I feel like this article is good, on the verge of great, then makes cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason. Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
The rest is spot on. I became a parent before I was ready, and man, they are little sponges. They learn everything you do, everything you say, embarrassingly so. My 5 year old would lay on the couch to 'rest her back' like me. She'd say weird country sayings I learned from my own Dad, like 'kneehigh to a cricket.' I had a habit of saying 'dicking with' to mean 'messing with' until she got scolded by a teacher at the ripe old age of 7.
The hardest part for parents today seems to be putting their phone down. It's what the kid and Mom have fought about forever, then applied to me. It's so easy to lose yourself in your social media, work, reading, etc. and kids are super receptive to it. But not as that effort, but as having a parent who stares at their phone unattentively. Our kid made her own 'phone' out of cardboard as a child, pretending to read and chat on it. That struck me deeply.
I never had social media, but as a voracious reader still find myself falling into the trap. Kids notice. Kids today have it harder because of that. My parents didn't have the Internet, they created the world we lived in and tailored it to us. I think that's incredibly rare today.
Now she's 13, knows it all, and doesn't want to be picked up anymore. And I tell you, I wish I never had a smartphone at all.
I'm going to quote the paragraph you're responding to so that those just reading the comments can see what it actually says:
> The marshmallow test also doesn’t account for cultural differences. In some cultures, waiting is baked into daily life. Think about Japan, where kids are often taught to wait quietly for meals or gifts. Compare that to the US, where instant gratification is practically a way of life. These cultural norms shape how kids approach situations like the marshmallow test. It’s not just about personality; it’s about the world they live in.
That's it. That's the entire quote about the effect of culture.
I see no mention of race or location—I see an argument that "the world they live in" affects children's ability to wait, and that culture is an important aspect of the world that kids live in.
Given that this is the actual text you're responding to, I'm not actually sure you disagree with them, because you go on to point out that smartphones are a dangerous component of modern culture.
> I see an argument that "the world they live in" affects children's ability to wait, and that culture is an important aspect of the world that kids live in
Followup studies on the marshmallow test also showed that how well kids do depends on whether they trust adults. In less stable environments, kids learn that adults don’t (or cannot) keep their word. They simply do not believe the researcher who says there will be 2 marshmallows later.
Better take 1 marshmallow now than risk losing even that one. If your life experience thusfar shows this is a more likely outcome.
Culture comparisons are a notoriously touchy topic. For some people, the topic itself is a taboo. I believe that's why the poster you're replying to had that reaction. For others, it's a topic to discuss and learn from.
It is important that we stop taking people who treat this topic as a taboo seriously at all
This modern mentality of "all cultures are equal and valid and none are superior to any other" is just ridiculous
Culture is something we are always looking to improve on. In this way, we are comparing our existing culture against hypothetical future cultures and deciding that one of them is more desirable
If we can compare a real culture with a hypothetical culture, then we can certainly compare two real cultures using similar criteria
Yes but these comparisons of real cultures become very gross very fast.
Japanese culture is orderly, neat, autonomous and their children are taught to wait at an early age. That's awesome! We should emulate Japan, clearly their culture is superior. Nevermind the salary-man trope, misogyny, Hikikomori, and rigidity that comes with it.
Instead of thinking about cultures in terms of ranking, try to understand the history of why a culture is a certain way and appreciate why other cultures are not like that.
We don’t need to “rank” cultures to recognize that individual aspects of culture are better adapted to current environments.
My dad always says that “Bangladeshis don’t know how to name kids.” We don’t have surnames, but instead two given names. And everyone uses a nickname anyway that’s unrelated to the legal names. That is just inefficient and unwieldy in a modern world where social circles are larger than a village. So I have my dad’s last name and so do my kids. None of us like the name and it has no historical value but it makes things more efficient going forward.
My parents adopted the western practice and gave us his last name, which he doesn’t share with anyone else in his family. It’s Arabic not Hebrew, but I imagine the words are related.
My wife’s last name is in the Domesday book, and they have extensive record of their family’s activities in the U.S.—which is a cool thing you can do when you have surnames! I feel somewhat guilty that the west coast line of the name will die out in favor of a name that has no family significance to anyone, but oh well.
I think this is a good example demonstrating why it becomes taboo: If you reduce cultural differences into a "good/bad" or similar simplification, then the comparison loses value, and triggers defensive responses.
Yeah, we can definitely judge anyone's behavior, we just should not do it blindly and we can despite or love someone for their actions, too, like why not? I despise cheaters, but I do not care, it is their life.
I'm probably further left than most people you've met, and even I've come around to the idea that cosmopolitanism isn't the zenith of culture, but the negation of it.
If all cultures are forcibly considered equal, one corollary to that is that a culture itself can also never improve, or fail, because then a comparison to itself from a different age would also be forcibly considered to be equal.
