> Think about Japan, where kids are often taught to wait quietly for meals or gifts
Author got the country and items correct but not associated correctly. In Japan, kids pass the marshmallow test with flying colors but fail the same test if it's a gift. In America kids generally pass the gift test (hypothesis is that they're used to waiting for presents on Christmas).
Another thing is there's the difference between getting a guaranteed reward that you want (two marshmallows) vs waiting for the unknown. What good is waiting if a kid could potentially have 15 minutes of fun time with a toy, but they instead wait for two gifts and all they get is a pair of socks?
But I was also a kid who'd beg nonstop to open my presents early. I knew if I opened something early, that was more time with a cool game or something. If I waited, well, that was less time with the cool game. Plus most of the presents weren't interesting. There was just one thing I wanted in particular and the other stuff could be forgotten.
Marshmallow test is one of those things real psychologists (whether practical or science) just do not care all that much about, but pop culture is sure obsessed with it.
Psychologists, in my experience, seem to be strangely unaware of what is taken seriously by other psychologists. They're generally 50/50 on Freud, for instance, and the half who don't care much for him also don't think anyone does.
I think the 50/50 on Freud is an overrated/underrated equilibrium. Most of the Freud "fans" and Freud "haters" don't estimate him differently because they disagree about the correctness of specific Freudian theories; they mostly just feel that his legacy is overvalued or undervalued, or that his prominence in popular culture has been helpful versus harmful to the field. It's like asking basketball fans about Michael Jordan and getting answers that vary greatly depending on what they think is the right way to compare him to current players.
I think the people Der_Einzige refers to who are practicing Freudian psychoanalysis today using anything resembling Freud's original ideas are a tiny minority, and you could toss them out without affecting the 50/50 balance.
Der_Einzige thinks Freud should be judged negatively because his ideas are discredited in detail and have been replaced by newer and better clinical approaches. Another person might have completely identical views with Der_Einzige about the current clinical worth of Freud's ideas yet judge Freud positively because he was a keen and empathetic observer of his patients, because he legitimized the concept of unconscious psychological processes in the public mind, and because he raised the profile of psychological medical care and made it more socially acceptable. The same person could even feel different ways on different days without changing their mind at all.
The people who still think Freud is relevant are known as “psychoanalysists” in the same way that we separate chiropractors (loony fake back doctors, equiv to psychoanalysis) from real back doctors.
But seriously, if you don't like Freud, you're going to have to come up with a better response than just saying he's a kook; we all know he's a kook!
A) Talk therapy was the mode invented by Freud and is still the dominant modality of psychotherapy today, and
B) While you didn't mention it but, at the time, Cocaine was in common use as a near magical local anaesthetic and from it we derive procaine, lidocaine, any drug ending in -caine, which you certainly have been administered before, and
C)If all we have in our psychological and social lives are narratives, and the narratives bind us into certain patterns which we don't even realize we are following, then the counter to that cannot be another narrative which equally obscures its reproductive capacity (ie "the data"). Freud created stories that untied themselves at their roots, that put patients, not to mention regular people, ill at ease. Even sex with siblings is less taboo, certainly less universally taboo, than sex with one's parents, even if the latter is more genetically troublesome--is this an accident? The stories got to things at their base level, which was impossible by any other means. They might be a bit weird, but they force you to think, maybe even to act differently under the right circumstances (those of treatment), and the latter is what we'd call medical care, no?
None of that implies that it would make sense to actually do Freud based psychoanalysis today or that some 50% of psychologists do. All of that are historical achievements of severely outdated theories. Outdated, because they were shown wrong and discredited.
It is not easy to do psychology as a science, it is way less precise and less measurable then comfortable to geeks here. But it did made massive progress in between Freud and now where Freud was abandoned due to being non scientific.
The important thing to remember about Freud is that, at least compared to the base case, it gets results. From the pragmatic aspect of psychology this presents something worthy of study. My mature take on Freud is that all the cookie wierdness derived from the fact that he was trying to get people do discuss their trauma - without discussing the specifics of their trauma
We understand “shame” well enough and the principle of “unconditional positive regard” is central to much of modern talk therapy.
It’s important to understudy that 200 years ago people viewed sexuality very differently and even the notion of what is and is not sexually apporiate was not widely discussed.
Freud operated in less illuminated times than ours and it was necessary for him to operate in code to deliver his therapy. It is my reading of history that he got close to things in doing this that powerful people didn’t want and this is what led to the widespread attempts to discredit him.
I still don't know what's the holdup then. Freud constructed narratives as we all do but his were deranged so why bother even mention him as anything other than the butt of the joke?
That you react so strongly is the proof that they touched a nerve. They could be kooky stories that you just forgot about, instead you’re incensed any time anyone mentions him. Why do so many people care about it? That’s the trick.
I'm offended by Freudian narratives in general. They are offensive because of their stupidity. If they were constructed about any other domain they'd be immediately recognizable as deranged to anyone. I'm not sure why supposedly knowledgeable people like psychologists have blind spot for them. For me they sound like "are you sure you wouldn't rather spread toothpaste on your toast instead of butter?" (and the cook nods his head thoughtfully), "does your fifth leg hurt a lot?" (and the medic ponders profundity of that possibility).
I don't know what the trick is but surely there's some trick. It's like a trick that prevents people from immediately recognizing Trump for who he is. A blind spot for obvious derangement.
I just don't understand how can people lack such basic intuitive understanding of psychology to think than any Freudian narrative "might have a point" and still function as a person.
I don’t know, I read a Pakistan Today article where a doctor said cousin marriage is no big deal as it “only” causes defects in 2% of cases. Interestingly, this article is now impossible to find on Google. You can find a dozen news articles of people in the UK arguing about this.
Hopefully the discourse is shifting, but a culture can be dysfunctional (like allowing first cousin or even worse double first cousin marriages, for example) for a very long time before it collapses.
But do bear in mind, an intro textbook for a 101 class aiming to correct popular misunderstandings; or an experimental guide wanting to give examples of mistakes one should avoid; or an article on the replication crisis would also count as citations, even as they sneered at the original faulty work.
Not quite. Psychology is a big field and the range of educational practices is very broad.
There are some excellent psychologists out there, but there are also a lot of trained psychologists who embrace all of the pop-culture and even pseudoscience trends in full.
They do care about it. It’s an immensely important milestone in the development of the field, and is pretty much axiomatic as a developmental marker and has been widely and consistently replicated.
Where modern day psychology diverges is (as discussed in the article) on the conclusions and analysis.
My point of view is based on this very paywalled article.
In science a study doesn’t just become bunk just because its original conclusions no longer hold, or because a journalist says so.
The data is solid and is widely replicated. All the guardian article attacks is the analysis and conclusions.
And it is correct to do so, as that is how scientific discourse works. The journalist was however incorrect in saying it had been debunked.
Mischel is indeed still taught and students are taught to think critically about it.
Modern pedagogy uses it as a solid reference point both in terms of development and also in the limitations of empirical data.
Psychology is not like other sciences. It’s very nature is questioning established shibboleths and you’d be crazy to think that prevalent thought hadn’t moved on from a study done more than 50 years ago.
The guy who made the original hypotheses disagree with you. The issue is that data are not solid and are not widely replicated. And especially, the point is overstated.
The guy who made the original hypotheses also literally says that marshmallow test is bad proxy for the trait under question.
Groundbreaking research is groundbreaking research regardless of how well it holds up over time. Obviously it’s been supersceded but that just demonstrates the vitality of the field.
"Another thing I’ve noticed is how much modeling matters. My daughter watches everything I do. If I tell her to wait and then lose my patience two seconds later because the internet is slow, what’s the lesson there?"
As a father of 3 kids, I can confirm 100% this is true. Once you understand that, your life changes completely. You realize there is somebody in this world, who will model their life after yours.
What kind of example you give them is up to you.
Suddenly, "be the change you want to see in the world" gets a whole new meaning !
You know the world by what you experience. Infants and toddlers have a very small world (mostly their home); whatever that world is like becomes their expected reality.
Maybe that's true of little kids but idk if that going to 100% dictate the adult they turn into. There's alot of things my parents did that I never took on.
My mom has this very interesting theory: A parent needs to be by a child's side for the first 6-7 years of their life and devote all their time to it. Which is what she did with me. My dad stepped up for the challenge and provided for both of us. My mom had one goal: to make sure that I'd stay curious. She taught me how to read at the age of 4, signed me up for piano lessons(I haven't played piano at all nearly 3 decades later but I can still read notes), she made sure I'd be interested in different cultures, which subsequently pushed me to learn a few languages(which is the biggest contributor to the fact that I am doing very well for myself by a huge margin, forget software engineering, speaking English was the one thing that truly opened up the gates for me). Which on a slightly lower level did exactly what the article says. For contrast, I was old enough to witness and evaluate the extreme opposite - my mom's brother and his wife, who had children when a dog would have sufficed their needs. Their children were pushed aside, no one ever spent any time with them, whenever they started crying, someone jumped over to the toy store, get a bag of toys and shove them in their face so they would shut up. To such an extent that their rooms were filled with unopened toys and I'm not talking about 1 or 2 in a box, I'm talking dozens if not hundreds of toys still in their boxes. Last time I saw these children, they were >10 years old and they had no clue how to use a fork and a knife.
> Last time I saw these children, they were >10 years old and they had no clue how to use a fork and a knife.
Shoutout to the adults like myself that grew up like this. On the one hand, you develop outside the box thinking, because you had to learn everything via trial-by-eroror - no one taught you how to think inside the box. On the other hand, it's tough to trust or ask anyone for help.
Well I'm no champion of this theory.. bit skeptical TBH having been shown during some parenting coaching BUT the idea is kids who have a loving, trusting and attentive relationship with their primary care giver will be more likely to trust and seek help from others later in life and vice versa.
> a loving, trusting and attentive relationship with their primary care giver
If you grew up without this, you would not be able to avoid noticing how seemingly effortlessly the people around you have adjusted to adulthood when it can sometimes be a struggle to get over your fear of interacting with other people when you go to the grocery store. Not saying your skepticism is invalid but I would suggest to consider that perhaps the above is a privilege that not all enjoy and what injurious effects its absence may have. You may wonder about those close to you who seem to have trust issues: did/do they have a good relationship with their childhood care givers?
Speaking only for myself, I had a loving, trusting relationship with my parents. It was my peers who taught me not to trust (edit: also school administrators).
I think your mom did a great job, and that’s the whole point of the post. We need to focus on bonding with our kids and building trust with them. I’m actually a father of three, and being a father to my youngest while being much older is an entirely different experience. I pay attention to all the small details with my kids (which is actually why I wrote that post! ).
> Your father is a parent and didnt parent 6 years by your side.
I don't think you can imply this from parent. My wife is the parent who spends most of the time by my children's side. Meanwhile I am working to support and provide for the whole family. Still I am lucky and able to spend quite a lot of time with my children.
> Why didn't your mother step up to support that?
She was probably already busy being a mother. It's a full-time job.
> If a mother can replace a father in this role, why can't a teacher?
Nowhere it is implied that the mother is replacing the father. Both have a different role to fulfil.
> Why doesn't a child need some freedom and independence to discover their own internal motivations and creativity?
Again, all sorts of assumptions. There can be guided freedom, protected independence... etc. Even if you decide to throw your kid into the swimming pool to 'encourage' them to learn how to swim, you won't leave them there on their own, will you?
Cause they sat down, discussed it like rational adults and came to some logical conclusions: my dad was more entrepreneurial and a bigger workhorse whereas my mom has a much wider scope of interests and knowledge, which is to say, more knowledge to share, even if they ultimately graduated the same university. And now that I'm an adult (and have been for a long while now), I do appreciate the sacrifices they made and can safely say that they genuinely did the absolutely best job they could have done with very limited resources and a lot of compromises on their end. Something which I did not see when I was a child or a teenager, even though it was in front of my face.
To the second question - for most teachers, looking after a child is their job. 18:00, work's over, adios. To most teachers, children are just that: work. Which is not the same as rising your own child. I don't have children to say that with certainty and the closest thing I have to a child is a dog. I love all(most) dogs but I'll walk the extra mile for my own dog. Also, welcome to eastern Europe, where the biggest struggle in the 90's was having food on the table, so tough luck having a teacher.
I'm also a prime example that being near a child does not mean that the child will follow your path: my parents: artists. Me - software engineer, who can't draw a straight line even if my life was on the line. My parents - terrified of fast speeds or extreme sports. Me - well I have double digit scars all over my body from skateboards to bicycles to head butting a flower pot.
Maybe she wasn't fortunate to have the level of education required to support a family and the father did. Don't be so judgemental - people have complex lives and come from all sorts of background.
Yes! I personally find marshmallows underwhelming. If you gave me one or two I might eat them. But if the choice is between “eat one now and you’re free to go do whatever you want” or “stay locked alone in this room for a quarter of an hour and you get two”, the latter is a worse proposition.
