour and I'm not him. And I feel that sagacious advice is applicable here. What are we possibly to do in this situation other than the unthinkable?
Previous progressive movements have indeed advocated for the removal of children in bad environments, and indeed many of these 'worked', but they're highly criticized (rightly, I guess) today.
I guess I can see this conclusion if you start from a position that all families are nothing but isolated, self-interested atoms in the world. Rather than, you know, a part of society!
Maybe you missed some of the bits in the middle? Like how education is a greater boon to the people who can't afford it and that the cost of it has increased over time.