Bigthink - Idea Comments Feed

Comment on: Re: Do we romanticize the impact of parenting?

Bigthink — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 03:06:47 +0100

I think that Pinker's answer is quite empowering. He was simply focusing on the simple meaning of influence. Parenting has a sort of an intertwined relationship for as to how our personality develops. At times we embrace the influence from our parents because they lead us to self-realization. That is not to say that without them it's not possible or common. Many secular environments and cultures today reinforce staples that "romanticizes the impact parenting", but the same would not apply in some form of a Utopian society would it? Which have existed and for all i know, they still do. I think babies would live!

Comment on: Re: Do we romanticize the impact of parenting?

Bigthink — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 02:31:55 +0100

The argument in this video is a bit simplistic compared to his books. I see several comments are "disagreeing" with the video and presenting objections to positions Pinker doesn't really hold.

He doesn't deny that abusive parents can screw up their children, what he is saying is that there is significant deminishing returns in parental investment. As long as the home is relatively stable, the peer group is far more important.

There's little question that this is true, and I can recommend his book "the blank slate" to anyone who wants to read the popular science version of the argument.
(It also has lots of references of course)

Sadly, anecdotal evidence of happy family life leading to good development suffers from the fairly big problem of not being able to make a comparison with a less inspiring alternative and is not able to distinguish between biological and environmental factors.

You need to study the differences between biological and adopted children in the same home or identical twins separated at birth to be able to separate nature from nurture.

Comment on: Re: Do we romanticize the impact of parenting?

Bigthink — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 23:07:21 +0100

I completely disagree with this line to rhetoric. What would professor Pinker think about the parental influence of an abusive father or mother and how that affects the upbringing of a child? To say that the influence your parents have on you is overrated is exclusionary to the effects that negative (or positive) influences have on the human psyche. How would a grown person who is insecure or afraid of the world say that the fact that his father beat him repeatedly as a child or tortured him as a child has nothing to do with who he is as a person now in his current state? Maybe that same person instead of being afraid used that same childhood negative experience and turned it into being a powerful successful individual but there again, we see how a parent's influence and/or upbringing either way affects a person, somehow shapes them, influences them. Regardless of whether it's in a negative or positive way, the influence is there. I'm very surprised this thought comes from a Harvard psychology professor.

Comment on: Re: Do we romanticize the impact of parenting?

Bigthink — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:22:48 +0100

I think Dr. Pinker is going soft on this subject so as not to offend those who want to believe in the nuclear family of our ancestors. Some also want to believe Geo. Washington chopped down a cherry tree and presented his buttocks to his father for just punishment. Some want to believe Carter's Little Liver Pills help relieve their backache. Some believe avoiding milk and eggs will help them live longer.

What science is revealing is that we have existed, since we became human, in an ever more complicated fantasy. We started with a feather or leaf garland or necklace for the leader and wound up with a gold cloisonn� Pope. We started with warpaint and ended up with officers laden in gold braid, stars, screaming eagles, lightning bolts, arrows, colored ribbons and medals to the point it must be hard for them to walk in full dress. While the world politic is descending into chaos and the environment is going to hell, we just turn up the iPod and jog for longevity. While the ocean is starting to rot, we try to decide if we want the tofu soft or firm in our miso. While the atmosphere loads up with methane and carbon dioxide, we sit watching steroid saturated "athletes" compete for aggregate sums in the billions of dollars. And park our SUVs in front of the house for the neighbors to envy. (If they don't have one too.)

Science is reality but it is too real for cultures that evolved with a firm sense of entitlement. A culture that believes they are somehow born with inalienable rights as human beings, completely overlooking the fact that only in societies such as ours, strong enough to have taken these rights from the ruling class and only while strong enough to maintain them is there any concept of rights at all.

I admire Pinker's motivation but what chance does a few rational voices have crying out in the midst of the hurricane that is pop-culture mixed in with old wives tales and myriad religions? I can only hope to Zeus he can turn it around.

Comment on: Re: Do we romanticize the impact of parenting?

Bigthink — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:39:43 +0100

I both agree and disagree. I agree that people romanticize the impact that their parents had on them, but I disagree that we should discount the influence of parentage beyond conception all together. The environment affects the expression of a number of genetic predispositions in a very "real" way, and parents play a big part in shaping the environment in which the child grows up.