I’m perfectly content with being with my own thoughts for hours, but being forced to do nothing for a crummy reward when a better alternative is right there is not compelling.
Are you a child between the ages of 3 and 5? Because that's the typical age of a participant in the marshmallow test. This is like scoffing a kid not finding something on Dora the Explorer.
I’m not criticising the kids, I’m criticising the conclusions of the experiment. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to explain my reasoning this clearly or perhaps even consciously understood why I had made that choice, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have been able to intuitively make that tradeoff. Which is precisely the point of the article: kids subconsciously performing an action based on psychological and environmental factors not fully within their grasp.
Within the parameters of your analogy, my point is closer to scoffing at the experimenters for making sweeping conclusions based on kids being able to find a single item on Dora the Explorer. Sure, maybe the kids who failed to find it had a learning disability, or maybe they weren’t that stimulated by being forced to watch a show they disliked when they could just go play something else. Even with the conclusions having been drawn years later, where the finders performed better academically, that could still indicate the non-finders were simply uninterested in the way most schools work by forcing you to be there and listen to certain subjects at certain times. Perhaps they would’ve thrived in a freer environment where they had greater freedom to pick the subjects for each day.
There's a lot of things the marshmallow test might signal, but most kids probably aren't spending a lot of time performing cost benefit analysis when faced with the problem. I wouldn't doubt that kids with trust issues would tend to do worse. Certainly the ones with behavioral/executive function/developmental issues do worse than others.
They don't do worse in the household they live in. They do better because if they waited for the 2nd marshmallow at home then they would end up with nothing.
Better with one bird in the hand right now than waiting for two empty promises.
So many of these psychological tests are based on values in upper-middle-class families. They are not always valid when the parents are drug users or alcoholic.
Kids of alcoholic parents know that most promises are empty promises. You are a fool if you take a "we will go to Disneyland on saturday" promise seriously.
Yeah. Just the wording "trust issues" makes it sound like the issue is with the kid. When in reality it is possible that they have a well grounded, rational, and evidence based belief that adults tend to not fulfil their promises. Exactly as you say.
Kids are pretty used to calculations related to stuff to eat.
I think anyone who grew up with siblings has an extremely developed sense of how much they're willing to risk vs how much reward. Like would I eat my brother's pudding knowing we'll be fighting to death when he's also back from school ? Yes, of course. That's risk/reward that made sense back in the days.
Whenever my sister and I had to share a single food item, like a brownie. Our mom would have one of us cut the item in half, and the other would get to pick their half first. Deciding which half was never a casual assessment.
Exactly, it's nonsense to talk about "executive function" as if it's some internal liquid that some kids have and others don't. Kids adapt to the realities of their situation, if they feel - on an intellectual level, or maybe on a more instinctive level - that things are precarious and options you have today won't be there tomorrow, and promises made to you won't necessarily be kept, of course you eat the goddamn marshmallow.
> it's nonsense to talk about "executive function" as if it's some internal liquid that some kids have.
That's actually how people with executive function disorders (like ADHD) describe it. There's a finite amount of gas/fuel/internal liquid they have in a day, which gets consumed as demands are made of them and it runs out a lot sooner for them than it does for others. Once it's gone even simple tasks can be overwhelming. Taking that one step further is the "spoon theory" (https://neurodivergentinsights.com/blog/the-neurodivergent-s...) which divides that finite resource into categories like mental, emotional, physical, social, etc.
As somebody with ADHD going on, the metaphor I've seen that I like best is to imagine that you have to do absolutely everything while bringing along a giant husky on a leash. Even when it's cooperative it's a source of friction; when it isn't, you're trying to drag it along just to be in a place to complete basic tasks.
You have a lot of people that take that last fact and then assume the converse.
But in a poor household, taking the marshmallow now is likely the optimal choice since there might not be any later — even if your parents tell you to wait. That’s not necessarily a sign of anything but having adapted to a particular environment: times you listened led to a negative outcome, so you stopped.
> But in a poor household, taking the marshmallow now is likely the optimal choice since there might not be any later — even if your parents tell you to wait. That’s not necessarily a sign of anything but having adapted to a particular environment: times you listened led to a negative outcome, so you stopped.
You've repeated the whole thesis from the article: people are conditioned for delayed gratification if that is possible/predictable, and then asserts that parents have the influence to develop that trait in kids by fostering predictability.
To further complicate things, kids in poor households tend to have more behavioral/executive function/developmental issues. It's still worth pointing out that just failing the marshmallow test shouldn't cause someone to assume anything.
"Poor" isn't needed here. If the kid has siblings, or the family has an "opportunistic" dog, or the kid has spent time in a daycare where treats are sometimes grabbed, or ...
Or the kid is getting bored by the stupid researcher and her stupid test, and is trying to get it over with as fast as he can.
You're right. Although it can hint at the possibility of those types of problems, the marshmallow test shouldn't be used to make those kinds of assumptions, especially in isolation. Like I said, it can signal a lot of very different things (even hunger).
One of the criticisms of the test is that children who fail it are more likely to have parents who regularly fail to deliver on their promises. From that perspective it doesn’t make sense to wait.
Don't fault social psychologists for what pop culture does with what they wrote. Even author of the marshmallow test experiment is arguing against this simplistic interpretation of it.
Marshmallows in hand have diminishing returns as well. The difference between having 0 marshmallows and 1 marshmallow is much larger than the difference between having 1 and 2, or 2 and 3.
People wash oranges?! Why? You peel the skin off and discard it. Is the worry that if the skin is dirty then you eat the insides with dirty hands after peeling it?!
She is 1.9 years old and anything that looks like food will be bitten. But to tell the truth you even need to wash bananas: pesticide residues (you can transfer chemicals to your hands and then to the editable part), can collect dirt/bacteria/rodent excrement.
Unless your or your kids immune system is compromised, that's probably a bit too much care (we did go to similar lengths with a preemie, but not with our second kid).
Yes, for dirt I wouldn't worry at all... but e.g. rodent excrement is quite dangerous: leptospirosis (kidney damage, meningitis, liver failure), hantavirus, salmonella, LCMV. I know, chances are low but I'd be happy to reduce them as much as possible.
> It always seems to be taken as read that they’re irresistible.
Nah. It wouldn't work if it was irresistible. You need a candy crapy enough to be resited by some people sometimes, but good enough to be desired by some people sometimes.
Experimenters tried the same setup with a turkish delights once. Things went sideways so fast that they needed to get a talking lion to calm the situation down. Kids were betraying their own siblings even without further prompting or promises of more turkish delights.
Normally I don't eat marshmallows and I don't crave for them.
But once a pack is open and I get one, whole pack just goes. I find texture quite satisfying and since I eat them once in couple years it feels like something new and different from normal stuff I eat so it ends up "just one more" until there is no more.
Amusingly, in my experience, it should be the "pasta experiment". I'm not 100% sure why they're that way, but pasta is super appealing to kids. I guess it's because they're funny (especially spaghetti).
> do people actually like eating marshmallows, if so why?
Everybody around me likes them. I have no idea why. It could be cultural. I moved to the US when I was about 19. Tried my first marshmallow when I was maybe 25. Ick. Its mostly a ball of sugar. I don't like Vanilla ice cream either. For similar reasons.
i'm not particularly fond of sweets in my adult life but in my child years it was something i loved. i don't know why anyone would think a child wouldn't like a sweet ball of treat
That seems terribly unfair to marshmallows. Smores, lucky charms, rice krispies treat/bubble slice, and hot chocolate wouldn't be the same without them.
> Giving sugar to a kid is like giving meth to an adult.
Giving sugar to a kid is like giving sugar to an adult.
Have you seen the meth usage rates? Awesome.
Now compare them to obesity rates. I'm not saying sugar is the sole factor, but the fact that I've seen off the shelf sauerkraut (literally "sour cabbage") having sugar[1] as a listed ingredient in the US, tells you all you need to know about sugar's addictiveness.
[1] Yeah, corn syrup or whatever the cheapest sugar substitute is.
Marshmallows, twizzlers, any of those corner store “cakes” like twinkies, the McRib, pop tarts etc. are absolutely disgusting hyped things I don’t understand. It’s like they manage to take sugar that most people like and make it inedible.
I don’t have kids. However, this same concept can be applied, and verified, with dogs.
I have made it a rule to never deceive my dog, and she trusts me because it. If I pick up her water bowl to refill and clean it while she is in the middle of drinking, I make it a point to always give it back with fresh water. I have several water bowls around the house , and the one in my room only gets refilled when I see she is actively drinking from it.
She sees this removal of something she wants (and needs) as a good thing, because I have never deceived her. I always give it back.
If I say we are going for a walk or I grab the leash, we go for a walk. I try to not do things that she would interpret as something not intended. For example, grabbing the leash and not taking her out.
With dogs you become really mindful of your actions. They learn so many of your subtle non-verbal cues, that you start to notice how much your body speaks.
I often think about this, and it has been a valuable learning experience. If I ever decide to have kids, I will make sure that what I communicate (either verbally or non-verbally) is congruent with my actions. I believe that this, is the surest way to build trust.
"With dogs you become really mindful of your actions."
Dogs hold you accountable in the most beautiful way. The best boss.
Everything is a trust relationship. I recall finding myself offended when I had difficulty pitching ideas at my workplace. A lot of times it felt like "hey, why don't you trust me or my idea". I only had maybe one or two of those moments, but I have also witnessed other people going through a trust battle just like the one I described at work.
This can happen in a family, in a romantic relationship, work, or in society. When the arena becomes entirely about trust, people act out. That's why kids rebel, that's why marriages fall apart, and that's why people leave companies.
Reread your sentence and look how much stuff you made up about 1) a scenario that’s completely fictional and 2) how I, a person you never met would react to it
You have avoided answering by changing the scenario. Deception was implied. I'll take that as my assumption being correct and you were simply too proud to admit it.
My dog trainer explained this to me like this: trust is like a bank, you build up and store a lot of trust, and sometimes you spend some trust, but if there's a lot banked up it will be fine.
The first day I got my dog, he had parasites in his ears and stomach. We had to force down gross medicines into his ears and his mouth, and he hated it and us for it.
Three years later we have built up so much trust that I clean his ears every bath and he stands still and waits for me to do it. He still hates it, but he trusts me and knows that I'm not trying to hurt him.
If I showed my dog the pill, and then showed my dog the peanut butter, and then showed my dog the act of me putting peanut butter on the pill before giving him this package, where does the deception lie in this sequence of events?
If the dog was familiar with pills and already had an aversion to them, which is typically the case when people resort to using peanut butter, it is possible the dog would be suspicious and just try to lick the peanut butter and avoid the pill itself. Or just avoid it altogether. Typically you would not show your dog the pill going in the peanut butter.
It would not be a deception in the scenario you presented, but it also might not be effective in getting the dog to swallow the pill.
A dog isn't a kid obviously, the dog you leave him outside of the home once you're done and it requires maybe 30 minutes of attention a day. a kid, it's constant attention.
> I will make sure that what I communicate (either verbally or non-verbally) is congruent with my actions. I believe that this, is the surest way to build trust.
Everyone think that way during the beginning, until having an hour of free time during a week becomes a dream, you don't sleep at night anymore, things get exhausting to do.
Then you get the belt out and teach the kids how to behave. i have been taught that way, most kids until 20 years ago were taught that way.
Physical pain is part of life, the very first event of a kid's life is his mother tearing herself painfully to get him out of her belly.
Sure, physical pain is absolutely part of life and unavoidable. Yet, it is not an effective tool for either parenting or raising dogs. This has been consistently shown, both for raising children as well as dogs, in research over past few decades. All you do is condition fear and creating emotional trauma that will leave them less able to cope and process emotional pain later in life without resorting to “getting out the belt” for their kids.
Patenting is brutally hard, exhausting, and often unrewarding work. But if you’re burnt out and find yourself reaching for the belt because your hour of free time is being disrupted by some undesirable behavior then just step out of the house for a few minutes. Young kids (and puppies) crave attention and removing the attention is more effective than giving attention by conditioning a fear response.
> A dog isn't a kid obviously, the dog you leave him outside of the home once you're done and it requires maybe 30 minutes of attention a day. a kid, it's constant attention.
You can have a relationship with a dog like this, but you don't need to. You can have a relationship where lots of attention and love is shared. It's very meaningful and powerful.
I have found that it’s way more effective to reward good behavior than to punish bad behavior.
Rewarding good behavior takes more effort than punishment though. It requires more patience because you don’t immediately see the results of your actions. Over time, they add up.
And I totally understand this. I have gotten angry at my dog , and I have shouted at her. However, after some reflection, the situation is always caused by some fault of my own. After all, I am the highly intelligent being, and I should know better. But it’s easier to shout than to critically examine your own behavior.
But hey, we can totally disagree on this. I think that hitting beings (either animals or humans) is not correct. Clearly, you think otherwise. You’re entitled to your opinion. Even if I think it is not morally correct.
