Sorry to be a buzzkill, but what are you trying to achieve here?
It is my impression from the literature that once controlled for genetic confounders the long-term effect of parents on cognition [and a host of other factors] is 0. Why spent so much effort if the net effect is nil?
I have spent a lot of thought on this, and I am well aware of all the studies posted by Gwern over time that show the effect of parenting on cognitive ability, educational attainment, etc. to be small or zero. I buy that your influence on intelligence and character is neglible. Still, it wouldn’t be adaptive for the child’s brain to throw away useful knowledge (though it might question its valence). There are also a lot of things that can make the parent-child relationship easier. Scott Alexander wrote that there seem to be shared-environment effects influenced by parents that are beneficial in other ways (I can’t find the exact quote, but this is close). A more fruitful parent-child relationship—esp. with multiple children—seems to fall into this category. You can also see it as being about trust. And it is also possible that there are effects at the tails of the distribution that are hard to find with usual study designs.
Consider all those teenaged Olympic medallists. It wasn’t just their genes that got them there. It takes opportunity as well. This is what parents can provide. And yes, the parents have the genes as well, but all that means is that they are in a position to provide those opportunities. Whether they do or not is their choice. These are the choices that distinguish good parenting from bad.
Think of parenting as being the primary stage of a rocket.
It is easier to break a system than to improve it. With parenting, this may mean that if you listen to advice like “parenting has no effect, you can skip it,” then you may stop doing what you as a parent usually would (i.e., foster and take care of the kid), and end up with worse results.
I think it’s often worth making a comparison to “what am I trying to achieve in my relationship with my partner? With another adult, you’re not trying to mold them into a better human. You’re trying to enjoy the time you have together now, and next month, and over the decades.
There’s a lot of parenting that makes a difference to how much you both enjoy the next 18 years. Like the “teaching them not to whine” thing—you will both be happier if they have other ways of getting their needs met.
This is only tangential, but “does being friend with them pushes me into becoming a better human” is a pretty good question to ask about your friends. And if the answer is a resounding”no”, considering not being friend with them is a good next step.
I’m deeply confused by this question. I think we are not coming from the same factual background. Do you have some literature reviews or meta-analyses showing that parental input (other than genes) has no effect on cognition, and what the “host of other factors” are?
Not to hide the ball—if the list of other factors isn’t “literally everything that matters,” I’m going to claim that the other factors about which we have no evidence are worth the effort, and if it is “literally everything that matters,” I’m going to look at the tails of the distributions and, given that I chose to create this eventual conscious entity, conclude that I have a duty to chase tails above a certain low probability threshold.
I haven’t gone through the literature you mention, so I may be off, but I am puzzled by your comment. It seems obvious to me that the effect of parents on very important factors is clear.
Just, for example, in what kind of job or studies the children choose. On average, children are much more likely to have jobs similar to those of the people they know well, just because they have much more inside knowledge. Children of parents with PhD are much more likely to get a PhD, etc. If parents influence this, why would they not have influence in other factors?
Maybe the studies only account for cognitive factors such as IQ and not in shaping the children decisions?
Still, it seems also clear that parents can actively worsen those (induce anxiety, fear, traumatise...), which would already be a strong incentive to learn and try to educate children as well as possible. Are such effects not long-term? Anecdotal evidence suggests me the contrary: one has to actively work to heal from it, meaning that the effect is long-lasting. And if having a bad influence on one’s children is possible, why should it not be possible to have a good one? Again, anecdotal evidence seems to show that some families are actually better than others helping their children develop (of course, this could be entirely a genetic thing).
Other ideas that come to mind are income and orphanages. Income seems to have a large influence in IQ, why should then parenting not have it? And people who used to live in orphanages are said to often have cognitive problems (I have no idea, just repeating “commou knowledge” for this one).
Am I writing about effects not accounted for in those studies?
well-done rigorous studies (i.e. those done with twins and/or adoption studies) mostly find that almost every aspect of offspring traits has a large genetic component and almost zero shared environment component.
These traits range from cognitive (like IQ) to degree of spirituality to traits like anxiety (which are harder to measure, hence the correlation coefficients can occasionally be lower due to measurement error). Indeed, it is hard to find traits that do not have a large genetic component! (interestingly homosexuality often regarded as the genetic trait par excellence has one of the lowest genetic components of common traits)
Yes children whose biological parents have a PhD are much more likely to have a PhD. How does this prove that parenting style is the mediating force as opposed to genes?
