Your parenting style could decide how successful your kid will be

The difference in parenting styles between rich and poor families account for a huge chunk of the inequality gap -- or does it?

This is a very sad article below.  It accurately reports that kids are being denied the carefree childhood that was once taken as the ideal.  Instead they are dragooned into a constant round of activities that they may or may not enjoy.  And the parents are getting frazzled by doing the dragooning.  But what if it is all for naught?  Are we sure it helps? Might it even be disadvantageous?

Before I say what the basic problem is, let me give an anecdote.  I grew up in a very permissive family and my son did too. My son was allowed to play computer games to his heart's content -- which meant most of the time. So I am obviously a BAD parent, No?

The pesky thing about it, however, is that he is now a highly paid systems engineer.  He still spends most of his day in front of a computer screen.  It is his natural habitat. But he is now paid well above average money for doing so.  So is he a hopelessly anti-social nerd?  He has recently married a bright, friendly and pretty girl and has a close group of friends -- so clearly not.

And my permissive background did not stop me from becoming a  much published academic, even though my father was a lifelong manual worker and my mother was a maid.

So what is going on?  The answer is that people are misled by the politically correct dogma that all men are equal and therefore it is only hard work that can give you an edge in getting ahead.  As a psychometrician, I knew differently.  I knew that your genetically given ability was all -- or nearly all -- in educational attainment and much else.  Both my son and I got good attainment reports back from our schools but we both just cruised. We had no need to do otherwise and no-one to push us.  So we had that carefree childhood that people talk about.

The upshot?  If you are born bright, you will do well in any system.  But can hard work make up the difference for the less bright? By far the major predictor of educational attainment is IQ.  Nothing else comes close.  There are probably a few cases at the margins where pushing a kid can lead to a small degree of advantage but is it worth the stresses and strains on all involved?  Might you not do better by SHIELDING your child from most stresses and strains? Might the kindest thing you could do for your child be to give them a happy childhood?

It is true that the children of middle class parents do better at school but that is because of genetics.  As Charles Murray pointed out decades ago, the rich tend to be smarter.  Being smart is how they got rich.  And IQ is genetically inherited so rich parents tend do have smart kids.  And smart kids do well at school with not much else helping


“We are creating a miniature version of our own lives for our kid, wanting him to be productive, keeping him busy all the time.” Abigail is talking about her two-year-old son, Joshua. She has a well-paid job with an investment bank in Dallas, Texas, which she finds stressful but exciting. Now pregnant with another child, she has every intention of resuming work after the second birth. She will keep on her Mexican-American nanny, and her writer husband will help with the child care.

But combining work with a larger family will not be easy, not just because of Abigail’s demanding job but because she and her husband, like many other prosperous parents in America, pursue a form of child-rearing that makes huge demands on their time and resources. It includes filling the child’s day with round-the-clock activities, from music and sports to sleepovers; going to great lengths to get him or her into the right schools; and strictly supervising homework. The parents may not like it, but they feel they have no choice because all their friends are doing the same thing.

This is colloquially known as “helicopter parenting” (because the parents are always hovering), or “concerted cultivation”, a term coined by Annette Lareau, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania. In her book “Unequal Childhoods”, based on in-depth studies conducted in the 1990s and early 2000s, she looked at the child-rearing habits of American families from a variety of social and ethnic backgrounds and found a yawning gap. Whereas better-off, better-educated parents (black as well as white) overwhelmingly adopted this intensive method, working-class and poor families followed a different model which she calls “the accomplishment of natural growth”. They saw their role as providing shelter, food, comfort and other basic support but lacked the time, the money and the nous for such intensive management, so their kids were often left to their own devices, and the extended family played a much greater part in their children’s lives than among Ms Lareau’s middle-class subjects.

In his book “Our Kids”, Robert Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard, used a mixture of interviews and data analysis to argue that different child-raising conventions are reinforcing a growing divide in American society. The privileged top third is pulling ever further ahead of the disadvantaged bottom third, whose families are often fractured and whose lives tend to be precarious. That shows up as a growing divergence in income, education, single-parenthood, friendship networks and other indicators.

The power of words

Upper-middle-class children are far better placed even before their parents make any special effort, simply because of the sort of homes they are born into. Educated parents tend to respond readily to their children’s endless questions, talk to them over the dinner table and take them to new and exciting places. In a famous study in the 1990s, Betty Hart and Todd Risley from the University of Kansas found that in the poorest families children heard about 600 words an hour, whereas in professional families they heard 2,100. By the time they were three, the children from the well-off homes had heard around 30m more words than the poorer ones.

“Parenting”, in the sense that it is now understood, is a relatively new term; it first popped up in 1958, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, and came into widespread use only in the 1970s. Experts see it as an important factor in successful childrearing, along with things such as genetic predisposition and external circumstances. To find out how much it mattered, Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University and Liz Washbrook of the University of Bristol separated out the effects of different parenting styles and home learning environments on the cognitive performance of three- to five-year-olds from different income groups in America and Britain. They found that they accounted for between a third and half of the income-related gap.