I would encourage you to think about whether that’s a belief you acquired by your own means or just something you believe because you were hit yourself.
Have you consistently tried to discipline with positive reinforcement? Have you found it to be ineffective? Have you consulted with professionals? Maybe you have. Maybe not.
Sometimes we do things just because that’s how we grew up and not really because we believe in them. That’s how we end up in these never ending violence cycles. But it only takes one brave, and introspective, person to stop :)
I feel like this article is good, on the verge of great, then makes cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason. Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
The rest is spot on. I became a parent before I was ready, and man, they are little sponges. They learn everything you do, everything you say, embarrassingly so. My 5 year old would lay on the couch to 'rest her back' like me. She'd say weird country sayings I learned from my own Dad, like 'kneehigh to a cricket.' I had a habit of saying 'dicking with' to mean 'messing with' until she got scolded by a teacher at the ripe old age of 7.
The hardest part for parents today seems to be putting their phone down. It's what the kid and Mom have fought about forever, then applied to me. It's so easy to lose yourself in your social media, work, reading, etc. and kids are super receptive to it. But not as that effort, but as having a parent who stares at their phone unattentively. Our kid made her own 'phone' out of cardboard as a child, pretending to read and chat on it. That struck me deeply.
I never had social media, but as a voracious reader still find myself falling into the trap. Kids notice. Kids today have it harder because of that. My parents didn't have the Internet, they created the world we lived in and tailored it to us. I think that's incredibly rare today.
Now she's 13, knows it all, and doesn't want to be picked up anymore. And I tell you, I wish I never had a smartphone at all.
I'm going to quote the paragraph you're responding to so that those just reading the comments can see what it actually says:
> The marshmallow test also doesn’t account for cultural differences. In some cultures, waiting is baked into daily life. Think about Japan, where kids are often taught to wait quietly for meals or gifts. Compare that to the US, where instant gratification is practically a way of life. These cultural norms shape how kids approach situations like the marshmallow test. It’s not just about personality; it’s about the world they live in.
That's it. That's the entire quote about the effect of culture.
I see no mention of race or location—I see an argument that "the world they live in" affects children's ability to wait, and that culture is an important aspect of the world that kids live in.
Given that this is the actual text you're responding to, I'm not actually sure you disagree with them, because you go on to point out that smartphones are a dangerous component of modern culture.
> I see an argument that "the world they live in" affects children's ability to wait, and that culture is an important aspect of the world that kids live in
Followup studies on the marshmallow test also showed that how well kids do depends on whether they trust adults. In less stable environments, kids learn that adults don’t (or cannot) keep their word. They simply do not believe the researcher who says there will be 2 marshmallows later.
Better take 1 marshmallow now than risk losing even that one. If your life experience thusfar shows this is a more likely outcome.
Culture comparisons are a notoriously touchy topic. For some people, the topic itself is a taboo. I believe that's why the poster you're replying to had that reaction. For others, it's a topic to discuss and learn from.
It is important that we stop taking people who treat this topic as a taboo seriously at all
This modern mentality of "all cultures are equal and valid and none are superior to any other" is just ridiculous
Culture is something we are always looking to improve on. In this way, we are comparing our existing culture against hypothetical future cultures and deciding that one of them is more desirable
If we can compare a real culture with a hypothetical culture, then we can certainly compare two real cultures using similar criteria
Yes but these comparisons of real cultures become very gross very fast.
Japanese culture is orderly, neat, autonomous and their children are taught to wait at an early age. That's awesome! We should emulate Japan, clearly their culture is superior. Nevermind the salary-man trope, misogyny, Hikikomori, and rigidity that comes with it.
Instead of thinking about cultures in terms of ranking, try to understand the history of why a culture is a certain way and appreciate why other cultures are not like that.
We don’t need to “rank” cultures to recognize that individual aspects of culture are better adapted to current environments.
My dad always says that “Bangladeshis don’t know how to name kids.” We don’t have surnames, but instead two given names. And everyone uses a nickname anyway that’s unrelated to the legal names. That is just inefficient and unwieldy in a modern world where social circles are larger than a village. So I have my dad’s last name and so do my kids. None of us like the name and it has no historical value but it makes things more efficient going forward.
My parents adopted the western practice and gave us his last name, which he doesn’t share with anyone else in his family. It’s Arabic not Hebrew, but I imagine the words are related.
My wife’s last name is in the Domesday book, and they have extensive record of their family’s activities in the U.S.—which is a cool thing you can do when you have surnames! I feel somewhat guilty that the west coast line of the name will die out in favor of a name that has no family significance to anyone, but oh well.
I think this is a good example demonstrating why it becomes taboo: If you reduce cultural differences into a "good/bad" or similar simplification, then the comparison loses value, and triggers defensive responses.
Yeah, we can definitely judge anyone's behavior, we just should not do it blindly and we can despite or love someone for their actions, too, like why not? I despise cheaters, but I do not care, it is their life.
I'm probably further left than most people you've met, and even I've come around to the idea that cosmopolitanism isn't the zenith of culture, but the negation of it.
If all cultures are forcibly considered equal, one corollary to that is that a culture itself can also never improve, or fail, because then a comparison to itself from a different age would also be forcibly considered to be equal.
In that spirit, I welcome your dissertation on how the Germany of 2024 is equal to the Germany of 1944.
This is a White America thing and it is why we are in the situation we are in as a country but people want to pretend that race and culture doesn't play any role in anything. It does. You don't need to feel bad about it. Just acknowledge that it is a thing.
Science still backs a genetic component for things like happiness and IQ, which unlike race is not a social construct and yet can still effect things like social behavior and cultural adaptations to the environment.
That genetic component is between parents and children, not between neighbours who serendipitously share the same skin colour.
happiness and IQ, which unlike race is not a social construct
Which one of those is not a social construct, you'd say? Happiness -- which relies on self-reporting, or IQ -- for which a person can change their score by 10-20 points by studying test preps?
depression is based on self reported information, is that a social construct? anyway my point is that personality predisposition has a genetic component.
> In 2003, Phase 1 of the Human Genome Project (HGP) demonstrated that humans populating the earth today are on average 99.9% identical at the DNA level, there is no genetic basis for race, and there is more genetic variation within a race than between them.
Right, there is .1 % variation in genetics which, although seems like small number, manages create differences that lead to social effects. no correlation with race required, not surprising really since race is self chosen and non specific.
The point is that race is entirely made up (that's what a social construct is) and can change in an instant, so trying to lock it down by calling it a "White America" thing is wrong.
That race isn't biological isn't really up for debate, scientifically. You can believe that scientific consensus is too "woke" or has a systemic bias against the idea or whatever, but the consensus is soundly at "race is not biological".
I'm personally conservative in my political views, but I don't think that means I must reject scientific consensus.
These are awful sources, and they clearly aren't scientific, but are expressions of opinion. Wish casting, even. They're playing the old cynical same word games that are required to hold this position:
"Modern genetics has established that the biological basis of most phenotypic traits typically associated with race, such as skin color and hair texture, has demonstrated that they transcend ancestry across vast geographic distances spanning continents."
The fact that the above is also true of genes that cross species lines is, presumably, not an argument that 'species' is a purely social construct with no foundation in biology.
Another asserts that humans can't be divided into subspecies, ergo race doesn't exist. That is not science, it's wordplay.
Populations of humans were separated for millennia with very little intermixing. These populations diverged genetically, to the degree that the descendants of one population can easily be visually distinguished from one another. These groups have fuzzy edges, but they are obviously, undeniably rooted in biological reality.
The NIH is not a scientific source? The Human Genome Project isn't a scientific source? The journal literally called Science? Duke University? Science Direct? The American Medical Association? The Experimental Physiology Journal?
That's a tough thing to read on HN, I have to be honest.
The NIH site is hosting an editorial. An editorial from what appears to be the journal of Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery. No, it is not a valid source in support of your claim. The fact that you not only shared it but defended it, purely based on the hosting URL, is... revealing.
How can you cite the human genome project as evidence of the supposed a-biological nature of race? How is it possible that you can believe this, while also understanding that 23andMe can not only tell your ancestors continent of origin (a rough analog for race), but their specific region?
If you bothered to read these articles critically (instead of turning off your brain in response to a specious appeal to authority) you would see that they don't even deny that racial populations are genetically distinct. They are discernible in purely biological terms, which by definition makes them biological. The desire to present race as non-biological is purely political/ethical and not scientific, is why their arguments stoop to semantic games and emotional appeals.
You won't actually respond to the substance of my comment, because you don't want to think about this topic. I get it. It's deeply taboo, and we are hardwired not to question taboos. Think about it anyway!
They absolutely deny race exists, you just seem to want to equate genetic heritability with race.
Which genetic markers constitute a black person? Which constitute a white person? You clearly think such is the case, so I’m curious to understand how your definition of race functions.
The NIH article you seem to dislike has this as its opening paragraph:
> In 2019, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists issued a statement on biological aspects of race, concluding that “pure races, in the sense of genetically homogenous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past.” The statement continues: “... The only living species in the human family, Homo sapiens, has become a highly diversified global array of populations. The geographic pattern of genetic variation within this array is complex, and presents no major discontinuity. Humanity cannot be classified into discrete geographic categories with absolute boundaries... Partly as a result of gene flow, the hereditary characteristics of human populations are in a state of perpetual flux. Distinctive local populations are continually coming into and passing out of existence.”
How you could deny this as not the scientific consensus, or not a full rejection of race as a biological concept fascinates me.
> Which genetic markers constitute a black person? Which constitute a white person? You clearly think such is the case, so I’m curious to understand how your definition of race functions.
The races are visually distinguishable. This is possible because there are genetic (i.e. biological) differences between the groups, which are expressed as differences in skin color, hair color, eye shape, etc. These genes aren't what defines race per se, they're merely proof that race--commonly understood in terms of membership in a geographically defined population--cannot be said to be some arbitrary social distinction with no basis in biology.
The paragraph you cite is a rhetorical slight of hand. They argue that that "pure races... do not exist". But nobody argues that "pure races" exist. This is the strawman fallacy in its most basic form.
I'm equally fascinated by your position! After a bit of thought, I might understand where we're getting mixed up.
It's possible that our disagreement comes down to a difference in what we mean when we say that race is/isnt "a biological concept". If the differences between races are insignificant compared to those between genus or species (I have no idea if this is true for all species distinctions, but i'll concede the point), and there is no existing concept in biology to account for such trifling differences as our racial differences, the it can be reasonably asserted that "race is not a biological concept". Another way to say this is "there are biological (genetic) differences between human racial populations, but they are so small that there is no analogous concept in biology/taxonomy."
Thus defined, the idea that "race is not a biological concept" is a narrow and purely semantic assertion. The problem arises when you conflate this semantic assertion with unrelated ideas like "race is meaningless" or "race isn't real". It was your use of the phrase in this latter manner that prompted my response.
Original comment:
> This is a White America thing and it is why we are in the situation we are in as a country but people want to pretend that race and culture doesn't play any role in anything.
Your response:
> It's not a White America thing to reject race as a biological concept, it's consistent with scientific study.
So you're saying the words "race is not a biological concept", but are you saying it in the narrow semantic sense in which it is true? It doesn't seem like it--an assertion about biology nomenclature would make little sense in context! It sounds like what you meant was something like "race is meaningless." But that is an entirely different assertion which (as I have been vainly arguing in previous comments) is not proven nor directly asserted by the papers you linked.
I suppose I'm trying to say that even though "race isn't a biological concept" is true in a narrow sense, it doesnt support your (apparent) assertion that race is meaningless.
Ah yes, this is what I presumed was taking place, I just needed you to say it.
Race is absolutely real, in that it is a social construct. Race is not, as you say, a biological concept. There are no sets of genetic traits that mark someone as of one race or another, but race has been loosely defined by various groups at various times to include traits that are heritable, such as skin tone and facial structure. Almost always, the group defining race are doing so in an effort to subjugate or stratify others in contrast with themselves, so usually racial classifications are done ignorantly and hatefully.
But, as a biological concept that can be defined, you're right that race does not exist. Though you argue this is semantics and therefore unimportant, which I find odd.
You don't consider semantic issues to be important. Wild! Words seem very important to me and to the people I talk to, I've not really ever met someone in my life who didn't think what words meant was important.
You could have done that without replying, and in my experience the folks who feel the need to announce their departure from a conversation are the ones who tend to be the trolls…
Doubly so when the topic is race and the position is that race is biological (you’re not even the first, sadly).
This is a bit complicated and I'm going to do a bad job of explaining it.
The argument is that there are population clines, which are biological, and then those population clines are divided into races by choosing to ignore or use specific traits at a certain point along the cline. This choice isn't biological, which makes race a social construct.
The underlying population clines aren't always along the same gradient. Skin colour and physical size might be gradients that run a different way across a continent; skin colour might change north to south to north again due to sun intensity, while physical size might change based on altitude and terrain. There's no disagreement that both skin colour and size are partly biological, but the decision to use one over the other to differentiate races is social.
