Variation in parenting (within reason) has no significant long-term effects.
This runs contrary to everything I’ve read about attachment theory and also the main reasons given to oppose corporal punishment of children. Attachment theory states that the first years are essential where the child learns an attachment style based on the way they interact with their caregivers, that will largely influence the way they bond when they are adults. Alice Miller, for example, has been one to oppose child abuse (defined very broadly) partly on the grounds that it causes long-lasting psychological damage to the future adult.
This reminds me, one thing that’s clearly proven is that young children have especially good abilities to learn new languages. As they grow older, their hearing tunes to the languages they hear, so that they become less and less able to distinguish subtle sounds in other languages.
So basically what Bryan Caplan is claiming is that all of the theories that say there are huge effects visible in people over 25 years old from early childhood parenting (at least from differences in early childhood parenting that are part of the normal distribution in our society) are wrong. Caplan is saying they are wrong because identical twin adoption studies show that identical twins raised apart are very similar on the measured variables, and also that the measured variables capture what we actually care about.
Does this actually contradict the evidence base saying that, having been abused as a child, for example, is bad for adults?
First I don’t know the literature on the effects of child abuse in adults. It is clear that correlational studies are not going to be able to tell you whether bad outcomes are due to some other factor (genetics, class status, local culture) that is strongly associated with also being abused as a child. But perhaps some of these studies use identical twins, or have found another reliable way to disentangle causality and reliably show that it was specifically the child abuse that caused the later problems.
Assume that child abuse does cause ‘long-lasting psychological damage to the future adult.’ Or alternatively lets simply look at the very well attested point that children are better at learning languages than adults. Do either of these outcomes disagree with Bryan Caplan’s argument that what you do as a parent doesn’t matter very much?
I’d argue that Caplan’s actual argument is still solid. The reason that it is still solid is that you are referring to long term effects from extreme changes in how the child is treated, rather than from switching from a high stress/ high pressure version of normal middle class parenting to a low stress version of normal middle class parenting. Ie from lots of extra curriculars to a few extra cirriculars.
The evidence base Caplan depends on with identical twin studies by construction only involves parents who were able to convince an adoption board that they would be responsible. There are unlikely to be very many extremely bad or weird parents in this group. The evidence for the result only holds within this range. And Caplan’s claim also was only that you can aim for the low stress part of this range because being a very good parent inside this range doesn’t make much difference relative to being a below average parent within this range.
I find it misleading that what Caplan calls “variations in parenting” would actually mean “switching from a high stress/ high pressure version of normal middle class parenting to a low stress version of normal middle class parenting”. You oppose that very limited definition on the one hand, and “extreme changes in how the child is treated” on the other hand, but there are many third options. Homeschooling, for example. Or raising a child in the countryside as opposed to a crowded city. I have nothing against the limited version of Caplan’s argument, but I’m concerned readers might be misled into updating towards a bigger version of the argument.
This runs contrary to everything I’ve read about attachment theory and also the main reasons given to oppose corporal punishment of children. Attachment theory states that the first years are essential where the child learns an attachment style based on the way they interact with their caregivers, that will largely influence the way they bond when they are adults. Alice Miller, for example, has been one to oppose child abuse (defined very broadly) partly on the grounds that it causes long-lasting psychological damage to the future adult.
This reminds me, one thing that’s clearly proven is that young children have especially good abilities to learn new languages. As they grow older, their hearing tunes to the languages they hear, so that they become less and less able to distinguish subtle sounds in other languages.
So basically what Bryan Caplan is claiming is that all of the theories that say there are huge effects visible in people over 25 years old from early childhood parenting (at least from differences in early childhood parenting that are part of the normal distribution in our society) are wrong. Caplan is saying they are wrong because identical twin adoption studies show that identical twins raised apart are very similar on the measured variables, and also that the measured variables capture what we actually care about.
Does this actually contradict the evidence base saying that, having been abused as a child, for example, is bad for adults?
First I don’t know the literature on the effects of child abuse in adults. It is clear that correlational studies are not going to be able to tell you whether bad outcomes are due to some other factor (genetics, class status, local culture) that is strongly associated with also being abused as a child. But perhaps some of these studies use identical twins, or have found another reliable way to disentangle causality and reliably show that it was specifically the child abuse that caused the later problems.
Assume that child abuse does cause ‘long-lasting psychological damage to the future adult.’ Or alternatively lets simply look at the very well attested point that children are better at learning languages than adults. Do either of these outcomes disagree with Bryan Caplan’s argument that what you do as a parent doesn’t matter very much?
I’d argue that Caplan’s actual argument is still solid. The reason that it is still solid is that you are referring to long term effects from extreme changes in how the child is treated, rather than from switching from a high stress/ high pressure version of normal middle class parenting to a low stress version of normal middle class parenting. Ie from lots of extra curriculars to a few extra cirriculars.
The evidence base Caplan depends on with identical twin studies by construction only involves parents who were able to convince an adoption board that they would be responsible. There are unlikely to be very many extremely bad or weird parents in this group. The evidence for the result only holds within this range. And Caplan’s claim also was only that you can aim for the low stress part of this range because being a very good parent inside this range doesn’t make much difference relative to being a below average parent within this range.
I find it misleading that what Caplan calls “variations in parenting” would actually mean “switching from a high stress/ high pressure version of normal middle class parenting to a low stress version of normal middle class parenting”. You oppose that very limited definition on the one hand, and “extreme changes in how the child is treated” on the other hand, but there are many third options. Homeschooling, for example. Or raising a child in the countryside as opposed to a crowded city. I have nothing against the limited version of Caplan’s argument, but I’m concerned readers might be misled into updating towards a bigger version of the argument.