Studies show that even poorer and less well-educated parents on both sides of the Atlantic (except, oddly, in France) spent far more time with their children every day in the 2000s than they did in 1965. They also spent more money on them, both in dollars and as a proportion of their income. Sabino Kornrich of Emory University and Frank Furstenberg of the University of Pennsylvania found that between 1972-73 and 2006-07 total spending per child in constant dollars increased somewhat for all income groups (see chart), but far faster for the richest 10% of parents than for the rest. Because incomes in this group had gone up rapidly, their spending as a proportion of income did not rise much. Yet by this measure the poorest 10% of parents vastly increased their spending on their children because their incomes had barely budged.

America is not the only place to practise helicopter parenting.

The British do it too, calling it “hothousing” ; continental Europe less so, especially in the Nordic countries, where social hierarchies are flatter and parents more relaxed. But globalisation has cranked up competition for the best jobs, and academic standards in different countries have become easier to compare thanks to the OECD’s PISA scores, which measure the reading, maths and science performance of 15-year-olds. Such comparisons have highlighted the effectiveness of a kind of concerted cultivation that is ubiquitous in East Asia. It is somewhat different from the Western sort, being directed more single-mindedly towards academic success, and works particularly well in maths and science. In the PISA rankings for these subjects in 2015 Singapore tops the bill, and Japan, China (currently measured only in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Guangdong) and South Korea are all well ahead of America.

Such comparisons have made some Americans wonder whether they are being too soft on their kids. For all the hovering they do, they tend to let them off lightly on things like discipline and helping around the house, preferring to build up their self-esteem and keep them happy. But parents have noticed that some of the country’s recent immigrants, particularly those from East Asia, use sterner methods to great effect. In her book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, Amy Chua, a first-generation Chinese-American married to an American academic, describes the tough love she meted out to her two daughters. She unapologetically made the girls do many hours of homework a day, pushed them into becoming musical prodigies and allowed them next to no time to have fun. Though one of them eventually rebelled, both achieved brilliant academic results and seem to have grown into accomplished adults.

Another Chinese-American mother, Lenora Chu, and her journalist husband tried a different variant of blended cultures. Having moved to Shanghai, the couple decided to send their three-year-old son to a top-notch state-run Chinese kindergarten. Ms Chu’s book about their experience is called “Little Soldiers”, after a song often recited in the kindergarten that started: “I am a little soldier, I practise every day.” It summed up the educational philosophy prevailing there and across China: anyone can succeed at anything if they work at it hard enough, whether or not they have a talent for it. Effort is all.

The Chinese kindergarten, Ms Chu found, had little trouble securing co-operation and compliance from the children and their parents. The authoritarian structure of the education system and powerful administrators keeps parents and students in check. In turn, the kindergarten proved responsive to parental pressure to offer some formal teaching even to these very young children, despite consistent guidance from the ministry of education that this age group should be spending most of the day playing. Even at kindergarten level, the parents are already thinking about getting the child through the gaokao, the all-important university entrance exam. As one mother explains, this is not just about the child itself. The Chinese have long been obsessed with education, and academic success for the child brings honour to the entire family.

If life at school is not much fun for Chinese kids, it is even worse for South Korean ones. Though both countries put much store by rote learning, in South Korea this takes on extreme forms. Jang Hyung-shim, an educational psychologist at Seoul’s Hanyang University, likens children’s experience at school to military service and says it stifles their creativity.

SOURCE 







I’m a Conservative Female College Student. Here’s How I Overcame Fear and Became Confident

Brianna Mirabile is an honors student at George Washington University double-majoring in economics and political science. She is the president of the George Washington University chapter of the Network of enlightened Women. She is also the director of the George Washington Undergraduate Law Review and the president of her sorority, Alpha Delta Pi.

“I’m not usually friends with Republicans, but I guess I’ll make an exception for you.”

The words were said in jest to me, but I knew there was truth in them. They confirmed my biggest fear, going into my freshman year of college—that my conservatism would create a barrier to forming true and lasting friendships.

When I arrived on campus, I danced around the topic of politics in conversation, but it was difficult.

For students at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., politics is the driving force behind a lot of social engagement.

Making matters worse, my first year in college came as animosity and division over the election of President Donald Trump was palpable not only on campus, but across the nation.

With that, I stayed silent as disparaging jokes were made about Republicans. I didn’t raise my hand in class during political discussions for fear of being ostracized by my peers and penalized by my professors.

When peers asked me about myself, I avoided talking about politics. I was so careful, I didn’t find out one of my roommates was conservative until mid-October.

But the situation more than nagged at me. As time wore on, I realized my behavior was unsustainable. I knew I was not being my true self. Politics is infused into the social atmosphere at my college, and all too often I was forced to bite my tongue or keep new friends at arm’s length.

