Thread by @diviacaroline

And my other assignment from vgr is 100 opinions on mainstream parenting, whether anyone likes this or not :-). I probably can’t do them all in one sitting, but I’ll start anyway.

Big caveat that mainstream parenting isn’t a single thing, and my perception of it is presumably all kinds of flawed. I do not have much depth of knowledge about mainstream parenting.

1. There is a big fault line I see about parenting. On one side, parents think their children should obey them. On the other side, no one can stomach the word “obey”, but parents still want kids to do what the parents, er, “request” or them.

2. In almost all cases, parent rules about trying to get kids to eat healthy food is better understood as them trying to get the kids to eat in socially normal ways.

3. The mainstream parenting narrative references both game theory and behaviorism, but mostly in ways that don’t really hold up to scrutiny, IMO.

4. I think there’s this incredibly sad situation that isn’t just about parenting but affects it where we as a culture can’t handle closeness well.

People feel emotionally safe enough for conflict, but then we aren’t good at conflict. People decide to spend more time apart.

5. I think everyone forgets how much work babies and toddlers are. Even people who currently have them!

So many parents talk about how the baby is easy compared to the older kid, but I’m skeptical. Wouldn’t the older kid be 100x easier if you weren’t busy with the baby??

6. I believe all modern American parents should request contemplate how amazingly good it is that we don’t have to wash clothes by hand. And that we can buy comvenience foods.

7. I think on a cultural level there is massive underinvestment in parenting skill.

People used to learn skills by helping as kids, and those skills applied more bc the world wasn’t changing as fast.

Parenting books barely if at all transmit useful skills.

8. I think most of the justifications parents give for controlling their kids in ways that it would obviously be counterproductive to try to control their friends are quite flimsy.

9. The whole idea that kids play more and better with fewer carefully chosen toys than with a big jumble of TONS of toys?

Yeah, some kids and some ages, but I think a lot of it is that parents don’t want to admit that they and their kids are not aligned on this point.

10. The sorts of interesting questions one might want answers to ire: parenting, outside of a few very narrow areas, will probably never be answerable by studies.

Many current “studies” are even worse than that. Misreported correlational BS that doesn’t account for genetics.

11. Those surveys where people say housework is more enjoyable than childcare?

Well of course! *on the margin*

Because everyone knows childcare is more important, so we skip housework when we really don’t want to do it and we don’t skip childcare.

12. One problem with pop parenting anthropology about how Inuit kids don’t get angry and Mexican kids do chores etc. is that you clearly can’t copy the thing on an individual level.

And. I think kids today look around and realize they need a different ego structure to operate.

13. Related to 12—afaict current day standard American parenting, for all its flaws, is better aligned with my values than parenting from almost all other times and places.

Which is probably what I should expect.

14. The idea that “boundaries help kids feel safe” is absurd on its face.

Sometimes boundaries create real safety, kids perceive it, and they feel safe.

But, unsurprisingly, kids mostly get mad or sad or resigned when you restrict their behavior.

15. Pediatricians give parenting advice about non-medical things all the time, and the right response is almost always to smile and nod.

16. Insulting people and belittling their interests is bad for relationships. Kids are not a magical exception.

17. Sharing, as a concept, should be reserved for dividing things up and permanently giving them to people.

Food is a central example of shareable.

You can take turns with toys, or let other kids use your toys, or even loan them out. And sharing is the wrong word for it.

18. The thing parents usually want is for little kids to be generous with their own toys AND not to demand that other kids be generous with their toys. Bc that’s convenient.

Good luck!

I think below a certain age you have to choose on or the other.

19. If I could single-handedly delete the word “tantrum” from the English language, I would.

20. Saying “good job” isn’t bad because of some nonsense that doesn’t reproduce about growth mindset.

It’s bad because it’a patronizing and inauthentic. When would you say it to an adult?

Mostly you wouldn’t. And you’d use a different inflection. A better one!

21. The word “teach” implies a certain degree of confidence about what a kid is likely to learn from a situation that is very rarely justified.

