[HN Gopher] Centuries of Childhood
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Centuries of Childhood
Author : benbreen
Score : 69 points
Date : 2024-06-11 13:00 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (resobscura.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (resobscura.substack.com)
| esd_g0d wrote:
| Yeah. I find this romanticization of the past, this search for
| the "true" or "natural" way of doing things... I've seen it done
| for things other than childhood, like relationships in general,
| physical activity, diet* (does the paleo diet apply here? I know
| nothing but the name)... I think we do this because society and
| the typical human life is changing really fast, which prompts us
| to consider different ways of doing things, and wonder what would
| be the best. It's kinda disappointing at first that there are no
| clear answers in the past... but maybe at least we should be
| reassured because it means that our chances of doing it the
| "wrong" way today aren't that high.
|
| Along those lines... the other day there was that discussion
| about the play-based childhood from decades ago, and I feel
| sometimes people were romanticizing it -- I don't think the
| increased rate of physical bullying and pressure for fitting in
| were mentioned enough (though there were some mentions).
| Personally, I think I'd rather not have been born in the 60s. The
| Internet is directly or indirectly responsible for like 99% of my
| knowledge (speaking English included), which in turn is
| responsible for so much in my life that's different and better...
| If I look back to the folks my age in my home town (which I think
| I'd never have left), I don't desire their life AT ALL.
|
| * Unlike for behaviors and social conventions, I don't think we
| have so much freedom with things like diets. Humans do have some
| hard dietary needs...
| anovikov wrote:
| Surely the romanticization happens with people who were on the
| receiving end of the change. Not kids from poor towns in 3rd
| world - they definitely have benefitted. But those who already
| had it all - and now have to share it with everyone.
| TimedToasts wrote:
| It's not "sharing" if it's forced.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Don't leave us hanging, my man, tell me what has been
| forced!
| jerf wrote:
| One of the memes the Enlightenment established is the idea of
| the "noble savage". If you want to learn more about it, that's
| the search term for it. For instance, Wikipedia pops something
| up that is a decent introduction:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage
|
| I find the memeset quite dehumanizing. "Savages", even putting
| aside the baggage that term carries, are as fully human as the
| "civilized", and as such, are as fully capable of the heights
| of humanity and the full plumbing of the depths.
|
| While I admit I have not seen the movie the author is talking
| about, it sounds to me like it reeks of the "noble savage"
| memeset. I'm sure there are wonderful parents in the more
| primitive cultures (I think I can use that terminology in this
| context, it just refers to their technology usage and not
| humanity), but the primitive cultures also used to let unwanted
| children die by exposure... and there was worse, too. Because
| they're human, and as such, as prone to the heights and the
| depths as the rest of us. The modern "civilized" world has all
| the heights and the depths too; the civilized world is just
| somewhat better at hiding the depths where other people won't
| see it.
|
| (Anyone who wants to complain about the terminology for "noble
| savage" is invited to take it up with the rest of the world;
| I'm just using the common name given to it. If it is not clear,
| I am dripping with contempt for the meme and have no interest
| in defending it in any form, name included.)
| dexwiz wrote:
| Yeah, it's pretty common. You can recognize supporters by:
|
| - A call to return to a primarily agrarian culture.
|
| - A claim that prehistoric humans were somehow in more
| harmony with nature and their community.
|
| - Focus on small, tribe like communities.
|
| - Avoidance or downplay of any modern advantages like
| medicine or logistics.