In that spirit, I welcome your dissertation on how the Germany of 2024 is equal to the Germany of 1944.
This is a White America thing and it is why we are in the situation we are in as a country but people want to pretend that race and culture doesn't play any role in anything. It does. You don't need to feel bad about it. Just acknowledge that it is a thing.
Science still backs a genetic component for things like happiness and IQ, which unlike race is not a social construct and yet can still effect things like social behavior and cultural adaptations to the environment.
That genetic component is between parents and children, not between neighbours who serendipitously share the same skin colour.
happiness and IQ, which unlike race is not a social construct
Which one of those is not a social construct, you'd say? Happiness -- which relies on self-reporting, or IQ -- for which a person can change their score by 10-20 points by studying test preps?
depression is based on self reported information, is that a social construct? anyway my point is that personality predisposition has a genetic component.
> In 2003, Phase 1 of the Human Genome Project (HGP) demonstrated that humans populating the earth today are on average 99.9% identical at the DNA level, there is no genetic basis for race, and there is more genetic variation within a race than between them.
Right, there is .1 % variation in genetics which, although seems like small number, manages create differences that lead to social effects. no correlation with race required, not surprising really since race is self chosen and non specific.
The point is that race is entirely made up (that's what a social construct is) and can change in an instant, so trying to lock it down by calling it a "White America" thing is wrong.
That race isn't biological isn't really up for debate, scientifically. You can believe that scientific consensus is too "woke" or has a systemic bias against the idea or whatever, but the consensus is soundly at "race is not biological".
I'm personally conservative in my political views, but I don't think that means I must reject scientific consensus.
These are awful sources, and they clearly aren't scientific, but are expressions of opinion. Wish casting, even. They're playing the old cynical same word games that are required to hold this position:
"Modern genetics has established that the biological basis of most phenotypic traits typically associated with race, such as skin color and hair texture, has demonstrated that they transcend ancestry across vast geographic distances spanning continents."
The fact that the above is also true of genes that cross species lines is, presumably, not an argument that 'species' is a purely social construct with no foundation in biology.
Another asserts that humans can't be divided into subspecies, ergo race doesn't exist. That is not science, it's wordplay.
Populations of humans were separated for millennia with very little intermixing. These populations diverged genetically, to the degree that the descendants of one population can easily be visually distinguished from one another. These groups have fuzzy edges, but they are obviously, undeniably rooted in biological reality.
The NIH is not a scientific source? The Human Genome Project isn't a scientific source? The journal literally called Science? Duke University? Science Direct? The American Medical Association? The Experimental Physiology Journal?
That's a tough thing to read on HN, I have to be honest.
The NIH site is hosting an editorial. An editorial from what appears to be the journal of Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery. No, it is not a valid source in support of your claim. The fact that you not only shared it but defended it, purely based on the hosting URL, is... revealing.
How can you cite the human genome project as evidence of the supposed a-biological nature of race? How is it possible that you can believe this, while also understanding that 23andMe can not only tell your ancestors continent of origin (a rough analog for race), but their specific region?
If you bothered to read these articles critically (instead of turning off your brain in response to a specious appeal to authority) you would see that they don't even deny that racial populations are genetically distinct. They are discernible in purely biological terms, which by definition makes them biological. The desire to present race as non-biological is purely political/ethical and not scientific, is why their arguments stoop to semantic games and emotional appeals.
You won't actually respond to the substance of my comment, because you don't want to think about this topic. I get it. It's deeply taboo, and we are hardwired not to question taboos. Think about it anyway!
They absolutely deny race exists, you just seem to want to equate genetic heritability with race.
Which genetic markers constitute a black person? Which constitute a white person? You clearly think such is the case, so I’m curious to understand how your definition of race functions.
The NIH article you seem to dislike has this as its opening paragraph:
> In 2019, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists issued a statement on biological aspects of race, concluding that “pure races, in the sense of genetically homogenous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past.” The statement continues: “... The only living species in the human family, Homo sapiens, has become a highly diversified global array of populations. The geographic pattern of genetic variation within this array is complex, and presents no major discontinuity. Humanity cannot be classified into discrete geographic categories with absolute boundaries... Partly as a result of gene flow, the hereditary characteristics of human populations are in a state of perpetual flux. Distinctive local populations are continually coming into and passing out of existence.”
How you could deny this as not the scientific consensus, or not a full rejection of race as a biological concept fascinates me.
> Which genetic markers constitute a black person? Which constitute a white person? You clearly think such is the case, so I’m curious to understand how your definition of race functions.
The races are visually distinguishable. This is possible because there are genetic (i.e. biological) differences between the groups, which are expressed as differences in skin color, hair color, eye shape, etc. These genes aren't what defines race per se, they're merely proof that race--commonly understood in terms of membership in a geographically defined population--cannot be said to be some arbitrary social distinction with no basis in biology.