All the things that differentiate race are genetic, sure, but which things are used to categorize people into race is socially constructed. Why do people base racial categories on skin color but not, say, finger length or whether you can wiggle your ears? Biology can't tell you that.
The "asleep" lie is that "black" means anything genetically. Every trait you want to attribute to "black people" is also found in people who wouldn't qualify as "black" culturally.
Location: "Think about Japan", "Compare that to the US" - this is a pretty straightforward comparison by location about culture based on location.
It presumes a bunch and I'm grunching (and showing my age by using that term), and I'm not trying to disagree with you . . . just highlight the comparison you said you could not see.
No, that isn't right. It's the culture differences, not locations, that are being compared here. Location is only correlated to those differences; being in Japan vs being in the US doesn't guarantee the comparison.
> I feel like this article is good, on the verge of great, then makes cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason.
Is it really for no real reason, though?
> Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
You might not be aware, but different cultural backgrounds do result in different life experiences. You might have even noticed that that's the whole point of the article. What you try to downplay as "race or location" is actually different social environments and contexts where kids grow. They are used as concrete examples lending support for the hypothesis. It is a behavioral issue that is determined by each one's experience living in a specific social circle with specific social norms.
Some people get really hung up on rigid thinking around "correlation is not causation" and throw the baby out with the bathwater, bending over backwards to avoid leaning on correlation at all. They focus on strict causal-logic, to the point of ignoring the truth value of of statistical reasoning under uncertainty.
It's completely fine to point out societal norms. Neither were particularly offensive.
But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience.'
I'm not at all against pointing out or even flexing cultural differences, but they don't matter at all when raising a child(other than of course, if you teach your child by that example.)
I have a math brain. I've been teaching her math since she could speak, mainly because she seemed to want to impress me and it's how she would get my attention. Should she instead be bad at math because the Chinese value that more? Should I have stuck to teaching her big macs and bald eagles instead?
You're applying the math brain wrong by using the "single counterexample invalidates whole article" mode, rather than just inserting the words "most" or "on average" or "in general" where necessary.
A specific kid will have individual behaviors. A group of kids will have behaviors that can be averaged. Different samples will have different outcomes.
I know sociology has poor reproducibility, but cultural and behavioral differences are definitely a thing.
I used to have a Korean colleague who'd moved to the UK specifically because he did not want his kids growing up in the Korean school system. They will always be ethnically and "genetically" Korean, and I would assume he would teach them the language, but he wanted them to be less culturally Korean because he thought they would be happier that way.
I've got a buddy who's dad is an American who was stationed in Korea, and his mom is a Korean citizen. He talks a lot about the cultural clashes he faced growing up and having trouble feeling like he fit as either a Korean or an American. It's clear the two different cultures really pulled at him strongly from two different places.
There’s been a phrase in the South Asian diasporas for a while that captures this idea. ABCD [0] where “C” reflects the confusion (aka two way value pulling). As a person with first generation immigrant parents who raised us in the rural Midwest of America, the C is a real feeling.
My wife is Korean, I met her over there doing some Samsung stuff, she was very frank with me that if she didn't marry me she would probably have married someone like me because she wanted to be able to have a family outside of Korean culture. I love my wife, I have a wonderful marriage and I learn so much from her daily, I feel quite blessed.
There are only three factors that could really influence it:
1. The way you were raised.
2. Your genes.
3. Some metaphysical explanation.
I'm going to set #3 aside for a bit because there's no way to test that hypothesis. That leaves the way you were raised and genes.
What correlates with the way you were raised? Culture. Your parents' culture is tightly correlated with the way they raised you, and when speaking about groups and averages it's fair to say that in general affects outcomes. So if you take this explanation, TFA is not wrong to say that culture would affect outcomes.
What correlates with your genes? Your ancestry, which is (imperfectly) correlated with race. So if you take this explanation, OP would not have been wrong to say that on average race would affect outcomes. (That said, I don't think they actually do—they strictly mention culture!)
You reject that peoples personalities are shaped by their environment? What if instead of focusing on location but instead focused on time period. Do you think there would be behavioral differences between a child born to a middle class family now compared to one 1,000 years ago? What about 10,000 years ago?
Rejecting the premise that the environment shapes who we are and the type of people we become sounds extremely ignorant of the realities of history.
> You reject that peoples personalities are shaped by their environment
No, I reject that you can tell anything meaningful about the environment by country. Or even state. Or even neighborhood!
Japan itself could fit into the US 25 times by area.
Are kids raised in SF the same as those raised in Alabama? Or NY vs Phoenix? It'd be insane to make any generalities about a country so large and diverse, IMO.
Heck, kids in Loudoun county grow up completely differently than kids in Baltimore county. What does that tell us about the US, if anything?
I'm guessing Japan is the same, but I'm not educated enough to speak to it.
It looks like you're rejecting every concept of averages, or probabilities, or statistics, or generalization because you feel slighted by the resulting comparison.
When considering the US as a whole then Loudoun county will get the appropriate weight in the resulting number. If you zoom out to see the map of the world and no longer see your street, it doesn't mean the map is wrong. It's perfect for the purpose of visualizing the world.
I'll bet you're fine with "the US people are richer than the Burundi" or "Dutch people are taller than US people". These also don't tell you anything about the short Dutch people or ultra-poor in the US. But you accept them because you don't feel slighted by them.
Or else you reject the premise because you zoomed in on a place which is not right on that average so the whole concept gets thrown out the window.
It has become fashionable among Very Online people who obsess about social justice to loudly reject generalizations.
They took the very reasonable "you're not allowed to talk about black people liking watermelons" and applied it to every statement about every minority, disadvantaged or not, ethnically defined or not, whether offense was taken or not. Generalization was relabelled a microaggression, and avoiding them (or calling them out) became an urgent imperative, whether or not you're a member of the group in question. Whether or not you take offense personally, it became a Duty To Police this sort of speech.
This alienates one from the vast majority of humanity, which uses generalizations about people and things every day as a cognitive & social necessity. It makes it impossible to communicate or organize, because some sort of nitpicking about social equity, even purely semantic equity, is always prioritized over topical action in SJW-oriented leftist conversation. The rally for women's rights is cancelled because the committee spent all day deciding whether to use the term "women" or some alternative.
It also makes one less effective as a thinker, because there are statements that you can make about cultures and people's background that are statistically very likely, or which indicate a very real difference in the center of different bell curves.
Great post. The increasingly insane purity tests that the far left levy upon others they deign as less woke (in the original sense of the word) has gotten completely out of hand. Especially here on HN. Too many times I've seen normal discussion happen and then someone comes along with "Um excuse me can you not use that term because [3 paragraphs of nonsense when one time one person somewhere took offense to said term]". It feels paralyzing. People can't have discussions anymore, especially online. There's always 20 caveats you have to worry about.
Personally I blame autism for much of it but that's another can of worms.
I know this is what you're complaining about, but did you just equate autism and being far left? Do you find that the sort of complaints you are describing come out after you do groupings like that?
To be fair as someone on the far far left we really think of those people as liberals caught up in culture war nonsense with conservatives. Many of us at least in my local community see “woke” as ultimately damaging to what we’re hoping to achieve. While we advocate for marginalized groups, we really generalize everyone (except the bourgeois) together into a working class. This includes conservatives, liberals, trans people, Christians, Jews, whatever.
I know in the US “liberal” is the “radical left” which is unfortunate as hell.
Leftist ideas favor the disadvantaged generally, but they have traditionally discussed economic disadvantage, since money is the primary way we denominate power and implement material change.
This recent "woke" trend originates from leftist impulses in a society where the fall or even moderation of neoliberal capitalism is 'harder to imagine than the end of the world'. A society where Reaganomics has been adopted wholesale by Third Way Democrats who still control the political discourse because that's what effectively fundraises from billionaires. Politicians who try to satiate their political base by promoting diversity initiatives that will make zero dent in the economy or institutions of state. "Social Justice" as explored on Tumblr by people still in university (isolated from economics) is largely orthogonal to that, and it wouldn't be possible for people exposed to more of the diversity of society and the exigencies of life to ruminate on the subject, absent economic concerns.
This is what leftists complain about with the pejorative "liberals", a distinction that half of the country appears to be completely unaware of because every pejorative means the same thing on Fox News.
This tendency to substitute diversity messaging for systemic material solutions appears to have zero appeal left to the American people. No, the American people do not want to send the gender noncomformists to the gas chamber, but if that's all you talk about, it does not add up to a political platform that people vote for. The "Black Lives Matter" protests demanded dramatically reshaping the way criminal justice works, not wearing kente cloth for an afternoon. The last Democratic presidential candidate scrupulously avoided social justice, but they didn't actually substitute any sort of populist left-wing economic ideas because the donors wouldn't allow that.
There are huge variations within a country, but they are far smaller than variations between countries.
It seems to be to be a common failing in the west to underestimate just how big differences are between themselves and other cultures. The two cultures I have lived in, despite being Britain and one of its former colonies (and therefore partially anglophone, similar political system, lots of other influences) are quite substation, and noticeable even in the (heavily westernised) circles I socialise in there. The differences would be even bigger if you compare to an East Asian culture like Japan.
Things that are regarded as fundamental concepts, or universal values are often not share (some values are pretty much human, some are not).
They're really not. Europe is diverse enough that you need to split it into quadrants to decide what countries are relatively similar. Like is Finland similar to Germany from an outside perspective? Yes. Is Finland similar to southern Italy? Absolutely not, you'd be better off comparing southern Italy and latin America, and Finland with Japan. Like seriously, those will have more in common with each other than Finland and southern Italy. People have told me Naples feels like Brazil... which is nothing like Finland, which has the orderliness and cultural restraint of Japan. North European,East European and South European countries are similar to other countries in those same segments of Europe. They are not similar across segments.
"Europe is diverse enough that you need to split it into quadrants to decide what countries are relatively similar"
The same is true for South Asia, but if you look at it from a western perspective you see the similarities.
There are plenty of similarities across Europe. Shared attitudes to sex, politics, religion..... things like freedom of worship and separation of church and state (laws restricting freedom of worship even in secular democracies like India, let alone the Middle East or China), attitudes to sex and sexuality (and ideas and definitions and identities linked to them - although this is changing because of Western influence, historically the idea of people having a fixed sexual orientation is a modern western one, for example)....
I dunno how what you're saying negates my point. I was actually gonna add that the same thing can be said of Asia, which even more so needs to be split into quadrants to find clear similarities in culture.
Did you notice that you just devided kids in Loudoun and Baltimore in 2 groups, giving them as examples of different environments? You do not object to premise, only to granularity of defining environment geographically.
> You do not object to premise, only to granularity of defining environment geographically.
Correct. I just picked those two because of stark differences of two well known areas close to each other. But it can go down to even neighborhood, or even street in said neighborhood.
Sorry if my rambling seems confusing. I'm not against the idea that environment affects children. I'm against broad brush stroke categorization about how different countries behave.
Or even one individual on different days. It should be all chaos and noise and yet it's not because these "general" numbers get translated to a realistic "it's more/less likely" not "it's guaranteed".
You're arguing against comparisons you don't like, or feel make you look worse than others. In other words you want to get to arbitrarily define the brush width presumably based on where you feel you sit in the comparison.
> I'm against broad brush stroke categorization about how different countries behave.
Ok - pick any conservative country (say India or Indonesia). Now tell me that the chances of an average Indonesian woman wearing a bikini to a beach (pretty normal in most Western countries) is same as an average French woman?
Or for a less gender-charged example, chances of an average Saudi eating Pork vs an average American.
>Ok - pick any conservative country (say India or Indonesia). Now tell me that the chances of an average Indonesian woman wearing a bikini to a beach (pretty normal in most Western countries) is same as an average French woman?
The strongest predictor for both the French and the Indonesian is almost certainly going to be the individuals physique and and the second is probably going to be the country and prevailing culture in which the beach is located (i.e. what everyone else is wearing).
This kind of illustrates the point you're trying to disagree with. You can't just look at some sort of demographic based average and shoot from the hip and expect to hit anything.
> The strongest predictor for both the French and the Indonesian is almost certainly going to be the individuals physique
I take it that you have either never been to a beach or the one you have been to is only open to athletes and supermodels.
> the second is probably going to be the country and prevailing culture in which the beach is located (i.e. what everyone else is wearing)
So you haven't had the chance of seeing Indonesian woman wearing full headgear and clothes covering their body having fun at a beach far away from Indonesia? Not joking, they were having a genuinely good time - from direct experience.
The world is much bigger and has far greater variety of people, customs and norms than you can imagine.
>I take it that you have either never been to a beach or the one you have been to is only open to athletes and supermodels.
Have you been to the beach in the last 10yr. All manner of 1-pc swimsuits are arguably the default style for women.
>So you haven't had the chance of seeing Indonesian woman wearing full headgear and clothes covering their body having fun at a beach far away from Indonesia? Not joking, they were having a genuinely good time - from direct experience.
