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Some interviews should just never take place.
Take the recent exchange between the beyond-out there Kathryn Jean Lopez, she who makes Michele Bachmann look rational, and George Mason University professor and author of Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think Bryan Caplan on Lopez’s National Review Online.
I consider myself a pretty solid reader, and I had to print …
… the interview out and make notes on it to gain any sort of clarity. Any sort of clarity.
And I’m still not sure that’s much.
After prefacing the (I assume verbatim) interview with a description of Caplan as “the anti-Tiger mom” and sharing his bottom line to “Calm down and have more kids”, Lopez launches into a Q and A that’s all over the place and, quite frankly, left me far less likely to read Caplan’s book than I would have otherwise been (and I should mention that I read everything, from toilet paper wrappers to teabags).
I parsed the interview down into four central themes, which made it a little bit easier to follow. I should also note that each of these areas could potentially be worthy of further delving and might actually lead to interesting, intelligent dialogue. It’s kind of a shame that it didn’t happen here
1. The influence of parenting on who or what children become as adults is way overrated.
CAPLAN: Once you accept your limited long-run influence on your child, you can focus on enjoying your journey and living every day together to the fullest.
I 100% disagree with Caplan’s assessment here. I think parenting has a largely significant impact on a growing child. I have seen evidence of this in ten years’ worth of teaching, and I’ve seen it with my own children and their peers.
I mean, is Caplan going to tell the dog-shit-on-the-doorstep lady to toke up, relax, have more kids? That’s freaking scary!
Even Lopez realized that this was a controversial spin, asking Caplan if he exaggerated “the effect of parenting on adult outcomes” as ranging “from small to zero”.
He claimed there are stats to back him up, but as my statistician ex-husband once told me, it’s incredibly easy to skew data, to design an experiment that is going to give you the result you want. As one of many examples given to me by the ex, if you focus your data pool on enough color-blind subjects, you can prove with statistic soundness that the color yellow does not exist.
I can tell you from personal experience, some crazy things transpired in the home I grew up in. To paraphrase The Doors, no one there got out unscathed, and the fears and neuroses my sibs and I carry around (not to mention the sense of humor and almost compulsive need to help others) can be tied directly to my parents.
And that’s not blame.
I love both of my parents very much and appreciate both the good and the bad because it was the whole childrearing package that made me who I am today … and I pretty much like myself now. Which actually segues nicely into the next … well, point, I guess.
2. Adults in therapy are wrong to blame their parents for what’s gone wrong in their lives.
CAPLAN: Parents do have a substantial effect on the parent-child relationship — how their kids feel about and remember them. But parents have little or no effect on overall happiness or personality. If people in therapy had grown up with very different families, they would probably be blaming that family for all their mistakes and bad habits, too.
This is actually widely recognized in modern therapy. There’s been a big shift away from “Tell me about your childhood” to “Tell me about the problems you face right now.”
Is it just me or is the gist of who you are, your values and morals and such, formed when you’re a young child?
When I was a little kid, around five or six, my parents bought me a brand new, very expensive winter jacket. The first day I wore it to school, I noticed a little girl on the playground without a jacket, and I gave it to her. For keeps.
I am still that person.
And—true story—I got kicked out of therapy. In a last ditch effort to save my marriage, my ex and I agreed to try marriage counseling. Well, if one of you goes to every session drunk, it becomes pretty evident that the marriage can’t be saved, but I liked the therapist and figured that if I’d ever needed individual therapy, now was the time.
After the second session, he said, “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you totally have your shit together. You can keep coming if you want—and I know your insurance covers it, so it has nothing to do with money—but you really don’t need therapy.”
Which I thought was funny. I’m going, “My ex-husband hit me when I was holding our daughter. I’m homeless. I’m still trying to come to terms with things that my parents did. I was freaking raped …”
He said, “And you have excellent coping skills. Again, I’m happy to continue working with you, but just know that, in my professional opinion, it’s a waste of time and money. If your support system breaks down, I’ll be happy to see you.”
But before he sent me packing (and I have been back to see him a few times … he was evidently right that I just needed an “on-call therapist”), he listened to me rant and rave about my parents’ atrocities, and then he said something very interesting.
“You are who you are because of your parents—the good and the bad.”
I think that might be the most useful thing anyone ever said to me. It let me put a lot of things into perspective, allowed me to look at the gifts given to me by my parents that made their transgressions balance out.
To assume that the formative years do not, clay-like, sculpt the psyche is just ridiculous, Dr. Caplan. Sorry, but it’s true.
3. The cost of kids is overrated, irrelevant, and should not be an excuse to stop procreating.
LOPEZ: You write: “Costs fall: The older kids get, the easier they are to care for.” But clothes and a phone and a car and college . . . are you saying we give our kids too much?
CAPLAN: I was mostly thinking of the time commitment. But you don’t need to feel guilty about failing to shower your kids with luxuries. Life itself is your greatest gift to your children. And mild deprivation is no big deal. Kids adopted by rich families are as successful in school and career as kids adopted by lower-middle-class families.
You know, kids that sit alone on the bus while everyone else is listening to iPods and texting on cell phones and talking about their upcoming family cruise … they’re not necessarily going to buy the “life itself is the greatest gift” argument.
Just saying.
And time commitment is a serious consideration before going into rabbit mode.
I feel guilty sometimes for not being able to spend enough time with my kids period because I have to work a full-time job (that often morphs into a much-more-than-full-time job), but it goes beyond that.
It’s kind of hard sometimes to balance time spent with both of my daughters. I cannot imagine trying to make sure that I brought one to the park as often as I brought the other one shopping and, given the ten year gap in their ages, it’s not always easy to find an activity that appeals to both.