The paragraph you cite is a rhetorical slight of hand. They argue that that "pure races... do not exist". But nobody argues that "pure races" exist. This is the strawman fallacy in its most basic form.
I'm equally fascinated by your position! After a bit of thought, I might understand where we're getting mixed up.
It's possible that our disagreement comes down to a difference in what we mean when we say that race is/isnt "a biological concept". If the differences between races are insignificant compared to those between genus or species (I have no idea if this is true for all species distinctions, but i'll concede the point), and there is no existing concept in biology to account for such trifling differences as our racial differences, the it can be reasonably asserted that "race is not a biological concept". Another way to say this is "there are biological (genetic) differences between human racial populations, but they are so small that there is no analogous concept in biology/taxonomy."
Thus defined, the idea that "race is not a biological concept" is a narrow and purely semantic assertion. The problem arises when you conflate this semantic assertion with unrelated ideas like "race is meaningless" or "race isn't real". It was your use of the phrase in this latter manner that prompted my response.
Original comment:
> This is a White America thing and it is why we are in the situation we are in as a country but people want to pretend that race and culture doesn't play any role in anything.
Your response:
> It's not a White America thing to reject race as a biological concept, it's consistent with scientific study.
So you're saying the words "race is not a biological concept", but are you saying it in the narrow semantic sense in which it is true? It doesn't seem like it--an assertion about biology nomenclature would make little sense in context! It sounds like what you meant was something like "race is meaningless." But that is an entirely different assertion which (as I have been vainly arguing in previous comments) is not proven nor directly asserted by the papers you linked.
I suppose I'm trying to say that even though "race isn't a biological concept" is true in a narrow sense, it doesnt support your (apparent) assertion that race is meaningless.
Ah yes, this is what I presumed was taking place, I just needed you to say it.
Race is absolutely real, in that it is a social construct. Race is not, as you say, a biological concept. There are no sets of genetic traits that mark someone as of one race or another, but race has been loosely defined by various groups at various times to include traits that are heritable, such as skin tone and facial structure. Almost always, the group defining race are doing so in an effort to subjugate or stratify others in contrast with themselves, so usually racial classifications are done ignorantly and hatefully.
But, as a biological concept that can be defined, you're right that race does not exist. Though you argue this is semantics and therefore unimportant, which I find odd.
You don't consider semantic issues to be important. Wild! Words seem very important to me and to the people I talk to, I've not really ever met someone in my life who didn't think what words meant was important.
You could have done that without replying, and in my experience the folks who feel the need to announce their departure from a conversation are the ones who tend to be the trolls…
Doubly so when the topic is race and the position is that race is biological (you’re not even the first, sadly).
This is a bit complicated and I'm going to do a bad job of explaining it.
The argument is that there are population clines, which are biological, and then those population clines are divided into races by choosing to ignore or use specific traits at a certain point along the cline. This choice isn't biological, which makes race a social construct.
The underlying population clines aren't always along the same gradient. Skin colour and physical size might be gradients that run a different way across a continent; skin colour might change north to south to north again due to sun intensity, while physical size might change based on altitude and terrain. There's no disagreement that both skin colour and size are partly biological, but the decision to use one over the other to differentiate races is social.
All the things that differentiate race are genetic, sure, but which things are used to categorize people into race is socially constructed. Why do people base racial categories on skin color but not, say, finger length or whether you can wiggle your ears? Biology can't tell you that.
The "asleep" lie is that "black" means anything genetically. Every trait you want to attribute to "black people" is also found in people who wouldn't qualify as "black" culturally.
Location: "Think about Japan", "Compare that to the US" - this is a pretty straightforward comparison by location about culture based on location.
It presumes a bunch and I'm grunching (and showing my age by using that term), and I'm not trying to disagree with you . . . just highlight the comparison you said you could not see.
No, that isn't right. It's the culture differences, not locations, that are being compared here. Location is only correlated to those differences; being in Japan vs being in the US doesn't guarantee the comparison.
> I feel like this article is good, on the verge of great, then makes cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason.
Is it really for no real reason, though?
> Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
You might not be aware, but different cultural backgrounds do result in different life experiences. You might have even noticed that that's the whole point of the article. What you try to downplay as "race or location" is actually different social environments and contexts where kids grow. They are used as concrete examples lending support for the hypothesis. It is a behavioral issue that is determined by each one's experience living in a specific social circle with specific social norms.
Some people get really hung up on rigid thinking around "correlation is not causation" and throw the baby out with the bathwater, bending over backwards to avoid leaning on correlation at all. They focus on strict causal-logic, to the point of ignoring the truth value of of statistical reasoning under uncertainty.
It's completely fine to point out societal norms. Neither were particularly offensive.