My mistake, I mixed up Indonesia and the Phillipines in my mind. No surprise muslim women will not be wearing bikinis. But the Westerners will also be far more modest in a setting where that is the prevailing default so....
>The world is much bigger and has far greater variety of people, customs and norms than you can imagine.
If looking down one's nose like that is what it takes to be cultured I'm glad I'm not.
This is so wrong that it I don't even know where to start countering it. The average Indian woman will not ever wear a bikini at all, most wouldn't even wear one in a women only swimming pool let alone a mixed beach.
I can't even tell what you're arguing for or against. Every comment seems to defeat itself. I am not trying to be inflammatory, but your statements honestly don't seem to stem from anything other than "think about it bro" and ignorance.
I think their point is that you can not just say "children in china like math" or "children in france will drink wine", because those are stereotypes and there are many examples of children within those countries who do not conform.
They say that there are differences between even children living on two different roads in the same town, and these differences matter more than differences between countries, and therefore we should not make any kind of arguments based on nationality at all.
I disagree though, I do think that there are significant statistical differences growing up between, say, Afghanistan or Sweden. That does not mean that you can make claims about specific children in either country, but you can make generalizations about the population as a whole.
Japan is… well, no. It just doesn’t appear to work that way here. The social conditioning is strong enough that the lane you fall into in life is basically predetermined based on your upbringing (and gender!).
Even at 6 there is a major difference between boys and girls that I just don’t see anywhere else.
The thing is you won’t even realize that’s what’s happening, and you just feel that the way you think is right and proper the rest of your life.
It’s honestly pretty anazing because people can be incrediy dissatisfied with how their neighbors are parayzed by social constraints while being bound a hundred times more strongly influenced by their own expectations.
You don't believe that what parents do has impact on kids? Or, you don't believe that parents in one culture can treat kids differently then parents from culture qirh different values?
It’s all social conditioning. You are socially conditioning your child to be good at math. Good for you. It would be very hard for me to group you together with others and formulate a trend. As we zoom out and evaluate the aggregate picture your outlier datapoint is swallowed up and culture becomes the dominant mediator.
You can reject all you want but your [personal, anecdotal] data point is irrelevant.
It takes a village to raise a child.
[rejecting an analysis because you disagree with the premise is unscientific - this analysis exposes a trend - it does not make a prediction - but gives pointers for further analysis]
(Throwaway as this topic can be inflammatory for those unfamiliar with the literature)
Behavioral patterns and personality traits have been pretty conclusively proven to be genetically inheritable. "Behavioral Genetics and Child Temperament" (Saudino) investigates this, as does "A genome-wide investigation into the underlying genetic architecture of personality traits and overlap with psychopathology" (Priya Gupta, et al).
There's no doubt that nurture and culture play a massive role in one's later personality and behavior as an adult, but it's incorrect to disregard genetics in this conversation. Some people are predisposed to be shy, some people are predisposed to be aggressive. Smart, critical people are able to appreciate genetic differences amongst broad human groups without letting that lead to unsavory viewpoints.
> But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience.
Sorry dude cultural differences are real. When I got married to my American wife, my Bangladeshi mom pulled her aside and said, “you know, we don’t get divorced.”
Since you have a math brain, you can probably conceptualize the concept of statistical distributions, right?
In any discussion of this sort of thing, what people are saying is that different circumstances lead to different distributions in outcome.
Does that really seem surprising to you? To me it would be very surprising if wildly different characteristics turned out to have identical distributions across every metric.
But this constantly gets lost because some people want to ignore that distributions differ, and other people want to ignore that the distribution is not destiny for any individual.
> But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience.'
You are making several jumps in logic to get from A -> B.
Japan has an education system which teaches the importance of certain values, patience and self-discipline among them.
Here is the short-film "Instruments of a Beating Heart" currently on the Oscars shortlist about this very point -
> Should she instead be bad at math because the Chinese value that more?
Not "bad" , but less fully invested...
Maybe?
It's isolating being the only non-Mandarin-speaking family at a math people gathering. It's quite striking in the high-level math community.
I have a math brain as well. But I also have 5 kids, and despite my teaching them very similarly, one of those kids cannot do math at all, another is average, and the remaining three are brilliant at it.
> assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought ...
I agree that it is weird. And I did not read the article. But I would assume that this is not the point it was trying to make when referring to race or location backgrounds.
When remarks like these are made, I would think they usually refer to a neighborhood. For instance, a well-groomed neighborhood at a good location vs. a slum at the outskirts of town, perhaps without electricity or even without running water. The race is mentioned in that context often not because it would have a direct impact. But because there is, unfortunately, a correlation between people living in poor neighborhoods and people of racial minorities.
I would think that the implication then is that a bad neighborhood is one of the factors which drive bad social behavior.
> I'm not at all against pointing out or even flexing cultural differences, but they don't matter at all when raising a child(other than of course, if you teach your child by that example.)
Except they do matter, unless you're going to "raise" a child by locking them in the apartment until they turn 18. Otherwise, as soon as they go to kindergarten[0], it's entirely out of your hands.
They say[1] that minimum viable reproductive unit for homo sapiens is a village. And the corollary to that is, the village will find our child, whether you want it or not, and they will have as much say in their mindset and values as you do. You can influence that, but only so much, and not everywhere all at once[2].
(Also obligatory reminder/disclaimer that group-level statistics are not indicative of any individual's character; individual variance in-group is greater than variance between groups, etc.)
EDIT:
> Should she instead be bad at math because the Chinese value that more? Should I have stuck to teaching her big macs and bald eagles instead?
No, you do you - and I respect you for passing on your interest in maths to your daughter, and I hope it'll stick. The point is, whatever the culture you're embedded in, she will be exposed to its tropes in aggregate. It doesn't mean she'll turn into a stereotype; no one ever does (see the disclaimer above); it's just that when someone doesn't like some aspects of their culture, "shopping for a village" that isn't reputed for those traits is one of the historically tried and true methods of reducing the risk.
EDIT2: To add another personal anecdote, there was a defining moment in my life early on, that I'm certain changed my entire life's trajectory. In my primary school, I ended up in a class with some rather unruly, mischievous kids, under a walking pathology of a teacher; by the time I was 12 and it was time to switch to secondary school, I already picked up on some of the bad behaviors. My mom went through some extraordinary effort to get me placed in a math-profile class[3], despite me not showing much aptitude or interest in sciences, just so I get away from the rascals. It paid off. I may have started as the dumbest kid in the group, but this group wasn't into mischief, and instead was supportive to intellectual pursuits; I ended up befriending a bunch of nerds, and quickly becoming the nerdiest of them all. I can't imagine that happening if I stayed with my primary-school crowd. In fact, they'd probably bully my fledgling interest in programming out of me, so I pretty much owe my entire career and the shape of my life to that one choice by my mom, to move me to a different "village".
--
[0] - And maybe earlier, if they go to daycare, or you're socially active and they tag along; and no later than when they go to school - unless, again, zip-ties and a radiator are a major part of the upbringing approach.
[1] - Well, someone on HN says that; I think they may have even coined it. Either way, it's true.
[2] - I grew up in a Christian offshoot that's a borderline cult. I can tell first-hand that, no matter how hard they try, even a strong fundamentalist culture that works hard on staying true to its values and pretty much defines themselves in opposition to "the world", can only do so much to resist the local culture in which people are embedded. And, when they try too hard, they just end up bleeding members.
[3] - A brief moment in time in Poland where we had 3-school system and profile classes in the secondary school.
I'd have to find a copy to see if it cites its source but paraphrased I've heard it:
> People mechanically can have kids, physically, before they're mentally able to take care of them. The [village] elders would raise and teach the children while the adolescents worked at things adolescents do better than elders
So "it takes a village" used to be literal, and as we in this part of the west started to isolate and nuclear family the whole idea that the elders should have plurality input to the neuroplasticity kinda went wayside.
I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. They all died when I was young but my sister was younger yet. I moved all our kids to be within 15 minutes of their living grandparents. They werent teens when we got here. My youngest spends 3/7th of their time at grandma's house.
I'll let you know how all this works in like 30 years.
I think a large, maybe even the main part of why community of family and close friends raising children together works: humans are uniquely motivated by shame and pride, and having that many eyes on you leads to quick corrections before bad habits take root.
There's arguments about in groups and globalization and if it's better to amalgamate and if so, community based child raising has gotta go. Please do not ask me to spell this out as I won't be.
The way I understood the line about "minimum viable reproductive unit" I quoted is different, more straightforward: a nuclear family can't survive alone. Two people and a kid just can't survive in the wilderness; we've evolved to function in group.
From this POV, the "village" is still there, it's always there. It may not be a literal village, and you and me might both be pretty much alone except for our partners, when it comes to parental responsibilities. However, the modern "village" is the society we live in - our neighbors, our friends, co-workers, the market economy as represented by people selling good and providing services we need to survive; later, also parents of children our kids go to school with. These are all people we interact with daily, share the same material and social environment, and we all influence each other.
There's no way to avoid that influence (in fact, if you try, the "village" will start getting worried, possibly to the point social services might get involved). It's always there, and once your kids start education, they'll be interacting with other members of society unsupervised - this is what I mean by "village finding your child".
> I think a large, maybe even the main part of why community of family and close friends raising children together works: humans are uniquely motivated by shame and pride, and having that many eyes on you leads to quick corrections before bad habits take root.
I 100% agree with that. I think it's fundamental. But it works only up to certain size; it's not that globalization is in opposition to that, it's just that to form societies larger than ~150, you need replacements for "shame and pride" as behavioral regulators to keep a group from self-destructing. Hence leaders and rules - and applied recursively a couple times, you end up with presidents and districts and rule of law and bureaucracy and all the staples of modern life, existing next to and on top of groups of families and friends.
I was lending some support to the "it takes a village" thing - i understand that you inferred that non-relations and even "non-friend" can and do supplant/supplement the "village" in "modern times".
to reiterate, i wasn't arguing or debating anything you said. More of a tangent, because i've read a few books that talk about this exact thing, albeit a quarter century ago and things are hazy.
I think the main potential benefit for a child, and the future community it will be part of, with secondary caretakers, is if the primary caretakers are insane.
It is like abit of good influence outweights alot of bad influence.
I think you have a really important point. There are these philosophical or political individualists that don't get this.
You could make an analogy with dogs. There you have plenty of examples of what can happen in isolation. A functional collective will in most cases manouver you out of parenting in part or fully with soft or hard means if you are bad enough since you will indirectly wreck havoc otherwise.
Me too, and I was almost 40 before I had my first. Worse, the affects of age is already showing in my body and so physically I'm less prepared than when I was 20.
For others reading this, you will never be ready. However it is still worth it. I encourage you take the plunge, and don't wait to long. You will never be ready. (of course not having kids is the right choice for some of you, I'll let you judge your own reasoning - if it is just fear go for it, but there are plenty of good reasons not to)
Yeah, I wasn't and didn't mean to imply I was too young, late 20s, just wasn't emotionally prepared or 'mature' enough I felt like, at first. Maybe that's normal for everyone. I don't know how 18 year olds do it!
> For others reading this, you will never be ready
That's probably a sage takeaway.
Thanks, it's comforting to hear others experience similar thoughts.
This is a beautiful comment, but take a step back here: parenting today is more child centric than it has ever been in the USA, with parents spending more raw hours with their kids (because they are spending less time independently with each other or extended family) and more direct paternal involvement to boot. I do not mean to minimize the scourge of adult phone overuse or the importance of being sensitive to a child's emotional world, but kids today overall get a ton of time with their parents, and parents are exhausted.
I've caught myself using my smartphone as a socially acceptable way to create distance from my children and get time to myself. Having noticed that trend I'm trying to do better at setting boundaries in healthy ways.
If it were socially acceptable to just tell your kids that you need some "you" time, I wonder how less prevalent smartphone usage among parents would be.
Well written comment... compliments the article well.
I think you inserting the objections to the culture/country part yourself. I don't think they are present in the actual article.
The central idea here is that children are shaped by their environment, the people around them and those people's behaviour. They sponge up behaviours of their parents, peers and such.
But... it's not all mimicry and habits. It's also a response to incentives in their life. That's the writer's point about trust... and the marshmello test. Does the child live in a world where trust and patience pay off... or a world where you get what you can while you can? The socio-economic correlation to patience in the marshmello test is a proxy... demonstrating his point.
I think you’ve raised a great topic, and it could serve as the foundation for another post. One study found that the environment plays the most significant role here, especially the nonshared environment (outside siblings/family). This challenges the traditional view that growing up in the same household has a major influence on personality and intelligence.
> then makes cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason. Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
Cultures differ significantly in how they raise their children. My dad grew up in a Bangladeshi village. He has this story where a cousin was sick and asked for lobster (which back then was a widely available food in the villages). His parents told him they’d make it for him the next morning, but he died overnight. My dad always invokes that story when I try to impose limits on my kids. When my brother and I were growing up, they put a lot of expectations on us academically, but no gratuitous self denial in terms of food or toys or anything like that.