As someone else said, it would be nice if Dr. Pinker provided specific scientific references to support his thoughts. Or, if he qualified his statement by limiting its application to learning of language and culture, I would be more inclined to agree with it.

Comment on: Re: Do we romanticize the impact of parenting?

Bigthink — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:58:49 +0100

Mr. Pinker says that he thinks that people often attribute far too much to parental upbringing, that data suggests that the effect of parents in shaping intellect and personality might be overrated and that the scientist in him warns against his tendency to tell a story to explain who he is today. Fair enough, and then he goes on to advise that his parents want him to be true to himself.

I respectfully disagree with him. My own experiences as a daughter, then an aunt and now a mother have shown me that parental influence is the single greatest factor in how a person is able to process information and whether or not they have the tools, both emotional and intellectual to use the received information to their benefit. I credit my upbringing to my environment and the people in it and this did affect me and peron I've turned out to be. Naturally, from a rather arbitrary point, let's say 19 years of age, a person usually has the wherewithal to turn past adversity into positives and decide if they want to benefit emotionally and spiritually from positive experiences so we must also consider our personal power going forward from this point. At anywhere from 25 to 40 yrs. of age, we can take a step back and hopefully be objective about what we've done right or wrong and take responsibility for it.

Mr. Pinker's parents clearly have the ability to understand their children and accept them as fellow human beings first, knowing that if their son had followed a non-scientific path they would have felt exactly the same way about him and again requested that he not be concerned about flattering them as parents. Parents mostly care about their kids being and staying healthy and happy. A person who might say they raised themselves, however, could be referring to a number of different aspects; physical, intellectual, etc., but the person that held him when he cried or picked him up when he fell as a toddler hard-wired his brain with the information that he was worth taking good care of and perhaps that enabled him to take good care of himself when he needed to. The language barriers and difficulties a person experiences are a part of the adversity one lives through but must certainly not be the prominent aspect of that life. When I think of the astounding bravery it must take for a person to come to an entirely foreign country and raise a family under those circumstances, I am humbled. I don't think that Mr. Pinker was casting his grandparent's in a negative light and he must also feel fortunate regarding the people who came before him and paved the way for him, whether he believes he's been influenced or not.

Comment on: Re: Do we romanticize the impact of parenting?

Bigthink — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 02:59:03 +0100

This idea is tempting, and I sincerely believe there is more scientific data to back up such claims. The only obstacle for my embracing such thinking is I would have to concede the demographic make-up up our prison system be based on inferior genes contributed at conception. One could make the point that the community/peer group the prisoners grew up in was to blame. Of course, the counter point would be who contributed the genes for the peer group?

Comment on: Re: Do we romanticize the impact of parenting?

Bigthink — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 02:56:15 +0100

Take a baby. Place him/her in a warm room. Feed it.
But don't hold it, don't talk to it, don't love it.
Be clinical.
How long will it live?

Comment on: Re: Do we romanticize the impact of parenting?

Bigthink — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:03:39 +0100

PeterArvai: Read "The Nurture Assumption" by Judith Rich Harris. Her work really influenced the way I think about developmental psychology and socialization.

Comment on: Re: Do we romanticize the impact of parenting?

Bigthink — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:51:11 +0100

Depressing that it seems that parents can only affect children in a negative way:

i.e. alcohol during pregnancy, drop on head, or deprivation of essential needs.

Comment on: Re: Do we romanticize the impact of parenting?

Bigthink — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:00:34 +0100

I suppose one example, from science, would be studies of identical twins separated at birth. (see work of Psychiatrist Peter Neubauer.)

Comment on: Re: Do we romanticize the impact of parenting?

Bigthink — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 07:22:08 +0100

Pinker makes the point that communal education has a substantial influence on immigrants. I wonder how much credit we give to parents for this type of learning because, arguably, PARENTS are the ones who ALLOW their children to engage in these experiences.

Comment on: Re: Do we romanticize the impact of parenting?

Bigthink — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 21:30:05 +0100

It would be great with some more concrete examples from science