But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience.'
I'm not at all against pointing out or even flexing cultural differences, but they don't matter at all when raising a child(other than of course, if you teach your child by that example.)
I have a math brain. I've been teaching her math since she could speak, mainly because she seemed to want to impress me and it's how she would get my attention. Should she instead be bad at math because the Chinese value that more? Should I have stuck to teaching her big macs and bald eagles instead?
You're applying the math brain wrong by using the "single counterexample invalidates whole article" mode, rather than just inserting the words "most" or "on average" or "in general" where necessary.
A specific kid will have individual behaviors. A group of kids will have behaviors that can be averaged. Different samples will have different outcomes.
I know sociology has poor reproducibility, but cultural and behavioral differences are definitely a thing.
I used to have a Korean colleague who'd moved to the UK specifically because he did not want his kids growing up in the Korean school system. They will always be ethnically and "genetically" Korean, and I would assume he would teach them the language, but he wanted them to be less culturally Korean because he thought they would be happier that way.
I've got a buddy who's dad is an American who was stationed in Korea, and his mom is a Korean citizen. He talks a lot about the cultural clashes he faced growing up and having trouble feeling like he fit as either a Korean or an American. It's clear the two different cultures really pulled at him strongly from two different places.
There’s been a phrase in the South Asian diasporas for a while that captures this idea. ABCD [0] where “C” reflects the confusion (aka two way value pulling). As a person with first generation immigrant parents who raised us in the rural Midwest of America, the C is a real feeling.
My wife is Korean, I met her over there doing some Samsung stuff, she was very frank with me that if she didn't marry me she would probably have married someone like me because she wanted to be able to have a family outside of Korean culture. I love my wife, I have a wonderful marriage and I learn so much from her daily, I feel quite blessed.
There are only three factors that could really influence it:
1. The way you were raised.
2. Your genes.
3. Some metaphysical explanation.
I'm going to set #3 aside for a bit because there's no way to test that hypothesis. That leaves the way you were raised and genes.
What correlates with the way you were raised? Culture. Your parents' culture is tightly correlated with the way they raised you, and when speaking about groups and averages it's fair to say that in general affects outcomes. So if you take this explanation, TFA is not wrong to say that culture would affect outcomes.
What correlates with your genes? Your ancestry, which is (imperfectly) correlated with race. So if you take this explanation, OP would not have been wrong to say that on average race would affect outcomes. (That said, I don't think they actually do—they strictly mention culture!)
You reject that peoples personalities are shaped by their environment? What if instead of focusing on location but instead focused on time period. Do you think there would be behavioral differences between a child born to a middle class family now compared to one 1,000 years ago? What about 10,000 years ago?
Rejecting the premise that the environment shapes who we are and the type of people we become sounds extremely ignorant of the realities of history.
> You reject that peoples personalities are shaped by their environment
No, I reject that you can tell anything meaningful about the environment by country. Or even state. Or even neighborhood!
Japan itself could fit into the US 25 times by area.
Are kids raised in SF the same as those raised in Alabama? Or NY vs Phoenix? It'd be insane to make any generalities about a country so large and diverse, IMO.
Heck, kids in Loudoun county grow up completely differently than kids in Baltimore county. What does that tell us about the US, if anything?
I'm guessing Japan is the same, but I'm not educated enough to speak to it.
It looks like you're rejecting every concept of averages, or probabilities, or statistics, or generalization because you feel slighted by the resulting comparison.
When considering the US as a whole then Loudoun county will get the appropriate weight in the resulting number. If you zoom out to see the map of the world and no longer see your street, it doesn't mean the map is wrong. It's perfect for the purpose of visualizing the world.
I'll bet you're fine with "the US people are richer than the Burundi" or "Dutch people are taller than US people". These also don't tell you anything about the short Dutch people or ultra-poor in the US. But you accept them because you don't feel slighted by them.
Or else you reject the premise because you zoomed in on a place which is not right on that average so the whole concept gets thrown out the window.
It has become fashionable among Very Online people who obsess about social justice to loudly reject generalizations.
They took the very reasonable "you're not allowed to talk about black people liking watermelons" and applied it to every statement about every minority, disadvantaged or not, ethnically defined or not, whether offense was taken or not. Generalization was relabelled a microaggression, and avoiding them (or calling them out) became an urgent imperative, whether or not you're a member of the group in question. Whether or not you take offense personally, it became a Duty To Police this sort of speech.
This alienates one from the vast majority of humanity, which uses generalizations about people and things every day as a cognitive & social necessity. It makes it impossible to communicate or organize, because some sort of nitpicking about social equity, even purely semantic equity, is always prioritized over topical action in SJW-oriented leftist conversation. The rally for women's rights is cancelled because the committee spent all day deciding whether to use the term "women" or some alternative.