By contrast my wife is an old stock American WASP. She has a very different parenting style than my parents. She makes my kids wait for everything and tells them everything they want is too expensive (even though we could easily afford anything they want).
Sometimes you can get a child to not get into your bad habits, but only if they are really bad. I know a women who never drinks because her parents were alcoholics and she doesn't want to follow their path. (her mother went to rehab for it, when she got back the first thing her husband did was pour her two shots and ordered her to drink).
Most of the time you are right though, kids see and follow their parents.
> cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason. Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
You have two kids, one ate ten boxes of marshmallows yesterday, the other didn't eat for two days. Which one is going to wait more for marshmallows?
It's pointing that the Marshmallow test was flawed. Which doesn't surprise me (most social experiments are very flawed).
Basically, when you account for socioeconomic factors, the correlation goes away, or so I heard. Rich kids are more successful in life than poor kids, who knew?
> Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
Ignoring the fact that you inserted a narrative that wasn't present in the article, YES OF COURSE THIS HAS A MAJOR IMPACT.
I'm a half-Dutch, half-Chinese man who spent the first years of my life in Ghana being blissfully happy and welcomed in the local community, and then the rest of my childhood being miserable in a Dutch village because I was excluded from that local community, all because I was "the local ethnic minority".
And I'm half-Asian, with parents from a higher-education background who had a good income. I only had to deal with "diet racism" compared to pretty much any other ethnic minority/social background in the Netherlands.
I've lived this and the fact that people like you keep insisting that my life experiences do not exist because they did not experience it is infuriating.
Anyway, fair points about the phone being a serious issue. But for goodness sake stop pretending that race and socio-economic background has no impact just because it makes you a little uncomfortable.
Honestly, yes this guy's comment screams white guy growing up in a white culture. Like... do you really think your culture is a default and you would've been like you are without your outside influence? Your culture is very specific and no more default than any other.
Hegemony lets you become the “default”. I can use the US dollar to pay for anything I want, anywhere, even if it’s not an official local currency. Try that with any other currency. That’s one small example of why we can indeed call “west” the “default” no matter how much this pisses off anti-colonialism types.
bro, that's not what I mean. What I mean is this guy really thinks his culture did not effect him. Trust me, if you went to Japan and acted exactly as your American upbringing tells you to, you will fuck up the entire social contract there and people will think you're wierd af. Your culture is not a blank canvas. Your culture is something that affects how you are and this guy seems to think otherwise because he is blind to the strong characteristics of his culture, viewing it as default.
Race is not mentioned in the article. Ironically, you are doing the very thing, here, which you claim spoils it.
The mention of culture is not out of place in the article, as the marshmallow test (which features quite prominently in it, including in its actual title) does have different outcomes in different cultures, and, in addition, it is hardly controversial to suppose that the way children are brought up is an important factor in establishing and maintaining a culture's cohesion.
I always wonder how many of the sayings I inherited from my father he inherited from my grandfather that died before I was born. It's like a kind of genetic memory.
I have a ton myself that my Dad would say but couldn't explain, so I don't use them as much.
Two notable examples...
'What do you want, a Dewey button?' as a sarcastic way of saying 'who cares.' He didn't know why. Google says it's probably related to Thomas Dewey.
'Kitty bar the door.' An expression to mean he was going to go all out. He didn't know who kitty was or why he said it. I still have no idea its real etymology.
It looks like Katy or Katie are the more common spellings in the Southern US, although Kitty seems to the standard when talking about hockey. The origin is disputed: https://worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm
It isn't as reliable as something that goes generation to generation transmission, but I think some things skip every other generation; like an organised grandparent leading to a disorganised parent who never had to think about it. Then an organised child because they learned to cover for the parent.
> The hardest part for parents today seems to be putting their phone down.
Kids are great at detecting hypocrisy. You can't tell them to not be addicted to their phone when you yourself are addicted to your phone. You have to set a good example.
I'm not much of an "idle scroller" but I try to limit my phone use to after the kid is in bed. When I visibly use my phone in front of her, I make it a point to show that I'm using it as a tool to do something, and then I put it away when that something is done. If they see you sitting on the couch all evening mindlessly scrolling Instagram, they're going to think that's OK. Just like past kids saw their parents sitting on their couch all evenings watching TV.
I didn't mention race in the post, but culture. I think culture has a significant effect on a person, and to prove my point, I'd refer to the book The Culture Map, which was a revelation for me and explained a lot of things I had noticed while working in a multicultural environment. Genetic factors typically account for about 50% of individual differences in traits like personality, cognition, and psychopathology, leaving the other 50% to environmental influences.
> She'd say weird country sayings I learned from my own Dad, like 'kneehigh to a cricket.'
It's also fun when it happens in the other direction: child invents a totally new word, parents think it's funny and copy it, it becomes a word used only within that family, but perhaps it stays around long enough for some of the grandchildren to pick it up. But everyone has to pay attention not to use it outside the home because outsiders would be very confused by it. We have a few words like that.
The race or location of the parent absolutely determines their childhood. This has been studied for decades, and it's called Practice theory. It emerged in the late 20th century and was first outlined in the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu [1].
> Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
This seems like a dishonest characterization of some of the points in the article.
Unfortunately, we do live in a society. A childhood is not just determined by the house the child lives in, but the community the child lives in as well, and the parents are also affected by the community they grew up in, which affects the way they parent.
> Our kid made her own 'phone' out of cardboard as a child, pretending to read and chat on it. That struck me deeply.
as a child of the 80s in an emotionally barren household with domestic violence, I also built myself a whole computer lab out of cardboard boxes at the age of 5 to mimic my father!
>"Now she's 13, knows it all, and doesn't want to be picked up anymore. And I tell you, I wish I never had a smartphone at all."
Geez this hits hard. I've been pretty aware of it though, so I try to spend as much time with my daughter as possible without smothering her. I tell my wife almost daily that she's going to regret not getting off her smartphone and spending more time with her when she could. I'm not some soothsayer, but it seems pretty obvious to me.
Wholeheartedly agree. Can't teach kids to eat broccoli if you don't eat it yourself, they're just too perceptive. I don't like phones myself, but sadly enough, it is becoming hard to keep up with society (e.g. sports groups) or even outright not accepted to be "offline" anymore. It becomes a tricky balancing act to teach your own pre-teens to deal with being left out versus fighting the dopamine goblin. I don't think technology is bad, nor food for that matter, but we really as a society have to overcome our monkey brains. We ought to be better informed about how our brains work, especially as parents responsible for developing brains; and we ought to have basic neurology taught in schools to give the new generation a fighting chance against the rapid pace of technological advancement.
What different does it make? My kids are rarely allowed screens, but they read in excess. They often get into trouble at school because after we go to bed thinking they are asleep they read a book - then the lack of sleep shows up in their behavior.
> The hardest part for parents today seems to be putting their phone down.
> And I tell you, I wish I never had a smartphone at all.
Being self-aware of phone use is 80% of the battle.
I also read a lot on my phone. Most of my screen time is in the books app.
Early on I decided to leave the phone on the charger in the mornings and evenings before the kids are in bed. Problem solved.
The biggest trap I see in my circle is the mental gymnastics of blaming everyone else for their own excessive phone use. It becomes easier to overuse a phone when they blame the algorithm or the companies for “making” them use the phone more than they want. Some people read stories about apps being made to be addictive and feel relieved because it offloads responsibility away from their decision making.
In the addiction treatment world it’s acknowledged that if someone can’t control their own behavior then they need even more controls and accountability, not to cede all responsibility for their actions to the addictive thing they’re drawn to. That usually means making decisions to shape their environment to keep them away from addictive behaviors, but for some reason many people see headlines about “the algorithm” and addictive apps and decide it’s futile to resist.
Making the decision to leave my phone on the charger during kid time was one of the higher ROI decisions I’ve made in my life. I used a smart watch to get any urgent notifications if I really needed them.
I've really tried to stop replying to every bait reply, because I don't think long arguments are productive or that we'll reach a middle ground.
But this for some reason struck a nerve. I never claimed racism at all?
"It's not racism, it's culture" is literally a white supremacist talking point. To be clear, I'm not accusing you of that.
My claim is that you can't make country wide generalizations, and yes, attempting to do so by culture is doing so by race. I'd bet if I brought up how foreigners in Japan score on tests, you'd then claim it's not real Japanese. Because you meant ethnic Japanese people.
But that's way, way harder in the US. Is it white culture, that doesn't really exist? Would you be surprised to learn that most people born in the US today are not white? Is 'American culture' the hispanic immigrant family getting by in Fresno? Or is the the Indian spelling bee winner from Virginia? Or is it the white farmer kid from Nebraska? Or the black inner city kid in Chicago? At some point you have to pick one, they have little 'culture' in common. But I'm not asking anyone to pick one, or defending any race. I'm saying such generalizations are stupid.
Culture pretty heavily implies race, perhaps not location, unless one pretends to be race blind.
I'm not sure why the focus on "young" parents. Consistent parenting is very important at any age. Kids need their parents to be reliable and dependable with clear expectations and boundaries or things can get bad very quickly.
Inconsistent and unpredictable parenting is a common factor in children with oppositional defiant disorder and treatment often includes working with the parents as much as working with the child.
This got me too, but on reading, it's clear the author means parents of young children.
Since the focus of the article is on child development, it's reasonable that it limits its scope to parents of young children, and not e.g. parents of 50-year olds, even if building trust might be nice there too.
> The word "young" doesn't even appear in the article, so not sure what you're talking about.
The title of the post we're both commenting on, which reads: "Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids". I was assuming that the title was oddly editorialized, but it's also not that uncommon for articles to change their titles too so it's possible that posting guidelines were followed and it was the article itself that specified "young parents" at some point. Considering the age of the article though, I kind of doubt it.
It was posted by the author I think. I have no idea why they went with the different title. Isn't HN usually pretty strict about titles, to discourage clickbaiting?
The actual page title "marshmallow test and parenting" is much better. The HN title makes it sound like it's only relevant to a subset of parents ("young ones").
There are no iPad kids in Taiwan. You go to a restaurant and all the toddlers are quietly eating. When the tantrums flare the parents gently put a lid on it. It’s truly remarkable, and I don’t have a good theory for it. But it makes going out for dinner a consistent pleasure.
I don’t know how to raise kids with an even keel but I am certain that putting a nonstop algorithm in their face and becoming outraged when they inevitably become overstimulated is not the way.
Must not be the same Taiwan I live in. When I go out to eat I constantly see mom, dad, and kid all zonked on their own devices (usually a phone, granted, not an iPad) instead of having a meal "together." I've also seen plenty of meltdown tantrums. If I had to square your observation, I'd say it's just because there are fewer kids, period, than almost anywhere because people aren't having them.
One person going "X doesn't happen in Y" is almost always followed by someone saying the exact opposite, solidifying the fact that we all live in our own bubbles, often experiencing the same things in completely different ways
Kind of reminds me of when you buy a certain car, you are suddenly primed to see that same car model everywhere, while before you weren't aware of them at all.
Yeah, I’m also in serious doubt about this. At least for Taipei (could be regional differences)? I don’t live in Taiwan, but visit often. Last time we had dinner with another family and the kids got iPads/phones immediately.
First, it's not downvoted. Second, it's not virtual signalling. I literally do not give mobile devices to my young kids. It is an option that more parents should consider... I've seen parents mounting a tablet to their baby stroller. It's fucked up.
My kids love their screens. They use it for "productive" things (Minecraft, ...) and "unproductive" (shorts, ...). We have certain time restrictions and there are two days a week where they're not allowed to use them. We also don't let them take screens to restaurants. They get to take a bunch of crayons and a book and they're very much fine with this.
I feel that it's a matter of sticking to principles and being predictable for the kids, but maybe I'm biased and just have "easy" kids.
Sounds like you give them some reasonable guardrails without being a hardass. Some digital indulgence is impossible to enjoy with tight time limits (e.g. Minecraft) but taking two days off is a good way to stay anchored in real life.
This applies to adults, too. When you're really poor, it's actually a reasonable strategy NOT to keep money but spend everything as soon as you hit pay day, for instance on storable food. Why's that ? Because money on your bank account can be seized, because you're late on rent, or because you unexpectedly got fined because your rusty old car has a broken light, etc. Food can't be seized, therefore at least you know you'll eat next week, even if it's only cheap pasta and canned sauce, and Nutella basically lasts forever.
I cannot overstate the importance of this. This particularly affects neurodivergent people. The article also (correctly) mentions how socioeconomic status plays a role here.
Food insecurity erodes psychological safety. Housing insecurity erodes psychological safety. Having to do unpredictable and extra jobs just to make ends meet such that a parent has unpredictable availability hurts psychological safety. Having to break promises because of circumstances hurts psychological safety and this is just way more likely if you're struggling, despite your best intent.