Severe abuse can certainly hurt children—it is easier to fuck something up than to significantly improve on a natural process. But the abuse has to be quite severe to have a measurable impact on long-term life outcomes—although of course it will still be an awful experience and memory for the child (and obviously I’m not saying you should abuse your child!).
There is indeed a fad to ascribe all kinds of maladies to this or that happening in childhood. Actually, this idea is quite age old (Freud?). Doesn’t make it true though. Well-done studies that control for genetic components as opposed to shoddy studies or anecdotes mostly don’t pick up on any of the effects that these theories claim (outside of severe abuse). Certainly, it seems plausible on the face of it and it is undeniably popular—but the lack of strong scientific evidence for these theories should make on skeptical.
Differences between the First and Third world are so large that these have very large effect on life trajectories.
If one believes the actual research done on this question then one can only conclude that the differences between middle-class parenting styles in the First World outside of severe abuse don’t make much difference in long-term outcomes for the child.
To be fair, it had never occurred to me that completing a PhD could be genetically driven… It seems quite plausible, actually (however, not completing one seems much less correlated to me).
Yes, I’m more skeptical now! Still, I’m also skeptical of these studies, though (maybe because I have not reviewed them myself—nothing persona!--, which I actually doubt I will do...).
AFAIK, there were very well know studies strongly relating IQ to genes (which implied that e.g. black people have lower IQ) that are now being refuted and the new ones link it much more to the socio-economic status of the family. I guess the difference is only the degree of correlation (you say it yourself that socio-economic status has an impact), but what I heard/read is that difference is quite large.
In addition, I can not square these studies you mention with other good research. E.g. gratitude journaling seem to have a huge effect improving mental health, and this is something that can be easily taught at home.
My guess to put everything together is now that the world is very messy, such effects very difficult to measure, and that most education is good enough to avoid trauma but still very sub-optimal (difficult to find the signal within lots of noise). In addition, probably, educating techniques work differently for different children (which would not be surprising and would largely explain that education is sub-optimal).
Sorry to be a buzzkill, but what are you trying to achieve here?
It is my impression from the literature that once controlled for genetic confounders the long-term effect of parents on cognition [and a host of other factors] is 0. Why spent so much effort if the net effect is nil?
I have spent a lot of thought on this, and I am well aware of all the studies posted by Gwern over time that show the effect of parenting on cognitive ability, educational attainment, etc. to be small or zero. I buy that your influence on intelligence and character is neglible. Still, it wouldn’t be adaptive for the child’s brain to throw away useful knowledge (though it might question its valence). There are also a lot of things that can make the parent-child relationship easier. Scott Alexander wrote that there seem to be shared-environment effects influenced by parents that are beneficial in other ways (I can’t find the exact quote, but this is close). A more fruitful parent-child relationship—esp. with multiple children—seems to fall into this category. You can also see it as being about trust. And it is also possible that there are effects at the tails of the distribution that are hard to find with usual study designs.
Consider all those teenaged Olympic medallists. It wasn’t just their genes that got them there. It takes opportunity as well. This is what parents can provide. And yes, the parents have the genes as well, but all that means is that they are in a position to provide those opportunities. Whether they do or not is their choice. These are the choices that distinguish good parenting from bad.
Think of parenting as being the primary stage of a rocket.
It is easier to break a system than to improve it. With parenting, this may mean that if you listen to advice like “parenting has no effect, you can skip it,” then you may stop doing what you as a parent usually would (i.e., foster and take care of the kid), and end up with worse results.
I think it’s often worth making a comparison to “what am I trying to achieve in my relationship with my partner? With another adult, you’re not trying to mold them into a better human. You’re trying to enjoy the time you have together now, and next month, and over the decades.
There’s a lot of parenting that makes a difference to how much you both enjoy the next 18 years. Like the “teaching them not to whine” thing—you will both be happier if they have other ways of getting their needs met.
This is only tangential, but “does being friend with them pushes me into becoming a better human” is a pretty good question to ask about your friends. And if the answer is a resounding”no”, considering not being friend with them is a good next step.
Exactly, well-put.
I’m deeply confused by this question. I think we are not coming from the same factual background. Do you have some literature reviews or meta-analyses showing that parental input (other than genes) has no effect on cognition, and what the “host of other factors” are?
Not to hide the ball—if the list of other factors isn’t “literally everything that matters,” I’m going to claim that the other factors about which we have no evidence are worth the effort, and if it is “literally everything that matters,” I’m going to look at the tails of the distributions and, given that I chose to create this eventual conscious entity, conclude that I have a duty to chase tails above a certain low probability threshold.