It also makes one less effective as a thinker, because there are statements that you can make about cultures and people's background that are statistically very likely, or which indicate a very real difference in the center of different bell curves.
Great post. The increasingly insane purity tests that the far left levy upon others they deign as less woke (in the original sense of the word) has gotten completely out of hand. Especially here on HN. Too many times I've seen normal discussion happen and then someone comes along with "Um excuse me can you not use that term because [3 paragraphs of nonsense when one time one person somewhere took offense to said term]". It feels paralyzing. People can't have discussions anymore, especially online. There's always 20 caveats you have to worry about.
Personally I blame autism for much of it but that's another can of worms.
I know this is what you're complaining about, but did you just equate autism and being far left? Do you find that the sort of complaints you are describing come out after you do groupings like that?
To be fair as someone on the far far left we really think of those people as liberals caught up in culture war nonsense with conservatives. Many of us at least in my local community see “woke” as ultimately damaging to what we’re hoping to achieve. While we advocate for marginalized groups, we really generalize everyone (except the bourgeois) together into a working class. This includes conservatives, liberals, trans people, Christians, Jews, whatever.
I know in the US “liberal” is the “radical left” which is unfortunate as hell.
Leftist ideas favor the disadvantaged generally, but they have traditionally discussed economic disadvantage, since money is the primary way we denominate power and implement material change.
This recent "woke" trend originates from leftist impulses in a society where the fall or even moderation of neoliberal capitalism is 'harder to imagine than the end of the world'. A society where Reaganomics has been adopted wholesale by Third Way Democrats who still control the political discourse because that's what effectively fundraises from billionaires. Politicians who try to satiate their political base by promoting diversity initiatives that will make zero dent in the economy or institutions of state. "Social Justice" as explored on Tumblr by people still in university (isolated from economics) is largely orthogonal to that, and it wouldn't be possible for people exposed to more of the diversity of society and the exigencies of life to ruminate on the subject, absent economic concerns.
This is what leftists complain about with the pejorative "liberals", a distinction that half of the country appears to be completely unaware of because every pejorative means the same thing on Fox News.
This tendency to substitute diversity messaging for systemic material solutions appears to have zero appeal left to the American people. No, the American people do not want to send the gender noncomformists to the gas chamber, but if that's all you talk about, it does not add up to a political platform that people vote for. The "Black Lives Matter" protests demanded dramatically reshaping the way criminal justice works, not wearing kente cloth for an afternoon. The last Democratic presidential candidate scrupulously avoided social justice, but they didn't actually substitute any sort of populist left-wing economic ideas because the donors wouldn't allow that.
There are huge variations within a country, but they are far smaller than variations between countries.
It seems to be to be a common failing in the west to underestimate just how big differences are between themselves and other cultures. The two cultures I have lived in, despite being Britain and one of its former colonies (and therefore partially anglophone, similar political system, lots of other influences) are quite substation, and noticeable even in the (heavily westernised) circles I socialise in there. The differences would be even bigger if you compare to an East Asian culture like Japan.
Things that are regarded as fundamental concepts, or universal values are often not share (some values are pretty much human, some are not).
They're really not. Europe is diverse enough that you need to split it into quadrants to decide what countries are relatively similar. Like is Finland similar to Germany from an outside perspective? Yes. Is Finland similar to southern Italy? Absolutely not, you'd be better off comparing southern Italy and latin America, and Finland with Japan. Like seriously, those will have more in common with each other than Finland and southern Italy. People have told me Naples feels like Brazil... which is nothing like Finland, which has the orderliness and cultural restraint of Japan. North European,East European and South European countries are similar to other countries in those same segments of Europe. They are not similar across segments.
"Europe is diverse enough that you need to split it into quadrants to decide what countries are relatively similar"
The same is true for South Asia, but if you look at it from a western perspective you see the similarities.
There are plenty of similarities across Europe. Shared attitudes to sex, politics, religion..... things like freedom of worship and separation of church and state (laws restricting freedom of worship even in secular democracies like India, let alone the Middle East or China), attitudes to sex and sexuality (and ideas and definitions and identities linked to them - although this is changing because of Western influence, historically the idea of people having a fixed sexual orientation is a modern western one, for example)....
I dunno how what you're saying negates my point. I was actually gonna add that the same thing can be said of Asia, which even more so needs to be split into quadrants to find clear similarities in culture.
Did you notice that you just devided kids in Loudoun and Baltimore in 2 groups, giving them as examples of different environments? You do not object to premise, only to granularity of defining environment geographically.
> You do not object to premise, only to granularity of defining environment geographically.
Correct. I just picked those two because of stark differences of two well known areas close to each other. But it can go down to even neighborhood, or even street in said neighborhood.
Sorry if my rambling seems confusing. I'm not against the idea that environment affects children. I'm against broad brush stroke categorization about how different countries behave.