I decided I was not going to let a hostile political environment control my college experience.

I started to make some changes. First and foremost, I sought out and connected with groups I knew shared my beliefs, including the College Republicans and the Network of enlightened Women.

Over time, I came to understand that I let my fears mislead me, hold me back, and stop me from engaging with other students in the way I wanted. I began to speak up. I started to defend my beliefs.

By the end of my freshman year and throughout my sophomore year, I grew and evolved by engaging in courageous conversations with peers and professors.

It was a personal decision, but an important one, to decide to stand up for unpopular opinions on campus. I became unwilling to be cowed into silence by those who use personal attacks instead of facts to defend their positions.

As a conservative woman, I am confident, sure of who I am and what I believe—and why.

Speaking up against the tide of political correctness and emotion-based rhetoric on campus is a hurdle—especially for freshmen—in a world where defending the Constitution, free markets, and individual liberty is no longer considered an intellectually honest position on campus, but instead one that brands someone as “heartless.”

Taking conservative political positions has been transformed into a sign of moral depravation by the left.

That’s why freshmen are so fearful to speak up. They arrive on campus to make new and possibly lifelong friends, and instead are cowed into silence for fear of being “othered” and bullied. It’s something I faced, and I know many others do, too.

One of the most harmful narratives pushed by the campus left is that conservatives are morally bankrupt. That is why so-called “social justice warriors” don’t try to get to know who we are and why we support certain positions.

On campus and beyond, conservatives need to stand up to this poisonous narrative. We need to be open about our beliefs and show how proud we are that our ideas have been proven to help people.

As a leader of my campus chapter of the Network of enlightened Women, I encourage my conservative female friends who face the same battles I did to stand strong, be brave, and resist the temptation to temper our beliefs out of fear of social rejection.

That’s easier for me today as a junior with a solid base of friends, which is why connecting with other like-minded friends is a key component of standing one’s ground in college.

My advice to freshmen? First, recognize your political beliefs are nothing to be ashamed of, and anyone who thinks otherwise is not worth your investment.

Second, join campus groups that can back you up. For me, the Network of enlightened Women has provided a great social base of women who share my beliefs, and much of my confidence in owning my conservatism came from the friendship and mentorship I received from the network’s president my freshman year.

Finally, engage in dialogue with others who don’t share your beliefs, especially those who have been manipulated into believing exaggerated or false claims about conservative ideology.

I’m grateful for my journey from fear to confidence, and I know my footsteps can and should be followed by others.

SOURCE 







Lawsuit: Sorority Punished for ‘Hazing’ for Requiring Members to Study 25 Hours per Week

A  predominantly Latina sorority is suing the University of Virginia on the grounds that it was wrongfully punished for hazing.

According to an article in The Daily Progress, Sigma Lambda Upsilon — also known as Senoritas Latinas Unidas — was punished for “hazing” because of a policy that required its members to study 25 hours per week. The sorority was suspended last March and filed the lawsuit in September, but the situation made news only when The Progress reported on it earlier this month.

According to the news source, the sorority got in trouble when one of its recruits went to a professor to complain about the requirement. The professor then contacted the student affairs office and the police. (Yes — the police.) UVa conducted an investigation and found that the forced studying did in fact violate the school’s anti-hazing policy.

The sorority argues that this determination was unfair because other classes and athletic programs on campus require a similar amount of studying, and claims that the school’s ruling amounts to discrimination.

UVa defines “hazing” as any situation that occurs either on campus property or during a campus event “that is designed to or produces mental or physical harassment, discomfort, or ridicule.”

“Such activities and situations include, but are not limited to, creation of excessive physical or psychological shock, fatigue, stress, injury, or harm,” the hazing policy states.

This, to me, is completely ridiculous. When you think of sorority or fraternity hazing, “studying” is definitely not what comes to mind. Instead, it’s stuff like making new members drink copious amounts of alcohol, or get naked and drink copious amounts of alcohol, or be blindfolded and drink copious amounts of alcohol.

Can studying create “fatigue”? Yes, sure, but so can literally anything. A mandatory sorority meeting, for example — which is something that many sororities do have — could also make members experience “fatigue.” Should an organization requiring meetings be deemed hazing, too? I think only an insane person would say so.

Is 25 hours per week a lot of studying? I suppose for some people it might be, but I know for a fact that I voluntarily studied that much or even more when I was in college — and that that was a good thing for me. I don’t regret any of the time I spent learning, and if I could go back, I would probably study even more.

Sororities and fraternities often get a bad rap for being nothing more than glorified, booze-soaked party factories. Clearly, this sorority enacted a policy that was intended to set itself apart, to show that its purpose was not to provide just social activities, but also tools for academic success. Seeing as academic learning is supposed to be the entire purpose of college, it’s kind of hard to see how this sorority wound up suspended over demanding that its members do just that.

SOURCE