| lmpdev wrote:
| Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater though
|
| While some may - as this thread make out - fall for that
| archetypal trope; some of those elements are indeed worth
| studying
|
| For example, scientists don't place a huge effort on
| documenting the peoples of Papua New Guinea for some weird
| Exoticism. They genuinely provide unbridled access to
| effectively untouched (from western influence) and highly
| diverse groups. This access in turn is breeding ground for
| anthropologic, historic and psychological theory
| development and empirical studies
|
| Don't fall into the trap of immediately disregarding
| genuine areas of research due to previous experience with
| these "noble savage" admirers
|
| To go further with this example: western doctors and
| researchers _immediately_ began to force PNG groups to stop
| their burial rites after _finally_ discovering Kuru (deadly
| prion disease) was being caused by some of their rites
| (consumption of brain tissue after death)
|
| You can both be an advocate for smaller cultures in
| undeveloped areas without fetishising it and still support
| modern medicine, science and logistics
| dexwiz wrote:
| I'm not saying don't study nonindustrial groups of
| people. I agree there is real value in that. But the
| noble savage is definitely a romanticization of these
| cultures by industrialized societies.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| We tried raising a generation of babies without breastmilk
| and discovered that doing so causes weak digestive tracts.
| We have a huge problem with obesity, largely due to highly
| processed foods that are optimized for profits. We have a
| mental health crisis that is likely linked to social media
| etc.
|
| The reality is that nobody wants to completely go back to
| the past. Nobody is protesting the use of soap or brushing
| their teeth.
|
| The real question is in which areas do we reject modern
| technology? We should evaluate modern technology not as
| fanboys but as mature humans. People think that the Amish
| are hypocrites because they use diesel generators instead
| of bringing electricity into their homes. But their
| relationship with technology is mature: they decide as a
| community which tech to use and which to avoid, instead of
| being fanboys who think the only thing better than tech is
| more of it.
|
| I personally don't make the same tradeoffs the Amish do.
| But I _do_ make tradeoffs. Saying that modern tech is
| universally good is just as chronologically snobbish as
| saying that the olden days were universally good.
| dexwiz wrote:
| I am not claiming industrialization is universally good.
| Just that it is not universally bad.
|
| And progress isn't a straight line. You can reject parts
| without rejecting the whole.
| ysofunny wrote:
| how do we measure the aumont of information my head can
| hallucinate out of 40 seconds of two babies interacting?
| arrowsmith wrote:
| "Watching Babies was just a small part of a regimen that included
| close-reads of Emily Oster"
|
| Tangential, but I find it harder to take this person seriously
| knowing that they take Emily Oster seriously. Oster's book about
| parenting is one of the dumbest things I've ever read.
| ad wrote:
| Would you mind continuing your tangent? I have a set of friends
| who really like Oster and I don't know much about her. Feel
| free to email me (address is in my profile) if you don't want
| to discuss in these comments.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| See my sister comment in same thread.
| thecrims0nchin wrote:
| I wasn't aware she was controversial. Can you elaborate? I'm
| genuinely curious
| 1bent wrote:
| I'd never heard of her, so I checked wikipedia. Try that.
| thecrims0nchin wrote:
| Thanks
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The only thing that stands out as controversial about her
| books was:
|
| > _In the book [Expecting Better, 2013], Oster argues
| against the general rule of thumb to avoid alcohol
| consumption while pregnant, contends that there is no
| evidence that (low) levels of alcohol consumption by
| pregnant women adversely affect their children. This claim,
| however, has drawn criticism from the National Organization
| on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and others._
|
| I don't have any strong opinion on the topic of the
| claim[0], but the way it is reported as having "drawn
| criticism from [Some National Organization Specializing in
| Arguing the Opposite of the Claim]" in my experience
| pattern-matches in favor of the claim.
|
| So beyond that, what's exactly so controversial about her
| books?
|
| --
|
| [0] - Like everyone, I've had "zero alcohol while pregnant
| or breastfeeding" message drilled into me for decades, and
| that's my prior, though I've personally heard an
| experienced gynecologist, widely respected in the region,
| giving pregnant women allowance for a small glass of
| champagne for New Year's Eve...