Or even one individual on different days. It should be all chaos and noise and yet it's not because these "general" numbers get translated to a realistic "it's more/less likely" not "it's guaranteed".
You're arguing against comparisons you don't like, or feel make you look worse than others. In other words you want to get to arbitrarily define the brush width presumably based on where you feel you sit in the comparison.
> I'm against broad brush stroke categorization about how different countries behave.
Ok - pick any conservative country (say India or Indonesia). Now tell me that the chances of an average Indonesian woman wearing a bikini to a beach (pretty normal in most Western countries) is same as an average French woman?
Or for a less gender-charged example, chances of an average Saudi eating Pork vs an average American.
>Ok - pick any conservative country (say India or Indonesia). Now tell me that the chances of an average Indonesian woman wearing a bikini to a beach (pretty normal in most Western countries) is same as an average French woman?
The strongest predictor for both the French and the Indonesian is almost certainly going to be the individuals physique and and the second is probably going to be the country and prevailing culture in which the beach is located (i.e. what everyone else is wearing).
This kind of illustrates the point you're trying to disagree with. You can't just look at some sort of demographic based average and shoot from the hip and expect to hit anything.
> The strongest predictor for both the French and the Indonesian is almost certainly going to be the individuals physique
I take it that you have either never been to a beach or the one you have been to is only open to athletes and supermodels.
> the second is probably going to be the country and prevailing culture in which the beach is located (i.e. what everyone else is wearing)
So you haven't had the chance of seeing Indonesian woman wearing full headgear and clothes covering their body having fun at a beach far away from Indonesia? Not joking, they were having a genuinely good time - from direct experience.
The world is much bigger and has far greater variety of people, customs and norms than you can imagine.
>I take it that you have either never been to a beach or the one you have been to is only open to athletes and supermodels.
Have you been to the beach in the last 10yr. All manner of 1-pc swimsuits are arguably the default style for women.
>So you haven't had the chance of seeing Indonesian woman wearing full headgear and clothes covering their body having fun at a beach far away from Indonesia? Not joking, they were having a genuinely good time - from direct experience.
My mistake, I mixed up Indonesia and the Phillipines in my mind. No surprise muslim women will not be wearing bikinis. But the Westerners will also be far more modest in a setting where that is the prevailing default so....
>The world is much bigger and has far greater variety of people, customs and norms than you can imagine.
If looking down one's nose like that is what it takes to be cultured I'm glad I'm not.
This is so wrong that it I don't even know where to start countering it. The average Indian woman will not ever wear a bikini at all, most wouldn't even wear one in a women only swimming pool let alone a mixed beach.
I can't even tell what you're arguing for or against. Every comment seems to defeat itself. I am not trying to be inflammatory, but your statements honestly don't seem to stem from anything other than "think about it bro" and ignorance.
I think their point is that you can not just say "children in china like math" or "children in france will drink wine", because those are stereotypes and there are many examples of children within those countries who do not conform.
They say that there are differences between even children living on two different roads in the same town, and these differences matter more than differences between countries, and therefore we should not make any kind of arguments based on nationality at all.
I disagree though, I do think that there are significant statistical differences growing up between, say, Afghanistan or Sweden. That does not mean that you can make claims about specific children in either country, but you can make generalizations about the population as a whole.
Japan is… well, no. It just doesn’t appear to work that way here. The social conditioning is strong enough that the lane you fall into in life is basically predetermined based on your upbringing (and gender!).
Even at 6 there is a major difference between boys and girls that I just don’t see anywhere else.
The thing is you won’t even realize that’s what’s happening, and you just feel that the way you think is right and proper the rest of your life.
It’s honestly pretty anazing because people can be incrediy dissatisfied with how their neighbors are parayzed by social constraints while being bound a hundred times more strongly influenced by their own expectations.
You don't believe that what parents do has impact on kids? Or, you don't believe that parents in one culture can treat kids differently then parents from culture qirh different values?
It’s all social conditioning. You are socially conditioning your child to be good at math. Good for you. It would be very hard for me to group you together with others and formulate a trend. As we zoom out and evaluate the aggregate picture your outlier datapoint is swallowed up and culture becomes the dominant mediator.
You can reject all you want but your [personal, anecdotal] data point is irrelevant.
It takes a village to raise a child.
[rejecting an analysis because you disagree with the premise is unscientific - this analysis exposes a trend - it does not make a prediction - but gives pointers for further analysis]
(Throwaway as this topic can be inflammatory for those unfamiliar with the literature)
Behavioral patterns and personality traits have been pretty conclusively proven to be genetically inheritable. "Behavioral Genetics and Child Temperament" (Saudino) investigates this, as does "A genome-wide investigation into the underlying genetic architecture of personality traits and overlap with psychopathology" (Priya Gupta, et al).