It's worth ruminating on this when you start to understand how every aspect of society is designed to extract value from you at every possible moment. Third and fourth jobs, medical debt forcing you to work, student debt, mortgage debt, high rent prices.
Yet the thirst for ever-increasing profits is unquenchable. Part of the reason that people such as myself rail against this system and the society we've built around work is how damaging it is to society as a whole.
South Korea is really the end stage of this pipeline, where birth rates are around ~0.71 children per woman as there are so many disincentives to have children and, for that child to have a good life, everything gets invested into their education. The pressure is intense such that the teen suicide rate is huge. And this birth rate is so low that 3 generations of this will decrease the population by 90%.
The main challenge that parents face today is on-line culture. Creating trust may mitigate that.
In the same way that teachers cannot educated children instead of their parents, even that they help. Social networks should not educate children but they are doing that. Being the problem that social network incentives are misaligned with education. Ad driven feature development and content promotion plus total deregulation make the on-line world a minefield for children.
If children at least trust their parents it is possible to mitigate the worst parts of on-line culture.
I think the far bigger problem is ipad kids. Social media is a problem, but it's not something that young kids understand. But young kids do understand ipads and youtube and mobile games.
Seeing 3 year olds zonked out is what worries me. That's a lot harder to untangle, imo.
I've had discipline problems for my whole life despite fighting it with different ways, to the point I'm kind of giving in and accepting that it is just who I am.
I have trust in my parents. We have issues between us like all families, but I believe they did their best to raise me without a doubt. At least I didn't have concern about food on the table for a single second during my childhood, and I got most of the toys I wanted. Maybe it is something more minor or deeper.
There are ways that people are set up psychologically that can lead to "discipline problems". A common companion of ADHD is oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) for example.
I've seen people with an instinct to resist everything when under pressure or stressed. I also know people who don't seem to have the instinct for understanding authority and hierarchy that most people do ("if I have to listen to the teacher, why doesn't the teacher have to listen to me?").
I'm sure having people with these behaviours can be very adaptive and beneficial for the whole society in some situations (I bet they do better on the Milgram experiment for example), but in many cases in modern life it can make it feel like everything is an unnecessary fight. I think for people dealing with such individuals the key is to understand that it isn't directed at you personally. I'm not sure what the best advice is for those with those instincts, but I would imagine that it's a combination of learning to use those instincts appropriately and not being too hard on yourself when it goes wrong.
I am not saying that you shouldn’t build trust with your kids (it’s important and only fair to them … they rely on and usually adore you, you should in turn be kind and reliable to them and love them back).
But: the null hypothesis for anything which correlates childhood behavior, childhood environment and adult behavior should be that everything is 100% genetic. From my glance at the studies, the marshmallow experiment was instead always done with the null hypothesis that kids and their parents are only connected by living in a common household (aka “shared environment” in the sense that it’s shared between siblings).
I would still imagine that some effect of the household on the “delayed gratification” would persist, but it would probably be weaker and I am not sure it would predict much about outcomes as an adult.
I don’t know if I understand you correctly but I’d argue genetics don’t play that big of a role in preparing your kids for their life as an adult. In my experience as a parent I am frightened daily by how influential I am in my role as a father. They pick up thousands of small things by copying the behavior and messaging of their parents. Even now they’re teenagers.
I've always taken comfort from the fact that my two boys were different on day zero. This tells me that although I have a great deal of influence on them, it isn't all up to me: it's both nurture and nature. (Takes a bit of the pressure off.)
Yes, but outcomes are largely multi-realisable. It’s true that nature has a big role to play, but I think a lot of that role is expressed in how it changes nurture dynamics.
A shy child might not develop productive, healthy confrontation and resolution skills if nurture isn’t sensitive to that factor and willing to create an environment where those skills are learned.
My nature affected my parents nurture, as well as my other caregivers, mentors, and teachers. I think that’s the more significant role of nature. Nurturers could be much more attuned to this and more mindfully think through how to test for and pursue the right end goals, given different natures.
This is spot on - I came from a very abusive and neglectful home, bordering on torture, and the way it carries into my life into my middle age is funny to look back on when it comes to “scientific” studies like the marshmellow test. In many ways, my early distrustful experiences have led me to become stronger in other ways that make up for my weaknesses. Not everyone is like this, unfortunately, and I very much agree with this message - kids should feel safe for maximum development. Especially kids on the spectrum, where frequently broken promises can possibly be more traumatic than it would otherwise seem.
Yes. Adversity is only good for development if it’s a strong enough signal to require growth while also being within the range of adaptability, relative to your environment (support system, resources, etc.).
A given event might wipe out Child A, might cause adaptation in Child B, and might be within the recoverable range but above the adaptive threshold for Child C. The reliable path to growth is small but sufficient challenge, response, adaptation and recovery, repeat as frequently as is beneficial.
Assuming you wash your other produce (you probably should, especially if you buy organic and don't like e. coli.), the question you're asking is just "how does the crap on the outside get into the inside?" The usual route for those contaminants is peel -> hands -> fleshy fruity bits. A lot more is transferred than you might think.
For a bit of fun, try the same idea with a few dirty potatoes. Wash two thoroughly, and leave one unwashed. Peel a washed one, peel the unwashed one, and peel the last washed one. You'll observe that both of the latter two are much dirtier than the first one [0]. It won't be as dirty as what you started with, but it'll still be enough to cause some minor taste issues and (depending on the type of soil) make the dish feel gritty as you eat it. Contaminants you can't physically see/taste/feel are transferred the same way.
[0] There's a minor confounder in that potato flesh can oxidize, and that discoloration might be perceived as dirt. It's not as bad as with, e.g., apples though. Just work quickly, and the difference in dirt levels should be apparent.
Its the same type of idiotic comment under any tiktok/short/fb video from any kitchen when chefs work without gloves: „EeW, UsE glOveS!!11“
That tiny amount of dirt wont kill you, but definitely keep your immune system in working order
The issue is not the literal dirt. Dirt is fine. The issues are the pesticides and industrial contamination like whatever's on the floor of the packing plant or grocery store.
Plenty of ways to keep my immune system updated providing myself scratches and cuts while mountain biking / trail running, let alone eating snacks while on the trail with my hands absolutely not clean, or by simply breathing in a forest.
But ingesting the black residue from exposure to diesel smoke while in transport is not for me, thanks. Feel free to train your immune system to dispatch tar.
Maybe in order not to get the (particularly bad, as far as I know) pesticides on your hands? I wash my hands after having peeled an orange, but washing the orange itself seems like a waste to me.
I don't really know. I could understand if it was for zesting, but then you're supposed to use untreated oranges anyway because the pesticides don't wash out easily because of the oils on the orange's skin.
She is 1.9 years old and anything that looks like food will be bitten. But to tell the truth, you even need to wash bananas: pesticide residues (you can transfer chemicals to your hands and then to the editable part), can collect dirt/bacteria/rodent excrement.
It depends on a lot of things. You could just as easily wash off the wax that was applied to the orange and make it spoil faster that way, and the extra moisture will cause delicate fruits (like berries) to spoil more quickly than any gains you'll get from the removal of dirt and larvae if you don't dry them very thoroughly.
What if you live in an unpredictable society where promises are often broken and trust outside of a chosen few should rarely be given?
Rightfully, the article says kids shouldn’t be judged for not waiting if there are factors that said, “hmm, that second marshmallow may be a lie.”
But I’m not sure the story goes far enough in this sentiment: when trust has been broken, waiting for the second marshmallow is the less adaptive response. The waiters are the kids behaving against a likely outcome. To the extent that this might predict later behavior at all then my guess would be that that non-trust marshmallow-eaters might show more determination to go after what they want than non-trust marshmallow-waiters. And the true test would be which kids adapt their waiting choices according to the promises kept/not kept.
But then again sometimes a marshmallow is just a marshmallow.
This post is a perfect reminder of Gandhi’s advice: "Be the change you want to see in the world." We can’t expect kids to trust or wait for better outcomes unless we first model consistency and patience ourselves. Our everyday actions—keeping promises, showing reliability—are the real lessons that shape their future.
I cannot imagine how different my life would be if I didn't trust both of my parents to the ends of the earth and beyond from the moment of consciousness. I also cannot imagine how different my life would be if despite that, they were untrustworthy people.
Everyone hate hypocrite and little kids especially hate hypocrites. You really need to be consistent with what you tell them and how your own actions. It’s so easy to mess this up so you need to humble yourself and explain that you’re not perfect either.
Building trust is much more than routine, it's about being predictable yourself. It's also about being supportive of the kids when they want to do something yopuu thik is so-so, also about letting them fail (and help them to recover), making them understand why we ask them to do something, giving them clear limits, but more than all, I'd say, being there (don't look your phone when you're with them, spend time with them when they want to, etc.)
And that starts from day zero and last (in my own experience) at least unti 19 years old.
It's fun, not difficult and it allows some spare time (yeah, less time than before you got them, but some time nonetheless) for yourself.
I get to closely watch my nephew being raised. He is about 2.5 years old now. If his parents need to go somewhere, they do this thing where they slip away while someone distracts the child. Really breaks my heart to see this. I can see the convenience factor. But I noticed that when the child is with them, he very often looks over his shoulders when they go out of his view. The kid is really sweet and deserves respect and honesty.
Honesty is not straightforward at that age. I know someone who grew up in a village and whose parents left her with an aunt to find work in a city when she was three. They explained to her what was happening, but she didn't understand what the city was or the time scales they were talking about. The next day she didn't understand why they were still gone. After a while she decided they had abandoned her and were never coming back. When they came back six months later, she was angry and confused because she thought they were gone forever.
The way she remembered it as a child was that she was told nothing. But being older and knowing her parents and her aunt as an adult, she realized that there was no point where the adult with her wasn't telling her exactly what was happening. She just couldn't comprehend it at that age. She didn't understand what a month felt like. She didn't understand that there were distances a thousand times longer than the length of her village. She didn't understand what a city was, or that her parents intended for her to come live with them there if they found good work. It just wasn't possible for her to understand. It didn't matter if she trusted her aunt or not, her parents were supposed to be there, and they were not.
Well in my scenario the separation is not this extensive. I am talking about when one of them has to go out for work or even to walk the dog for 15 minutes. I get your point that there is no explaining to a child that young what exactly is happening because it is beyond their comprehension. But I think conditioning them to be able to handle goodbyes knowing that the parent will be coming back soon is a good practice.
Can’t they bring him with them sometimes? I have a 9 month old so I don’t get it yet but I would bring my daughter with us most of the time in that situation and just tell her this time it needs to be me and Mom only and she can come next time.
Perhaps a more accurate title would be "Why parents of young children should focus on building trust with their kids". In any case, thanks for the enlightening article.
Parenting is one of the hardest things I will probably ever do in my life. I grew up in a middle-class family in SEA, and when I came to the West, I realized what a fantastic job my parents did raising me.
Here, things are quite different. Many upper-middle-class families struggle to provide stability, proper education, and a loving environment—things we always took for granted growing up. This isn't a denigration of Western society. More like an observation of how capitalism has made both parents work like crazy and still feel like they don’t have enough.
It’s not a panacea in the East. We had to deal with overpopulation. Absurd competition in schools, colleges, and universities scarred my childhood. But I'm thankful to my parents for what they endured for me.
My some friends and almost all neighbors could be my grandparents by age. And they love to invite me for a tea and share their memories. West was wildly different back then. Much better with rising economy and much better vibe. Traveling with kids was normal. Like Barcelona, Nice, Paris were normal destinations (I am in Germany). Skiing in the Alps absolutely normal even for poorer families. Rents were high, but not impossible. The job stability was there and infrastructure was built in their eyes. They saw when train line was built and the train started coming every two hours, every hour, every twenty minutes. Now the same train is constantly late and occasionally canceled. And one old guy told me openly, that he’s not envy me rising kids today. It’s kinda stupid when pay rise does not cover inflation and increasing taxes. Infrastructure is collapsing. Ancient school system is stuck producing factory workers for factories that are long gone. It’s just hard time being a parent.
> Skiing in the Alps was absolutely normal even for poorer families. Rents were high, but not impossible. Job stability was there, and infrastructure was built in their eyes.
I'm in Germany too. Rent in Berlin makes me glaze over this sentence with dreamy eyes. Despite being in tech and paying taxes in the 90th percentile, these big cities always find ways to drive you crazy. I don't have kids yet, but I'm not sure I'll be able to shield them from all of this shit as well as my parents did.
> Now the same train is constantly late and occasionally canceled.
Tell me more.
> And one old guy told me openly that he doesn't envy me raising kids today. It’s kinda stupid when a pay raise doesn’t cover inflation and increasing taxes.
I don't wanna be rich. I just want my pay to cover my yearly expense increases. It's getting more expensive every year, and people are scared shitless because of layoffs. Most people don’t even bring up raises to their managers. No wonder westerners don’t want kids—people just can’t afford them comfortably anymore.
> The ancient school system is stuck producing factory workers for factories that are long gone. It’s just a hard time to be a parent.