I guess the Duggars get around this by making sure each child has an age peer, but surely those kids must miss out on one-on-one time with parents, which I believe is vitally important.
4. According to Caplan, his book has received positive feedback from a variety of audiences.
CAPLAN: The patterns of resistance interest me the most. The only really hostile critics are (a) the child-free and (b) philosophic anti-natalists (people who think creating life is wrong). Environmentalists have mostly ignored me, and feminists have been fairly supportive–as I think they should be. After all, moms pay most of the cost of over-parenting.
I’m neither child-free nor an “anti-natalist” using Caplan’s definition (but I am pro-choice, so I suppose that would make me an anti-natalist in his opinion), but I think this is pretty much a load of crap … and the interview itself confused the hell out of me, not gonna lie.
What are your thoughts on this?
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I’m more likely to agree with point 3. I don’t think that the argument “your kids will feel left out because everyone else has an iPod and/or a smart phone” is a good reason to claim you “have” to have things beyond food, clothing, shelter, access to education and medical care, and love. That being said, those can end up being expensive enough.
Also–the federal government designed FAFSA assuming it is the parent(s)’ responsibility to pay for college. It’s almost impossible to be seen as an independent under the age of 25 unless you do not speak to your parents at all.
i think parents should love their children and provide for them within their limitations. if you dont have enough money to buy them an ipod without having to sacrifice something else…then dont buy them an ipod. priorities. society is not going to manipulate me into thinking he will be uncool and ipodless. using that reasoning i am better off encouraging he/she joins a sports club, which I sure will if he/she is inclined to do so. about the whole present parenting ordeal I do believe parents parent their children and that childhood is an important part of the formation of you childs morals and values. i will however not be paranoid over my parenting skills, i will be happy and that will show off through my actions towards them and hopefully make them happy and free as well. love above all i say, the rest will fall together as it comes.
I think that I would be more or less the same person who I am today if I had had different parents. If I had had a better stepfather or if my mother had never remarried, I would certainly be happier and more function — but I do not consider PTSD to be a part of who I AM any more than I consider a scar to be a “body part.” My interest in justice (actual justice, not just…court systems) is certainly heightened because of my experiences, though.
But that is not true for a lot of people. I know so many people who are so much like their parents, or so much UN-like their parents, that it cannot be coincidental.
As for the second point, I would NEVER have children if I could not afford to give them a decent life. I do not mean that they would have to have a Gossip Girl lifestyle, of course. But just as I would not raise children in a tiny town with only a few thousand residents, and just as I would not raise children in a violent neighborhood, I would not raise children unless I was able to provide for them.
I would not invite a friend to stay the night unless I could provide that friend with a reasonable place to sleep — I certainly would not CREATE a person for whom I could not adequately care. And that means college — it’s not a luxury. Some people can get by without going to college, but under no circumstances would I have children if I would not be able to pay for them to go to college.
That said, I doubt many people, no matter how well off they are, have the entire college fund already set aside before they conceive. You have 17-18 years to save for that.
Many people, including some who were raised in such a situation, think that a town of a few thousand people is the perfect place to raise a child. Your preferences are not universal truths.
by the time a person is 18, their parents shouldn’t be providing everything for them. The number of entitled kids I’ve met whose parents pay for them to wander through the humanities drinking and partying on passable grades is sickening.
A determined person can pay for their own schooling through careful selection of schools and achievement scholarships.
I think it’s awesome of a parent to contribute money for higher education, but I think it’s actually better for a student to have to put some money towards it themselves as well and get an idea as to the worth.
I pay for my own college… I work full time and I go to school full time. I don’t think I have a miserable life because of that.
Nobody cares.
People shouldn’t blame their parents for what goes wrong in their adult lives. Once you’re an adult, you don’t get to blame your parents anymore – it’s time to take responsibility for your life.
It is appropriate to understand the effect that your upbringing has on your life. It is reasonable to recognise the things your parents did that have benefitted or harmed you.
But as an adult, it is no longer an *excuse*.
Yes, maybe your parents never taught you the value of a dollar, and you never learned to save. that may have been the cause, but as an adult, it’s now up to you to figure out a way to learn it and do better.,
Maybe your parents spoiled you rotten so you expect to have the newest shiniest everything and that got you into debt as a 25-year-old not making a lot of money. But as an adult, it’s now your fault and your responsibility to fix.
As a child, I went to standard public school where I was unchallenged, bored out of my mind, and didn’t need to pay attention nor study when a quick read of the material was sufficient to do excellently on tests. This became a real problem when I was 18 before I ran into the first learning topic that actually challenged me such that I had to work through it a bit (calculus).
I can say that it is my parents fault for not moving me into an education stream where I would get to learn at a reasonable rate that would challenge me so to learn how to struggle with a subject, and study, and practice at an appropriately young age, instead of 18 when it’s much more difficult.
But you know what? That doesn’t matter. It may be background, but it’s not an excuse. As an adult, I recognised that whatever got me to that point, it was my responsibility to deal with it. Crying ‘my parents never taught me how’ doesn’t fix anything. Accepting where you are and taking personal responsibility to do what you need to is what being an adult is about.
As long as you’re blaming your parents, you’re refusing to grow up and act like an adult.
I read through the points and I think it’s obvious that any person who backs his opinions already have the same outlook and are trying to justify their actions and/or lack of responsibility in child rearing. I am a pro-life, no child having feminist so maybe I am just proving his point by saying that though…lol
Mostly I just wanted to comment and say Thank You for sharing so much of yourself in explaining your points of view!! I come to this site occasionally and reading this has give me a much broader respect for the person writing the articles.
Thank you :-)