There's no doubt that nurture and culture play a massive role in one's later personality and behavior as an adult, but it's incorrect to disregard genetics in this conversation. Some people are predisposed to be shy, some people are predisposed to be aggressive. Smart, critical people are able to appreciate genetic differences amongst broad human groups without letting that lead to unsavory viewpoints.
> But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience.
Sorry dude cultural differences are real. When I got married to my American wife, my Bangladeshi mom pulled her aside and said, “you know, we don’t get divorced.”
Since you have a math brain, you can probably conceptualize the concept of statistical distributions, right?
In any discussion of this sort of thing, what people are saying is that different circumstances lead to different distributions in outcome.
Does that really seem surprising to you? To me it would be very surprising if wildly different characteristics turned out to have identical distributions across every metric.
But this constantly gets lost because some people want to ignore that distributions differ, and other people want to ignore that the distribution is not destiny for any individual.
> But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience.'
You are making several jumps in logic to get from A -> B.
Japan has an education system which teaches the importance of certain values, patience and self-discipline among them.
Here is the short-film "Instruments of a Beating Heart" currently on the Oscars shortlist about this very point -
> Should she instead be bad at math because the Chinese value that more?
Not "bad" , but less fully invested...
Maybe?
It's isolating being the only non-Mandarin-speaking family at a math people gathering. It's quite striking in the high-level math community.
I have a math brain as well. But I also have 5 kids, and despite my teaching them very similarly, one of those kids cannot do math at all, another is average, and the remaining three are brilliant at it.
> assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought ...
I agree that it is weird. And I did not read the article. But I would assume that this is not the point it was trying to make when referring to race or location backgrounds.
When remarks like these are made, I would think they usually refer to a neighborhood. For instance, a well-groomed neighborhood at a good location vs. a slum at the outskirts of town, perhaps without electricity or even without running water. The race is mentioned in that context often not because it would have a direct impact. But because there is, unfortunately, a correlation between people living in poor neighborhoods and people of racial minorities.
I would think that the implication then is that a bad neighborhood is one of the factors which drive bad social behavior.
> I'm not at all against pointing out or even flexing cultural differences, but they don't matter at all when raising a child(other than of course, if you teach your child by that example.)
Except they do matter, unless you're going to "raise" a child by locking them in the apartment until they turn 18. Otherwise, as soon as they go to kindergarten[0], it's entirely out of your hands.
They say[1] that minimum viable reproductive unit for homo sapiens is a village. And the corollary to that is, the village will find our child, whether you want it or not, and they will have as much say in their mindset and values as you do. You can influence that, but only so much, and not everywhere all at once[2].
(Also obligatory reminder/disclaimer that group-level statistics are not indicative of any individual's character; individual variance in-group is greater than variance between groups, etc.)
EDIT:
> Should she instead be bad at math because the Chinese value that more? Should I have stuck to teaching her big macs and bald eagles instead?
No, you do you - and I respect you for passing on your interest in maths to your daughter, and I hope it'll stick. The point is, whatever the culture you're embedded in, she will be exposed to its tropes in aggregate. It doesn't mean she'll turn into a stereotype; no one ever does (see the disclaimer above); it's just that when someone doesn't like some aspects of their culture, "shopping for a village" that isn't reputed for those traits is one of the historically tried and true methods of reducing the risk.
EDIT2: To add another personal anecdote, there was a defining moment in my life early on, that I'm certain changed my entire life's trajectory. In my primary school, I ended up in a class with some rather unruly, mischievous kids, under a walking pathology of a teacher; by the time I was 12 and it was time to switch to secondary school, I already picked up on some of the bad behaviors. My mom went through some extraordinary effort to get me placed in a math-profile class[3], despite me not showing much aptitude or interest in sciences, just so I get away from the rascals. It paid off. I may have started as the dumbest kid in the group, but this group wasn't into mischief, and instead was supportive to intellectual pursuits; I ended up befriending a bunch of nerds, and quickly becoming the nerdiest of them all. I can't imagine that happening if I stayed with my primary-school crowd. In fact, they'd probably bully my fledgling interest in programming out of me, so I pretty much owe my entire career and the shape of my life to that one choice by my mom, to move me to a different "village".
--
[0] - And maybe earlier, if they go to daycare, or you're socially active and they tag along; and no later than when they go to school - unless, again, zip-ties and a radiator are a major part of the upbringing approach.
[1] - Well, someone on HN says that; I think they may have even coined it. Either way, it's true.
[2] - I grew up in a Christian offshoot that's a borderline cult. I can tell first-hand that, no matter how hard they try, even a strong fundamentalist culture that works hard on staying true to its values and pretty much defines themselves in opposition to "the world", can only do so much to resist the local culture in which people are embedded. And, when they try too hard, they just end up bleeding members.