Our culture has way too little epistemic humility about what kids are learning when and why.

22. There are maybe 3 intellectually honest parenting books.

23. I count Selfish reasons to have more kids as one of them, though I think Bryan Caplan overstates the “parenting doesn’t matter” case.

He’s very right that genetics matters though, and I find it kinda shocking how many people deny or don’t know this.

24. A lot of the challenge of parenting is figuring out which essential (not food) nutrients you were automatically getting and therefore not even tracking in your non-kid life and how to bake them into life with kids.

As kids age, it’s a moving target.

25. Analyzing parenting style using the axes of warmth/nurture and structure has its uses, I’m sure, but it reads to me like a scam.

Because it leaves out the “treat kid like a person” component, and you can’t leave that out!

26. Afaict the same parents who unproductively blame their kids for things all the time usually feel a ton of guilt as well, and they do question themselves. But they don’t show it much bc it’s too vulnerable to.

They are bankrupt wrt to their guilt :-(.

27. Some kids are happy to play with other kids just because they are the same age. Lots aren’t, and this is normal.

Hot take: it’s much easier to make friends as an adult than as a kid, especially if you have the internet.

28. Mainstream parenting is a sad situation.

It’s beautiful too, because everything real is beautiful.

But if you look at it and don’t see how sad it is I’m not convinced you can see what’s happening.

29. And school is at the center of the badness. Years before school are defined by school being next. Hours after school are defined by homework and studying. Summer “vacation”, too, is deeply affected.

30. Sleeping with your kids because it feels good and right and breastfeeding because it feels good and right are both underrated.

31. People like to separate what is moral from what works, but this impulse is basically misguided.

Moral claims *are* claims about what works.

Coercion is costly. Including in parenting.

Doesn’t mean you can use zero coercion, but you should invest coercion, not spend it.

32. I don’t think everyone should be doing EC, but the discourse around what is developmentally possible wrt potty training is quite the case study that makes me contextualize all popular claims about “developmentally appropriate” as more a part of the Borg than I would have.

33. We should have coming of age rituals and we mostly don’t. Teenage girls at least get a physiological one, so guys are more screwed here if I had to pick. But it’s bad for everyone.

34. A lot of mainstream parenting is based on the idea that you will eventually teach kids the importance of things by forcing them to do the things.

35. A very important thing to realize about “mainstream” parenting is just how diverse and self-contradictory it is without being very self-aware about this point.

Mainstream parenting has plenty to object to about mainstream parenting in a way that seems very American.

36. Almost too obvious to say, but all sorts of parenting practices are about transmitting social class.

37. The dance where parents complain about their kids (and maybe their partner) and their conversational partner mostly listens and validates that of course they are doing their best is an important and load-bearing part of the mainstream parenting memeplex.

38. People are very right to complain about how neighborhoods aren’t built for kids to roam around and this is a huge problem.

39. People also have a very good point when they complain about not having community or family helping, but I think this one is actually more complicated!

Since even main team American parenting is multi-cultural is hard to truly distribute it.

40. When I google “which is harder pregnant with toddler or toddler and newborn” I don’t get a clear answer and I think google is correct on this point.

41. A typical hospital birth is an incredibly disempowering to enter parenthood :-(.

42. When you are visibly pregnant, lots of women who don’t have kids will spontaneously open up about wanting kids.

43. There are no vacations with little kids. Trips can be fun though!

44. Sometimes I forget that lots of people lie to their kids all the time pretty reflexively.

45. If you tune in to it, the constant invalidation of children can be deafening.

“You don’t want that!” (He does.)
“You’re okay!” (She isn’t.)
“That doesn’t matter.” (It does to the kid.)

Etc.

46. When someone says, “I could never do that” about one of your parenting practices, the delivery might be annoying, but they are usually telling the truth.

47. Letting siblings work things out for themselves is a bad meme. Sometimes it’s the right answer, and scaffolding instead of doing it all yourself is good.

