However Aella doesn’t have any children, and I suspect that once she does she will discover that she ends up needing to discipline her children far more often than she expected.
That’s dirty pool.
I myself have some pretty strong beliefs about how much consideration and autonomy children should get. Having read your post and Aella’s, I’d say my view is much closer to hers than to yours (and my own childhood was nothing like hers; if anything I probably got fewer absolute commands and less punishment than most). I didn’t become a parent until late. One among many reasons for that was that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to meet my own standards on those issues.
Before I became a parent, I’d get into discussions about the status and autonomy of children and it seemed I constantly heard “You’re not[1] a parent; you can’t know” used as an all-purpose argument.
Then I did become a parent… and my view didn’t change much. Although I had to make compromises (and mistakes), there weren’t as many as I feared. Probably the biggest sacrifice of her autonomy was the whole “school” thing; that still bothers me a lot even though she never much seemed to mind. But what I never had to do was to adopt an attitude that accepted such compromises as the “default”. Not through my daughter’s entire childhood. She’s 18 now.
That’s N=1, and I am pretty sure that my kid was an unusually easy case. But even if I’d had to make more compromises, I have trouble believing I’d have had to give in to depriving somebody of agency as the standard approach, or sink to “because I said so”.
Absent parent intervention children will be hitting each other every 5 minutes.
That’s not my experience, and I don’t just mean of my own kid. Even quite young children can spend plenty of time in even quite large groups without that happening. Something is wrong if kids are constantly hitting each other.
Unfortunately most parents are of average intelligence, busy, and tired. If your solution to chattel childhood doesn’t account for that, it’s not a general solution (but may work for you as an individual parent).
This presumes that it’s OK to become a parent under such circumstances. As part of my solution, am I allowed to suggest that it might not be?
Agree with parts of this but on the whole this comment seems pretty extreme.
> This presumes that it’s OK to become a parent under such circumstances. As part of my solution, am I allowed to suggest that it might not be?
You realize tfr would be like .2 if people actually behaved like this? I know this is a little tangential but I feel like this instantly can be thrown out with reductio ad absurdum.
> Something is wrong if kids are constantly hitting each other. Strongly disagree. It is extremely normal and probably even beneficial for pre pubescent kids, especially boys, to get physical. Depends on the context of course, just slapping people in the face for no reason would imply something is wrong. ordinary pushing, grabbing, wrestling, toy conflict escalation, and sibling roughness are not by themselves evidence that anything wrong.
In general yes it seems to me you are way overindexing on your child being easy. Even an average kid will be way more problematic to many parents with your attitude and walk all over you.
You realize tfr would be like .2 if people actually behaved like this?
I don’t see that as a problem.
I mean, yes, people aren’t going to buy into it. But those same people aren’t going to listen to any “solution” I (or anybody here) come up with, so it’s actually no more unrealistic than anything else I could say.
Strongly disagree. It is extremely normal and probably even beneficial for pre pubescent kids, especially boys, to get physical.
“Every 5 minutes”? No, sorry. I was a prepubescent boy. It was a rare month in which I hit anybody or was hit by anybody. I’ve watched parks and day cares full of kids who were not hitting each other or even shoving each other. Wrestling as a game, perhaps.
That’s not my experience, and I don’t just mean of my own kid. Even quite young children can spend plenty of time in even quite large groups without that happening. Something is wrong if kids are constantly hitting each other.
Big difference between siblings and non-siblings. Even kids who never ever hit other kids get into physical fights with their siblings. A lot.
I had a sibling, we didn’t get along all that well, he was the person with whom I got into the most physical fights, and we didn’t hit each other every 5 minutes, or anything remotely within extreme hyperbole range of 5 minutes, at any age I can remember, and I believe not at any age at all. We were kind of far apart in age for that, though… so I have to fall back on the fact neither did anybody else I knew then or now. That is an insane level. You wouldn’t have time to do anything else. And we definitely wouldn’t have done anything like that anywhere where our parents could do anything about it… even though in most cases the correction would have been more like a disapproving remark, only sometimes sharp disapproval, than physical restraint or any kind of punishment.
I don’t think “every 5 minutes” is to be interpreted literally. After all, that would imply the siblings sleep in shifts so that one is always able to hit the other. (Or that they are in a constant boxing match throughout their waking hours to compensate for the lack of hitting during sleep.)
Most days, my children (3 and 5) have periods of the day (usually toward the evening) in which they have exhausted their patience for trying to talk it out and they hit each other at least every five minutes, unless we keep them separated. They also have periods in which they reason, empathise, and negotiate better than many adults I’ve met. The latter periods are rare, but getting more frequent with age.