Schools aren’t qualified to teach kids the right things. Parents aren’t qualified either; it’s just that Americans like to think homeschooling is the way. It’s not—many of the parents I’ve seen homeschooling didn’t even go to college.
People make so much more money in the West, but my parents live a far more comfortable life in Bangladesh than I do. They’re retired, live in an apartment three times the size of mine, and have enough not to rely on anyone. Plus, all the SEA shit doesn’t affect them now that they’re out of work. I envy them so much.
It's not just kids. I find this works with pets as well: be predictable in delivering their necessities -- food, exercise, play, affection -- and they behave better. Make them beg and they behave worse.
Also, businesses thrive on trust. If a business can predict and prepare for conditions, if it can depend on loans, grants, services, the economy, it can invest and thrive.
My kids got this delayed gratification stuff from the beginning but mostly in the form of. Yes you might get that cookie at the bakery however you have to wait to eat it until after dinner.
I'm much more worried about the general lack of resilience and self-reliance I see in a lot of kids and teens. I think it's caused by a combo of parents and schooling. Also the level of anxiety seems very very high.
Author Oliver Burkeman discusses this marshmallow test in his book Meditations for Mortals.
Paraphrasing from memory -
Who is to say that stockpiling as many marshmallows as you can is inherently more virtuous or objectively more positive than enjoying one marshmallow in the moment you and the marshmallow are ready for each other.
"Now" is the one moment you are truly alive. Rest is a concept.
It's actually possible that tolerance for delayed gratification might have nothing to do with life success. It might be purely coincidential that affluent parents create environments that make delying gratification easier, but the success is transferred to their offspring by much simpler mechanism, inheritance.
As a parent, you can't demand trust. It's a gradual process that requires mutual commitment and it will inevitably strengthen your relationship. It will also set your child up to develop healthy relationships in the future.
Well, that's always true. It's just that if you demand trust of an adult, they'll pretend to give it to you; children will make it clear (somehow) that they're reserving judgement.
The point about trust/predictability is a nice new take on the delay gratification story.
Good points from a motivated new! parent. When you get to your third kid, you tend to lose that burning ambition and think you know it all. We should always be learning.
> A follow-up study showed that kids from stable, reliable homes were much more likely to wait than kids from unpredictable ones. If you’re a kid and the adults in your life constantly break promises, why would you trust them this time? Why wait for the second marshmallow if history tells you it might not show up? Waiting isn’t a character trait; it’s a strategy. And strategies are shaped by experience.
I think this is a potentially dangerous oversimplification of the work discrediting this study. The first sentence is pretty accurate, but the rest of the paragraph puts "stability" 100% in the hands of parents, and not childrens surrounding environment due to poverty. Parents can only do so much if there aren't good schools, safe communities or reliable policing.
I'm probably being a little too critical here, and it's clearly important as a parent to do everything you can to make sure that your child has a stable, trusworth environment, I have a son and that's exactly what I try to do personally.
But I think we also have a massive influence in how we shape society, children in poverty have unpredictable, unstable environments even if they have great parents. There are some really clearly documented outcomes of the effects of poverty, and yet a societal tendency to blame outcomes on parents and character over situation still remains.
I'm basically just saying in a long winded way, be a good parent, but do what you can to make the world a safer and more reliable place for other children too.
Maybe the experiment was planned better than the video but in the video it's not clear if the children are aware it's an experiment and if they're aware of what an experiment is in general.
When I was a little kid I had a school psychologist give me the marshmallow test. It was extremely awkward because their assumption was the same as used throughout this article, that the marshmallow represented a strongly tempting treat. But it happens that to me as a picky eater marshmallows were always creepy nonfood and to this day I still find them absolutely disgusting. I was also quite disciplined because of my violent and abusive father, so I just sat through it and then gave both of the marshmallows to the first other kid I encountered who said they liked them.
When people go on and on about the marshmallow test what they are really saying is they don't really know anything or even actually care about human nature or experience. The whole thing is garbage.
Nowadays my paying work is servicing properties which means a lot of awkward sharing of people's homes and families. It is absolutely heartbreaking how many kids are being raised like pets or fun game partners. They end up having near zero executive function and have to be helped with everything including the most basic life decisions. What kids need is a sense of agency and some tools for dealing with the world. Enough of these stupid and disconnected marshmallow games. Let's start actually taking kids seriously and giving them what they need to function as adults.
> I was also quite disciplined because of my violent and abusive father
I went the complete opposite direction as the result of violent and abusive parents and had never considered that the opposite also occurs, but of course it must.
For whatever reason, the more violent my parents became with me, the more violent and defiant I became…and not just with my parents. I came to see everyone and everything as a threat to my safety and began to respond accordingly.
Given the whole fight or flight thing, I am wildly predisposed to choosing fight. It took years and I mean years to learn to control this.
The article also has a strong whiff of: the author has one young, neurotypical child and is now pretty sure he's got this whole parenting thing figured out, decides to blog about it. Then the overwhelmingly young, male, childless HN brigade descends with virtue-signaling responses about what amazing parents they'd be if, you know, they had kids, and how easy it would be.
Makes logical sense to read about. We give my daughter as much consistency as possible
Family meals, bedtime, we live on a routine...
She's still a tiny terrorist.
I'm not a father (yet), but I thought a lot about this, and I totally agree with everything. It is good to hear it from somebody with actual experience.
One of the most important points about parenting is that kids learn from watching you. That means what you say has far less impact than people colloquially think it does. What matters is whst you do and how that relates to the words you say.
E.g. if you want your kids to value culture, it is way more effective to live in a way that shows you value it, instead of just saying culture is important and never touching it with a ten foot pole yourself. You could never say culture is importsnt and go to the theater and museum every other weekend and that would be way more effective than telling your kid about the importance every day.
The latter doesn't teach the kid that culture is important, it teaches them that there are certain things your parent wants you to be, that they themselves don't manage to do despite them thinking it is important. As a kid your parents are likely the most powerful figure in your lifes, so if they aren't able to do it, how could you?
Any parents needs to have a keen eye out for these implicit lessons they are teaching their kids. The crazy thing is that these implicit lessons can at times be the polar opposite of the lesson you want to teach them.
And it is okay to fail, if they see you are trying to improve yourself, guess what the implicit lesson is? That working on yourself is not only normal, but a good thing that even parents do.
I know this comment invites disaster but.....what is heaven other than the ultimate delayed gratification? i.e. don't worry about your miserable life as a serf toiling for the lord of the manor 6 days a week because if you're good now you'll be happy after you die. You can imagine the aristocracy laughing to themselves about that idea.
Nowadays we get told to save money...but I'm from Zimbabwe where saving money was a total disaster. Instead it was important, when I was still there, to spend it at the earliest possible time on anything physical. The prize for discipline was to be robbed.
... and yet of course if nobody saved money we'd all live an inflationary hell and if some people didn't believe in heaven there might be nothing else to retard their atrocious behaviour.
>I know this comment invites disaster but.....what is heaven other than the ultimate delayed gratification? i.e. don't worry about your miserable life as a serf toiling for the lord of the manor 6 days a week because if you're good now you'll be happy after you die. You can imagine the aristocracy laughing to themselves about that idea.
You are correct. This is the delusion that peasants feeds their kids so that life appears to be worth living. In the west it's the similar rigmarole of mortgages, debt, divorce, unstable jobs etc that their parents did. Not saying that there is no value to discipline, but it has to be intelligently applied ( not easy) else you will loose. For example saving for a house (vs taking a large mortgage) will not do you good if the inflation is high.
NOO! Zimbabwe is the best **g place on earth. I had an incredible childhood and was beyond lucky to live there. The problems are horrendous and there are a lot of powerful evil people there but there are also wonderful people.
It's also gut-wrenchingly beautiful. When I leave I burst into tears.
In a way the emotion of it is just too much. It's easier not to visit and to stay numb.
When you look at how people act in the US now, I stopped feeling inferior. It's the same. Some people are just the ones who decide to kill the golden goose in hopes of getting 1 more egg for themselves. Some people are willing to ignore all the other signs and bend over for a politician who says the thing they want to hear.
I wasn't there but I think dollarization brought stability. There was no need to rush off to spend your money.
The "elite" don't really benefit from dollarization though. The currency was a way for them to rob everyone without even trying. All the big black market money dealing companies were ultimately owned by the big players in ZANUPF. So they profited from the difference between the official exchange rate and the black market one. They were able to use their influence to get dollars at the official rate and sell at the unofficial one.
So for that and other (more reasonable) reasons they have tried to reintroduce a currency. The place is so humped that I don't know if it can ever be fixed. This is what you get for electing demagogues. I say that as a warning to those of you who think national pride is a substitute for intelligent behavior.
The marshmallow test does not predict success in life. Success in life predicts the marshmallow test. All the other factors they measure are variants of this. Success of parents, stability of home life, etc., are not random events that happen to a child. They are contributors via a variety of uncontrolled factors that correlate to being successful later in life.
In other words, doing things in your child's life in an attempt to improve their Marshmallow Metric (tm) is useless cargo culting.
I don't think the author disagrees. He's not implying that the marshmallow test is the cause for success. I think he says what you say - that passing the marshmallow test is a measure of success of how well you parented a child.
Note the last sentence:
> And who knows, maybe one day they will pass their own version of the marshmallow test
The marshmallow test is just a rhetorical symbol for patience and virtue. I.e. "If I do well as a parent, my child will grow up to be patient and virtuous".
Not, "If I get my kid to do well on this random pop-psych experiment right now, they'll grow up to be successful".
The idea of the article is to create an environment at home so that your child feels secure in the sense of being able to pass the marshmallow test.
This is the same sort of logic that leads to the idea that you should have a large home library, because that is predictive of success, or make sure your kids don't have holes in their shoes because that is predictive of success. If you "fix" these things they lose their predictive power. Similarly if everyone tries to modify their parenting behavior so that the children can pass a hypothetical marshmallow test, then you will find that the test is no longer predictive of success.
> If you "fix" these things they lose their predictive power. Similarly if everyone tries to modify their parenting behavior so that the children can pass a hypothetical marshmallow test, then you will find that the test is no longer predictive of success.
Maybe in the end nurture has no impact and the result is 100% due to nature. But what's the point in being a parent if that's the case? At that point is a philosophical debate akin to determinism vs free will. Maybe everything is pre-determined. And if it is, then why bother do anything?
I think the moral of the article is that children will do as you do. So probably better to do virtuous things. Maybe in the end it won't matter, but nothing really matters in the end.
This is a false dichotomy; that it's either 100% nature and you have no control or that you must obsessively apply whatever faddish unverified pseudoscience passes your way in order to ensure your child's success.
Do what comes naturally. Do things that other parents around you are doing. If you want to do something that other parents are not doing, approach with caution but be openminded. Do things that your parents did that seem good, don't do things that your parents did that seem bad.
Most importantly, if you encounter research that disagrees with your intuitions, ignore it. If you encounter research that agrees with your intuitions, also ignore it.
If you encounter data-driven research that disagrees with your intuitions, then run screaming away. If you encounter data-driven research that agrees with your intuitions, then question your intuitions.
Finally, live with the fact that a lot of how your children develop is completely out of your control. If you have multiple children this will become extremely obvious very quickly.
"Do what comes naturally" has changed a lot over time. Corporal punishment used to be natural.
Today, being on your phone is natural. But as a soon to be parent, I see the zombie kids on their ipads in public and there's just no way that's good for them. Which means I'll need to fix my own screen usage.
You mentioned the research that correlates large home libraries with success. A related study is that the number of words a child hears in the first 4 years correlates with success.
Maybe I'm a fool and it's psuedoscience, but it strikes me as plausible that a child who hears a lot more words will be better equipped for school (and by extension life). It's something I intend to do (by reading to my children, talking to them as I go about the day etc..).
I'm not sure it's something I would've thought about too much if I wasn't exposed to the idea.
Again, maybe it's rubbish, but my sample size is very small. I don't have 100 kids to test it out on. I don't take research blindly, but I don't think it's stupid to try and learn about ways to parent. And I certainly don't think the right way is what comes naturally to you.
The headline makes it sound like a boomer giving advice to a millennial parent or your in-laws giving unsolicited advice. I started hate-reading it but it turned out to be rather wholesome and good. Thank you!
I wonder if it's "inverse" has been studied. Promise the child another one after 15 minutes but then either not deliver on the promise or even steal the one marshmallow.
I know people that had the equivalent happen to them as kids, and I think it had enormous effect on their personality as adults.
Depending how often it happens, I wouldn't be surprised if that's how you raise sociopaths.
Author got the country and items correct but not associated correctly. In Japan, kids pass the marshmallow test with flying colors but fail the same test if it's a gift. In America kids generally pass the gift test (hypothesis is that they're used to waiting for presents on Christmas).
source - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-culture-affec...
another source - https://www.colorado.edu/today/2022/07/21/new-take-marshmall...
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