| vharuck wrote:
| I've come to see "No alcohol while pregnant" as the
| better simple rule. The alternative is "No more than X
| drinks in a day, and no more then Y drinks over your
| pregnancy." There will be a lot of people failing to
| remember the numbers (especially after a drink), the
| numbers vary by body type, the effects vary a lot between
| pregnancies for no known reason, drinking impairs
| decision-making, and the bad outcomes harm somebody
| besides the mother.
|
| Public health guidelines targeted at non-professionals
| need to be simple. Same idea behind telling somebody who
| just wants a retirement fund to park their money in a
| managed portfolio, then ease those investments into safer
| stuff close to retirement. You could totally explain
| things in more detail, giving them more options and
| better opportunities, but most people are likely to not
| understand enough to safely do it. (I probably explained
| it incorrectly, which would reinforce my point of the
| general public's ignorance.)
| rolisz wrote:
| > Public health guidelines targeted at non-professionals
| need to be simple.
|
| And that's how you lose their trust. Just telling me to
| do simple X when it's clear to me from my own experience
| that sometimes not-X is better for me will make me think
| your overly simplifying and that your advice is not to be
| trusted, no matter your credentials.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| I could write a longer review but people on Goodreads have
| already done it for me. Try going here and filtering for one-
| star reviews, I agree with them all:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40121328-cribsheet?ac=1&.
| ..
|
| It's a book for neurotic, middling-IQ soccer moms who obsess
| over things that don't matter. Utterly vacuous.
| alan-hn wrote:
| Its no surprise that an economist cherry picked and used
| anecdote to support their writing. It's one of the least
| rigorous fields out there whose practitioners are primarily
| used to green light whatever policy a politician deems
| fashionable or appropriate
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Indeed. Economics is the art of using meaningless
| spreadsheets and number-crunching to justify the
| decisions you were going to make anyway. Oster's book is
| a great example of how.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It sounds like you're getting mad at someone for reading
| Malcolm Gladwell or _Freakanomics_. It might be _NYT_
| bestseller middlebrow pop science that you find facile
| and contemptuous but a lot of people do not. And the
| author doesn't even indicate how Oster informed his
| parenting. Seems overly dismissive of the article.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| You're right, I regret my original, snide comment. It's
| barely relevant to the article and I should have known it
| would derail the thread.
|
| Too late to undo it now, but lesson learned.
| slothtrop wrote:
| This is pretty disingenuous. Oster's book(s) is
| tantamount to long-form data journalism, principally
| citing research to criticize confidence in certain
| notions rather than arguing for overconfidence in
| another.
|
| Much like nutrition and sociology, research can be
| politically fraught, have lots of data points, etc. But
| that's neither here nor there, either research is high
| quality or it isn't, including in the domain of economy.
| shkkmo wrote:
| It's not that she is particularly 'controversial', it is that
| she is biased and misleading.
|
| She is an economist who wrote a book that misrepresents,
| ignores and twists science what does know about childrearing
| and then presents that with a high level of confidence.
| slothtrop wrote:
| This is a projection. Oster seems to do the opposite, cast
| skepticism on overconfidence of certain ideals using data
| as a guide, or criticizing the lack of it or the rigor of
| studies leaned on.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| If I remember correctly, the tide began turning against her
| when she advocated for reopening schools during covid. Also,
| in her book, she concluded that there wasn't compelling
| evidence for abstaining from drinking small amounts of
| alcohol during pregnancy.
| wisemang wrote:
| Is there compelling evidence for that?