My wife has been worried about the amount of hitting, so we have talked to child psychologists about it, and they claim it is well within a couple standard deviations. That doesn’t have to mean anything, of course, but the data on this is sparse, as one could imagine.
That was not my experience with my two brothers close in age (one twin, one two years older). We never hit or fought each other. Now, we did have a younger brother with anger issues who frequently attacked us. The attacking isn’t my evidence of anger issues, just a symptom. He didn’t attack people at school, so I guess that’s evidence other people, even without anger issues, might hit siblings but not non-siblings.
This presumes that it’s OK to become a parent under such circumstances. As part of my solution, am I allowed to suggest that it might not be?
If there was a moral rule that forbid most parents from becoming parents and this rule was widely followed, then we’d be facing an even more drastic fertility decline and population collapse than we’re seeing now. Possibly enough to wipe out humanity within some generations (assuming no drastic transhumanism like indefinite life extension in the meanwhile).
Are you supposing that the majority of children of allowed-parents would themselves qualify to be parents? If the trait was only weakly correlated across generations, then the exponential argument might remain less than unity for many generations.
I am assuming that there are sub-sub-subcultures which will have higher success rates of instilling this trait in would-be parents and at least one will have higher than replacement rate. Maybe a fertility cult that happens to give lots of child autonomy.
I don’t think that would occur until we got to apocalypse levels of depopulation where a modern economy simply dissolves due to lack of workers. My assumption (given I and my wife are both highly intelligent, well off, are non-violent, don’t suffer from any significant physical or mental health issues, and are generally reasonable people) is that we are in the top say 10% of parents in terms of child welfare. If we don’t make the cut, and TFR is already about 1.5 without this rule, then in one generation world population would be 90% less, and if the desired traits aren’t maximally heritable, another generation would see it drop to 95-99%.
Yes, that’s why I said populations would initially collapse. I think you are missing that there are already groups of people who would qualify, live close enough together (or would be willing to relocate), and instill that culture on their children. And if there isn’t, I expect some religious cults will quickly spawn once the gods reveal themselves and start enforcing this new moral law.
There definitely will… eventually. What bad things happen in between when we have 1 billion people too old to support themselves and 300 million working age people? When food prices go through the roof because there’s not farmers to produce food for everyone? When supply lines collapse because the modern economy is built on a certain density of population and minimum demand that no longer exists.
That’s dirty pool.
I myself have some pretty strong beliefs about how much consideration and autonomy children should get. Having read your post and Aella’s, I’d say my view is much closer to hers than to yours (and my own childhood was nothing like hers; if anything I probably got fewer absolute commands and less punishment than most). I didn’t become a parent until late. One among many reasons for that was that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to meet my own standards on those issues.
Before I became a parent, I’d get into discussions about the status and autonomy of children and it seemed I constantly heard “You’re not [1] a parent; you can’t know” used as an all-purpose argument.
Then I did become a parent… and my view didn’t change much. Although I had to make compromises (and mistakes), there weren’t as many as I feared. Probably the biggest sacrifice of her autonomy was the whole “school” thing; that still bothers me a lot even though she never much seemed to mind. But what I never had to do was to adopt an attitude that accepted such compromises as the “default”. Not through my daughter’s entire childhood. She’s 18 now.
That’s N=1, and I am pretty sure that my kid was an unusually easy case. But even if I’d had to make more compromises, I have trouble believing I’d have had to give in to depriving somebody of agency as the standard approach, or sink to “because I said so”.
That’s not my experience, and I don’t just mean of my own kid. Even quite young children can spend plenty of time in even quite large groups without that happening. Something is wrong if kids are constantly hitting each other.
This presumes that it’s OK to become a parent under such circumstances. As part of my solution, am I allowed to suggest that it might not be?
The word “not” here was embarassingly added on edit…
Agree with parts of this but on the whole this comment seems pretty extreme.
> This presumes that it’s OK to become a parent under such circumstances. As part of my solution, am I allowed to suggest that it might not be?
You realize tfr would be like .2 if people actually behaved like this? I know this is a little tangential but I feel like this instantly can be thrown out with reductio ad absurdum.
> Something is wrong if kids are constantly hitting each other.
Strongly disagree. It is extremely normal and probably even beneficial for pre pubescent kids, especially boys, to get physical. Depends on the context of course, just slapping people in the face for no reason would imply something is wrong. ordinary pushing, grabbing, wrestling, toy conflict escalation, and sibling roughness are not by themselves evidence that anything wrong.