But I meet all sorts of people whose parents basically let their siblings abuse them for years with this justification.

48. Toddler leashes are unfairly stigmatized. Some kids hate them, so there’s that. But they are much much less restrictive than strollers.

49. You don’t have to squint very hard to a huge chunk of justice arguments over to kids. People don’t usually though, even when they are pretty into SJ.

50. In terms of structural factors that interfere with healthy parent-child attachment, I think car seat use is pretty bad actually.

51. On Becoming Babywise, one of the most popular books about scheduling and sleep training babies starts with a whole section about now the best thing you can do for your baby’s sleep is have a strong marriage.

Interesting, right?

52. New moms aren’t sure what to do with half their brain and also want community.

Hence, extreme geeking out about baby carriers, cloth diapers, etc.

53. There are lots of events where you can bring your kids but no one is expecting them to actually do kid stuff, which is fine.

I’ve been to a Mormon family church service before and I was impressed! The message I got was that it was truly normal to have kids. It felt foreign.

54. Lots of people have very poor memories of their childhoods. And lots of grandparent types barely remember what they did as parents.

Exceptions exist, and it’s fruitful to pick their brains.

55. Parents are usually meaner to their kids in private than in public. Everyone knows this, and people rarely even allude to it.

56. Stuff management is a big part of parenting these days.

57. I wouldn’t call it meaner, but yeah most kids are on their “best behavior” in public and for people who aren’t their parents. More emotional and less compliant at home.

58. Lots of people think it’s terribly impolite to open presents in front of everyone at kid birthday parties.

Lots of people think it’s impolite not to.

Most people don’t care all that much.

59. Regular baby socks do not stay on. Long ones are a little better.

60. The canonical way to be initiated into “you are parenting wrong” is strangers telling you that your baby needs a hat.

61. I think parents should mostly relax about kids being cold and stop making them wear coats.

Some little kids will rather be half naked and shivering than wear a coat...

62. Kid interactions often have the same form as adult interactions, and the simplicity exposes the structure.

Like how some kids will repeat the same few words on loop until someone repeats them back.

63. Beaches are one of the most reliable ways to keep kids entertained forking stretches.

64. Afaict, baby sleep wasn’t nearly as much of a “thing” for boomer parents as it is for today’s parents. Maybe because babies really do sleep longer on their stomachs?

65. Lots of people like to say how with three kids, you move to some defense, but I think this is a weird take. Do most parenting hours happen with both parents there?

66. Also, I think even when both are home, parents of little kids should switch off more than they usually do.

67. One of the most hilariously recognizable patterns is the one where the mom (or primary parent) is like “please watch the toddler” to the dad and then the dad responds to push notifications.

But the kid keeps wandering over to the mom and she is still the one tracking.

68. We hear a lot about “creepy” algorithmically generated videos, but to me the more interesting situation is that never in history has so much human creativity and intelligence gone into making exactly what kids want with a tight feedback loop.

We should pay attention.

69. Lots of people can’t understand what’s up with kids even when kids explain it pretty articulate because lots of people’s filters aggressively remove reasons that aren’t “reasonable”.

70. One of my tell-tale signs of an unhappy co-parenting dynamic is a very high ratio of parents assigning childcare tasks to each other vs. noticing things they personally care about and doing those things.

71. I reject “for healthy development, the dad should be like x and the mom should be like y” archetype stuff.

I do assume they accurately describe trends.

And I assume at most half of it is gendered independently of who is the primary vs secondary caregiver.

72. I waffle between “cities are super underrated as places to raise kids” and “nah I’m just weird”.

73. Occasionally I see really dramatic as-seen-in-books results from “techniques” like empathizing with kids or giving them choices, but it’s rare.

It seems to be more common when the kid has a broad empathy or choice deficit.

74. Lots of kids intuitively describe their feelings as being located in their bodies. I assume at some point this is commonly socialized out, but I don’t have confident models of when or how.

75. Nature videos are a notable intersection of "no one would disapprove of you for letting your kid watch this” and “way too emotionally painful for lots of kids”.