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| I was under the impression that it's more a matter of how
| this makes some folks extremely uncomfortable. From what
| I've seen, they haven't been able to point to any good
| evidence to the contrary, other than the general idea
| that absence of evidence doesn't necessarily mean
| evidence of absence. There's also the idea that some
| expecting mothers might not care to understand the little
| details and as a result take it as a pass to drink at
| levels we know to be harmful.
| yohannparis wrote:
| I understand that many parents can feel anxious about even the
| smallest things. For them, having a book that offers reassuring
| advice can be very comforting. As long as the information in
| these books is medically accurate, there's no harm in having
| more resources that can help parents feel more at ease during
| such a stressful time in their lives.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| The author lists historic examples as counters to envisioned
| idyllic childhoods (ex:kids working dangerous jobs). I think his
| examples run into a few issues.
|
| 1) His strongest examples of child death causes are highly local.
| ex: Labor caused deaths. The opportunities for kids to work new,
| dangerous jobs are local to that region. They're also local to
| many other regions but the driver is corporations that are
| headquartered in that region. Going back decade by decade, those
| corporate presences are less and less. ex: Health
| caused deaths. What we know of historical child death rates comes
| times/places when human population is the densest (when records
| are better). Groups outside of this metric include per-European
| indigenous people - people who's death rate skyrocketed when
| Europeans appear in their lives. To be fair, I can't find data on
| child deaths for per-discovered indigenous people. But absent two
| massive drivers of disease death, lower death rates seem like a
| thing that would be.
|
| 2) The authors comparisons are super limited. The structure of
| child development has taken many 10k years to socially evolve
| _and_ it encompasses much of Earth 's landmass. His arguments
| concentrate on the last two centuries of industrial nations. This
| minuscule sliver doesn't represent ~100% of when and how
| historical child development happened (commonly among paleolithic
| peoples).
|
| The author's piece isn't poorly written but I think it's value
| about explaining how things really sucked for kids in some
| places, 150 years ago. As far as ideal childhood environments go,
| we need to look outside of the areas he's considering.
|
| (one potential ex):
| https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288...
|
| ref: I spend a lot of time thinking about Euro/US lives from my
| birth back to 1800, because genealogy.
| em-bee wrote:
| just because attachment parenting uses historical or "primitive"
| cultures as example to support it while there exists counter
| examples from other historic or "primitive" cultures, doesn't
| mean that the practice itself is a bad idea.
|
| the article is not directly making that claim, but i feel it does
| imply it.
|
| but does that really matter?
|
| what we really need to look at is how different parenting styles
| affect children growing up. there isn't enough research on that
| because the effects are subtle and hard to see.
|
| it took me a few decades to understand how my childhood affected
| me, and how i spend most of my life searching for the love that
| my parents could not give me.
|
| i have had the opportunity as a young man to observe different
| parenting styles with friends, like lovingly involved dads but
| also the crying out method of putting a baby to sleep, which to
| me intuitively just felt cruel.
|
| there is a lot of insecurity by young parents, so we tend to look
| to others for help. our own parents of course and our community.
| but in this modern times we also have access to examples from
| other cultures as well as history, and i find it only natural
| that we use those examples to support our beliefs. just because
| counterexamples exist, doesn't mean those examples are wrong.
|
| the counter argument is rather, if attachment parenting were
| wrong, then we should not find any historic examples of it at
| all. of course the same is true for the opposite, which is why
| the truth is that we simply do not know enough yet about what is
| really the best way to raise children. more research is
| necessary. personally i feel that going with your own intuition
| is a safe approach.
| aym62SAE49CZ684 wrote:
| A good way to figure out how we are "supposed" to parent might
| be to study primates and other mammals.
| Terr_ wrote:
| That suggests strategies to test, but doesn't tell us if they
| are _good_ strategies. (Risk of naturalistic fallacy.)
|
| Compare to "what is the best way to walk" and then studying
| gorillas. We might learn something, but we obviously should
| not--heh-- _ape_ those evolutionary relatives. We 've had
| more than enough time to develop our own separate-possibly
| incompatible--situation and needs.
| aym62SAE49CZ684 wrote:
| Sure, I agree. Animals don't wear clothes either!
|
| That said, sometimes you might want to take a chance and
| not wait for the results of an experiment to be known.
| ChatGPT calls this a "temporal dilemma".
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| oh man please don't study the lions
|
| ...also, closer to us, definitely don't study the bonobos
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