In general yes it seems to me you are way overindexing on your child being easy. Even an average kid will be way more problematic to many parents with your attitude and walk all over you.
I don’t see that as a problem.
I mean, yes, people aren’t going to buy into it. But those same people aren’t going to listen to any “solution” I (or anybody here) come up with, so it’s actually no more unrealistic than anything else I could say.
“Every 5 minutes”? No, sorry. I was a prepubescent boy. It was a rare month in which I hit anybody or was hit by anybody. I’ve watched parks and day cares full of kids who were not hitting each other or even shoving each other. Wrestling as a game, perhaps.
We’re taking about different ages here. Toddlers Vs 8 year olds.
Big difference between siblings and non-siblings. Even kids who never ever hit other kids get into physical fights with their siblings. A lot.
I had a sibling, we didn’t get along all that well, he was the person with whom I got into the most physical fights, and we didn’t hit each other every 5 minutes, or anything remotely within extreme hyperbole range of 5 minutes, at any age I can remember, and I believe not at any age at all. We were kind of far apart in age for that, though… so I have to fall back on the fact neither did anybody else I knew then or now. That is an insane level. You wouldn’t have time to do anything else. And we definitely wouldn’t have done anything like that anywhere where our parents could do anything about it… even though in most cases the correction would have been more like a disapproving remark, only sometimes sharp disapproval, than physical restraint or any kind of punishment.
I don’t think “every 5 minutes” is to be interpreted literally. After all, that would imply the siblings sleep in shifts so that one is always able to hit the other. (Or that they are in a constant boxing match throughout their waking hours to compensate for the lack of hitting during sleep.)
Most days, my children (3 and 5) have periods of the day (usually toward the evening) in which they have exhausted their patience for trying to talk it out and they hit each other at least every five minutes, unless we keep them separated. They also have periods in which they reason, empathise, and negotiate better than many adults I’ve met. The latter periods are rare, but getting more frequent with age.
My wife has been worried about the amount of hitting, so we have talked to child psychologists about it, and they claim it is well within a couple standard deviations. That doesn’t have to mean anything, of course, but the data on this is sparse, as one could imagine.
Sure, I read every 5 minute as hyperbole. That would be a continuous brawl. Also, lot’s of variation of course.
That was not my experience with my two brothers close in age (one twin, one two years older). We never hit or fought each other. Now, we did have a younger brother with anger issues who frequently attacked us. The attacking isn’t my evidence of anger issues, just a symptom. He didn’t attack people at school, so I guess that’s evidence other people, even without anger issues, might hit siblings but not non-siblings.
If there was a moral rule that forbid most parents from becoming parents and this rule was widely followed, then we’d be facing an even more drastic fertility decline and population collapse than we’re seeing now. Possibly enough to wipe out humanity within some generations (assuming no drastic transhumanism like indefinite life extension in the meanwhile).
Populations would initially collapse, but then people who follow the rule will exponentially increase the population.
Are you supposing that the majority of children of allowed-parents would themselves qualify to be parents? If the trait was only weakly correlated across generations, then the exponential argument might remain less than unity for many generations.
I am assuming that there are sub-sub-subcultures which will have higher success rates of instilling this trait in would-be parents and at least one will have higher than replacement rate. Maybe a fertility cult that happens to give lots of child autonomy.
I don’t think that would occur until we got to apocalypse levels of depopulation where a modern economy simply dissolves due to lack of workers. My assumption (given I and my wife are both highly intelligent, well off, are non-violent, don’t suffer from any significant physical or mental health issues, and are generally reasonable people) is that we are in the top say 10% of parents in terms of child welfare. If we don’t make the cut, and TFR is already about 1.5 without this rule, then in one generation world population would be 90% less, and if the desired traits aren’t maximally heritable, another generation would see it drop to 95-99%.
Yes, that’s why I said populations would initially collapse. I think you are missing that there are already groups of people who would qualify, live close enough together (or would be willing to relocate), and instill that culture on their children. And if there isn’t, I expect some religious cults will quickly spawn once the gods reveal themselves and start enforcing this new moral law.
There definitely will… eventually. What bad things happen in between when we have 1 billion people too old to support themselves and 300 million working age people? When food prices go through the roof because there’s not farmers to produce food for everyone? When supply lines collapse because the modern economy is built on a certain density of population and minimum demand that no longer exists.