To launch Views from Cleve-Mandu podcast, Manjul and I discuss parenting in personal, philosophical, and sociological terms. We’re both relatively new to fatherhood and want to do our best for our kids.
Today’s episode breaks down into roughly three segments:
Generational differences in parenting
Eastern versus Western differences in parenting
How much parenting matters to outcomes for kids (i.e. nature versus nurture)
Recap with References and Recommendations:
We talked a bit about whether social expectations have changed much across generations for parents. There isn’t a simple story to tell. Manjul thinks contemporary parents can individually forge their own path at least this is his approach today. From my perspective, I think there are trends in the data suggesting increased parental investment, especially as with step up the class ladder.
During our conversation, I claim that becoming a new parent is associated with a happiness penalty (a claim I’ve borrowed from Emily Oster). Measuring such things is fraught, and I highlighted this to point out that subjective responses to parenting can vary and that parenting does require personal sacrifice. Manjul and I are overjoyed to be parents. However, I can understand how this finding may pop up in the response data as there is an entire lifestyle adjustment when moving from a married but childless life to a married-with-child(ren) life. Here’s one look at that issue in The Atlantic: What Becoming a Parent Really Does to Your Happiness
We make reference to some parenting data, but if you’d like some more details, check out this post from Lyman Stone on Parenting Trends (I’ll summarize some points below):
Parenting has become a more isolating activity over recent time.
Most the measured increase in parenting time is due to low-intensity supervision by dads.
Moms have increased the intensity of their parenting investment despite spending similar amounts of time on parenting compared to the recent past.
Moms are spending less time with friends than the recent past.
Parenting styles have become increasing attached to brands, identities, politics. etc. This has raised the stakes of parenting discourse.
I made some claims in the show about the state of American family structure and related trends. Here’s is some additional data for those interested:
Between 1980 to 2022, births to unmarried women rose to ~40% from <20%. The CDC has a helpful color-coded chart of rates of births to unmarried mothers by state. MS, LA, and NM have rates at or above 50%. UT and CO have the lowest rates. This trend has drawn the concern of policymakers and commentators of all ideological stripes for a long time. See this policy brief from Brookings Review from 1996!
From the Single parents in the United States Wikipedia page:
~70% of children <18 years-of-age live with two parents (most of these are married) according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2016). This is a decline from nearly 90% in the 60s.
Households size has shrunk overtime: 3.3. People in 1960 to 2.5 in 2016 (ibid)
Median age of first marriage is increasing. In 2016, it was 29.5 for men and 27.4 for women, up from ages 23.7 and 20.5, respectively, in 1947. (ibid)
Some of our attempt to contrast Eastern and Western parenting ventures into a discussion of parenting styles. This is a controversial area. There is a recent movement to reduce parental supervision of childhood as there is a concern from some social observers that “helicopter parenting” (safteyism) and social media/smartphone socialization is driving a noticeable rise in mental health issues among teenagers and young adults. Jean Twenge of iGen, Lenore Skenazy of Free Range Parenting and Jon Haidt of The Anxious Generation are high profile figures in this space. Also on parenting styles, I incorrectly referenced the title of Amy Chua’s memoir on her aggressive parenting approach. Her notorious and entertaining memoir is titled The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom.
At the close of the show, we sneak in a reference to Emily Oster. We recommend her work to any current or prospective parent. Check out Emily Oster’s blog called Parent Data along with her books: Expecting Better, Cribsheet, and The Family Firm. She is the Billy Beane (the one from Moneyball) of mommy bloggers, meaning she applies cost-benefit, quantitative approaches from her discipline (economics) to granular parenting related questions.
Some claims she’s known for include:
Advocating early oral allergen exposure to prevent food allergies
Arguing the current guidelines for alcohol, caffeine, food consumption during pregnancy are overly stringent
Arguing the benefits of breastfeeding are often oversold
Arguing the only negative consequences of “screen time” boil down to it just outcompeting other enriching activities.
Arguing that daycare has no effect on attachment.
Our nature versus nurture discussion is quite short and obviously doesn’t jump into all the complexities raised by such questions. I have written on the subject a few times before but even there I am just scratching the surface. For those looking for a primer, I think Robert Plomin’s Blueprint is a gentle and appropriately provocative introduction to the field that studies these questions, Behavioral Genetics. Blueprint leans quite heavily into championing the nature side of the argument and some of the claims have been complicated by more recent research. Nonetheless, it is an easy and engaging read. I have a review available at Goodreads that discusses some of the issues at play. I’m perhaps a strong partisan for the importance of nature, but I think this is largely my response to seeing too many smart people entirely dismiss its role without careful consideration.
Although we didn’t address the subject explicitly in the podcast, I’m interested in the question of how paternal care evolved in humans. This was recently the subject of Sarah Hrdy’s newest book Father Time. Hrdy argues that prolonged exposure to children decreases male testosterone levels and increases oxytocin and prolactin levels. This is a latent parental instinct that may have been selected for in the Pleistocene (~2 mya to 12kya which includes a major Ice Age) during harsh conditions. I have a detailed review of Hrdy’s book here.
We implicitly referenced the Varsity Blues Scandal when touching on the relationship between parental expectations and educational outcomes. This is a really interesting news story that illuminates a lot of salient issues in contemporary America. To some extent, it reveals the way elite status is conferred more by college degrees than material wealth. We’ll return to the social issues raised by higher education trends today.
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Disclaimer
This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes. The opinions expressed are solely our own. We are not providing professional advice (financial, medical, etc) of any kind.
Episode 1: Dadsplaining