76. Healthcare as signaling that you care is a big thing.

Band-aids are largely this, and they moderately offend my aesthetic.

Doesn’t mean I refuse them if the kid is asking.

77. When people want compliance and tweak their voice/body language until they get it, it’s very easy for them to fall into optimizing for scaring/shaming the kid even when that wasn’t the plan.

78. Of course I don’t make my kids hug relatives, yet I’m low-key mad at the meme about this bc:
-it makes it seem like this is important bc of sexual assault, which 🤷🏽‍♀️
-predictably gets vitriolic responses
-is a tiny part of routine kid autonomy violation

79. Facebook ads for beautifully tasteful “screen-free” wooden electronic toys that maybe even teach programming have got to be peak *something* right!??!?!

Or does it keep going from here...

80. Grocery shopping and running errands with your kids used to be very common stay-at-home-parent activities, but this seems to be less true every year, and I expect the trend to continue.

81. Feels tricky to talk about gracefully, but online mom communities that aren’t conservative-leaning seemed to be trending more and more social-justice aligned.

Inclusivity statements, library of readings to educate yourself with. Whole nine yards.

I see pros and cons.

82. Also filed under almost-too-obvious:

Pretty pictures aren’t very good evidence about how happy people’s families are.

83. With kids who are having trouble, there seems to be a trajectory from “I don’t want to define my kid with labels”/frame this as a big deal to a savvier plan to collect as many as possible to get maximum access to potentially useful services for the kid.

84. Parenting as life work can be pretty lonely in the sense that often literally no one is modeling what hard stuff you are doing and how it’s mattering.

Especially since there’s this weird collective load-bearing narrative that minimizes the role of skill in parenting.

85. The standard economy of parenting advice is very about lived experience, not stuidies or abstractions.

So if you haven’t been through x with your own kid yet you want to comment on it, the standard smooth move is to be vulnerable about how x was for you as a kid.

86. Even people who don’t lie to kids often totally scramble their affect and reactions to things that happen when interfacing with kids. Kinda like how adults on shows for toddlers act.

I doubt it’s a huge deal in small doses, but I intuitively mistrust it.

87. In order to relate harmoniously, parents often pick an epistemically dubious justification for why it’s okay that different families prioritize radically different things.

Stuff like:

“Well, you know your kids best.”

88. I did not expect nearly so many kids shows to be reboots of things I watched as a kid!!

89. Sometimes warnings or admonitions not to do things are basically experienced as hypnotic suggestions for the kid *to* do the thing :-(.

90. Some parents rely heavily on the “we are connected and we all want the same thing” frame with kids, and I do think it’s warm and can truly reduce conflict.

But then what about when everyone doesn’t want the same thing...

91. Most kids prefer more focused time where adults are present and really there for them than they get.

Most adults prefer more of this too. It seems to be a scarce commodity overall.

92. Taking care of sick kids while you yourself is sick is pretty miserable for a mundane thing that happens all the time and doesn’t mean anything is actually wrong.

93. A different way of saying 90 is that with kids it’s often hard to simultaneously be clear about which things are negotiable and not to anchor on your BATNA.

94. Modern American culture is pro being open about loving your kids and thinking they are the best ever, and I appreciate that—not all cultures are!

95. There is huge variation in how much parents play with their kids.

96. Watching people parent gives a whole bunch of info even when I’ve talked to them about parenting for many, many hours. Many of the most important things people do with their kids are things they totally take for granted and would never think to mention.

97. One of the very best things about being a parent is it clearly isn’t a bullshit job.

It’s so viscerally obvious that the kids matter, and that goes a long way.

98. Parents die :-(, and people cut all external ties with parents, but even then it’s rarely possible to cut ties with the parents that live in our heads.

99. In a sane world, children would consult their parents early and often about their financial and romantic affairs. But this only works if the parents have a certain baseline understanding of the kid’s world.

100. Magnetic baby clothes are the best parenting innovation I’ve heard of in the past couple of years.