I haven’t gone through the literature you mention, so I may be off, but I am puzzled by your comment. It seems obvious to me that the effect of parents on very important factors is clear.
Just, for example, in what kind of job or studies the children choose. On average, children are much more likely to have jobs similar to those of the people they know well, just because they have much more inside knowledge. Children of parents with PhD are much more likely to get a PhD, etc. If parents influence this, why would they not have influence in other factors?
Maybe the studies only account for cognitive factors such as IQ and not in shaping the children decisions?
Still, it seems also clear that parents can actively worsen those (induce anxiety, fear, traumatise...), which would already be a strong incentive to learn and try to educate children as well as possible. Are such effects not long-term? Anecdotal evidence suggests me the contrary: one has to actively work to heal from it, meaning that the effect is long-lasting. And if having a bad influence on one’s children is possible, why should it not be possible to have a good one? Again, anecdotal evidence seems to show that some families are actually better than others helping their children develop (of course, this could be entirely a genetic thing).
Other ideas that come to mind are income and orphanages. Income seems to have a large influence in IQ, why should then parenting not have it? And people who used to live in orphanages are said to often have cognitive problems (I have no idea, just repeating “commou knowledge” for this one).
Am I writing about effects not accounted for in those studies?
well-done rigorous studies (i.e. those done with twins and/or adoption studies) mostly find that almost every aspect of offspring traits has a large genetic component and almost zero shared environment component.
These traits range from cognitive (like IQ) to degree of spirituality to traits like anxiety (which are harder to measure, hence the correlation coefficients can occasionally be lower due to measurement error). Indeed, it is hard to find traits that do not have a large genetic component! (interestingly homosexuality often regarded as the genetic trait par excellence has one of the lowest genetic components of common traits)
Yes children whose biological parents have a PhD are much more likely to have a PhD. How does this prove that parenting style is the mediating force as opposed to genes?
Severe abuse can certainly hurt children—it is easier to fuck something up than to significantly improve on a natural process. But the abuse has to be quite severe to have a measurable impact on long-term life outcomes—although of course it will still be an awful experience and memory for the child (and obviously I’m not saying you should abuse your child!).
There is indeed a fad to ascribe all kinds of maladies to this or that happening in childhood. Actually, this idea is quite age old (Freud?). Doesn’t make it true though. Well-done studies that control for genetic components as opposed to shoddy studies or anecdotes mostly don’t pick up on any of the effects that these theories claim (outside of severe abuse). Certainly, it seems plausible on the face of it and it is undeniably popular—but the lack of strong scientific evidence for these theories should make on skeptical.
Differences between the First and Third world are so large that these have very large effect on life trajectories.
If one believes the actual research done on this question then one can only conclude that the differences between middle-class parenting styles in the First World outside of severe abuse don’t make much difference in long-term outcomes for the child.
Thanks you very much! That’s a great answer!
To be fair, it had never occurred to me that completing a PhD could be genetically driven… It seems quite plausible, actually (however, not completing one seems much less correlated to me).
Yes, I’m more skeptical now! Still, I’m also skeptical of these studies, though (maybe because I have not reviewed them myself—nothing persona!--, which I actually doubt I will do...).
AFAIK, there were very well know studies strongly relating IQ to genes (which implied that e.g. black people have lower IQ) that are now being refuted and the new ones link it much more to the socio-economic status of the family. I guess the difference is only the degree of correlation (you say it yourself that socio-economic status has an impact), but what I heard/read is that difference is quite large.
In addition, I can not square these studies you mention with other good research. E.g. gratitude journaling seem to have a huge effect improving mental health, and this is something that can be easily taught at home.
My guess to put everything together is now that the world is very messy, such effects very difficult to measure, and that most education is good enough to avoid trauma but still very sub-optimal (difficult to find the signal within lots of noise). In addition, probably, educating techniques work differently for different children (which would not be surprising and would largely explain that education is sub-optimal).
I’m interested in your thoughts :-)
Your mental flexibility and willingness to chance your mind is commendable.
I recommend taking a look at Plomin’s “Blueprint”.
https://www.amazon.com/Blueprint-How-DNA-Makes-Press/dp/0262039168
even on IQ short-term gains can be made by intensive training. However, it effects seem to always wash out in the long-term.
Thanks, I’ll take a look.
Possibly they’re trying to beat the odds?
To some degree, sure.