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Other than in extreme cases of abuse or neglect, almost all of the long-term impact that parents have on their children’s long term life outcomes (happiness, income, intelligence, health, etc), can be explained via genetics rather than parenting style.

parenting
Discussion
  • andrew posted a reason to agree 5 years ago:
    Bryan Caplan argues for this in Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids.
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    • andrew replied 5 years ago:
      Notably, he says that how you raise your kids can have real short-term effects in what they are like to live with: think of it like training your roommate more than sculpting a future person.
      Reply
  • steven.noble posted a reason to disagree 5 years ago:
    I guess it depends on the meaning of "impact". Like almost none of my childhood narrative comes from my genetics. Is that still impact if the cities I lived in, in what order, didn't affect my adult level of education or salary?
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    • andrew replied 5 years ago:
      Fair enough. I'm going to change this view to be more explicit about what is meant by impact, but I think your point is a good one regardless: even if you don't particularly change the quantitative outcomes, you might still impact who they end up being (for better or worse :P)
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  • luke posted a reason to disagree 5 years ago:

    The research is still very unclear, but the study of epigenetics at least suggests that there is a more complex interaction between genetics and environmental factors than a traditional understanding might suggest. See for example the section on epigenetic psychology and psychiatry on Wikipedia: "subjects who carried one or two copies of the short allele of the serotonin transporter promoter polymorphism exhibited higher rates of adult depression and suicidality when exposed to childhood maltreatment when compared to long allele homozygotes with equal ELS exposure".

    Regardless of epigenetics though, it also seems crazy to me to assume that family wealth and the context of privilege in which someone is raised has little or no impact — if only in terms of helping to define someone's expectations about what they "deserve" in life, and giving them a cushion to fall back on when taking any sort of financial risk. Unless you think that parental wealth itself is a result of genetics. :)

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    • andrew replied 5 years ago:
      If I recall correctly, Caplan specifically called out things like "childhood maltreatment" as having real long-term impacts (regardless of the specific mechanism). It was more about differences in parenting within a relatively broad normal range. I think I've heard him say something along the lines of "if you're worrying at all about differences in parenting, you're probably in the normal range and therefore should stop worrying".
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      • luke replied 5 years ago:

        Fair enough. I guess it depends what you count as abuse or "extreme neglect" — just looking at myself and the people I know best, it seems like we were all influenced by our parents' treatment in key ways, both positive and negative, and I suspect that "a relatively broad normal range" still includes a lot of questionable stuff! (That is, we're all terrible at parenting in one way or another, but probably some of us more than others.)

        Obviously in terms of how similar we end up to our parents, that could be highly genetic, but I'm thinking more about the way many people either directly rebel against their parents or who more generally try to compensate for things they feel like their parents did poorly.

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        • andrew replied 5 years ago:
          Yeah, I think that he might grant all of this (certainly that there's lots of questionable stuff), but according to the twin studies data, in the aggregate, most of it is a wash with respect to health, happiness, income, etc. People are just very resilient and tend to become who they are going to become regardless. I don't feel qualified to analyze the backing data, but I also haven't seen any super convincing critiques of it so far (would welcome them though).
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  • andrew posted a reason to agree 5 years ago:
    Not sure if this is actually a reason to agree, but a conclusion of Caplan's that I like is that one thing where your actions as a parent really do have an impact in the long-term is in what kind of relationship you have with your kids. So, rather than try to form them in some particular way, focus on building and maintaining a good relationship with them.
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