[3] - A brief moment in time in Poland where we had 3-school system and profile classes in the secondary school.
I'd have to find a copy to see if it cites its source but paraphrased I've heard it:
> People mechanically can have kids, physically, before they're mentally able to take care of them. The [village] elders would raise and teach the children while the adolescents worked at things adolescents do better than elders
So "it takes a village" used to be literal, and as we in this part of the west started to isolate and nuclear family the whole idea that the elders should have plurality input to the neuroplasticity kinda went wayside.
I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. They all died when I was young but my sister was younger yet. I moved all our kids to be within 15 minutes of their living grandparents. They werent teens when we got here. My youngest spends 3/7th of their time at grandma's house.
I'll let you know how all this works in like 30 years.
I think a large, maybe even the main part of why community of family and close friends raising children together works: humans are uniquely motivated by shame and pride, and having that many eyes on you leads to quick corrections before bad habits take root.
There's arguments about in groups and globalization and if it's better to amalgamate and if so, community based child raising has gotta go. Please do not ask me to spell this out as I won't be.
The way I understood the line about "minimum viable reproductive unit" I quoted is different, more straightforward: a nuclear family can't survive alone. Two people and a kid just can't survive in the wilderness; we've evolved to function in group.
From this POV, the "village" is still there, it's always there. It may not be a literal village, and you and me might both be pretty much alone except for our partners, when it comes to parental responsibilities. However, the modern "village" is the society we live in - our neighbors, our friends, co-workers, the market economy as represented by people selling good and providing services we need to survive; later, also parents of children our kids go to school with. These are all people we interact with daily, share the same material and social environment, and we all influence each other.
There's no way to avoid that influence (in fact, if you try, the "village" will start getting worried, possibly to the point social services might get involved). It's always there, and once your kids start education, they'll be interacting with other members of society unsupervised - this is what I mean by "village finding your child".
> I think a large, maybe even the main part of why community of family and close friends raising children together works: humans are uniquely motivated by shame and pride, and having that many eyes on you leads to quick corrections before bad habits take root.
I 100% agree with that. I think it's fundamental. But it works only up to certain size; it's not that globalization is in opposition to that, it's just that to form societies larger than ~150, you need replacements for "shame and pride" as behavioral regulators to keep a group from self-destructing. Hence leaders and rules - and applied recursively a couple times, you end up with presidents and districts and rule of law and bureaucracy and all the staples of modern life, existing next to and on top of groups of families and friends.
I was lending some support to the "it takes a village" thing - i understand that you inferred that non-relations and even "non-friend" can and do supplant/supplement the "village" in "modern times".
to reiterate, i wasn't arguing or debating anything you said. More of a tangent, because i've read a few books that talk about this exact thing, albeit a quarter century ago and things are hazy.
I think the main potential benefit for a child, and the future community it will be part of, with secondary caretakers, is if the primary caretakers are insane.
It is like abit of good influence outweights alot of bad influence.
I think you have a really important point. There are these philosophical or political individualists that don't get this.
You could make an analogy with dogs. There you have plenty of examples of what can happen in isolation. A functional collective will in most cases manouver you out of parenting in part or fully with soft or hard means if you are bad enough since you will indirectly wreck havoc otherwise.
Me too, and I was almost 40 before I had my first. Worse, the affects of age is already showing in my body and so physically I'm less prepared than when I was 20.
For others reading this, you will never be ready. However it is still worth it. I encourage you take the plunge, and don't wait to long. You will never be ready. (of course not having kids is the right choice for some of you, I'll let you judge your own reasoning - if it is just fear go for it, but there are plenty of good reasons not to)
Yeah, I wasn't and didn't mean to imply I was too young, late 20s, just wasn't emotionally prepared or 'mature' enough I felt like, at first. Maybe that's normal for everyone. I don't know how 18 year olds do it!
> For others reading this, you will never be ready
That's probably a sage takeaway.
Thanks, it's comforting to hear others experience similar thoughts.
This is a beautiful comment, but take a step back here: parenting today is more child centric than it has ever been in the USA, with parents spending more raw hours with their kids (because they are spending less time independently with each other or extended family) and more direct paternal involvement to boot. I do not mean to minimize the scourge of adult phone overuse or the importance of being sensitive to a child's emotional world, but kids today overall get a ton of time with their parents, and parents are exhausted.
I've caught myself using my smartphone as a socially acceptable way to create distance from my children and get time to myself. Having noticed that trend I'm trying to do better at setting boundaries in healthy ways.
If it were socially acceptable to just tell your kids that you need some "you" time, I wonder how less prevalent smartphone usage among parents would be.
Well written comment... compliments the article well.
I think you inserting the objections to the culture/country part yourself. I don't think they are present in the actual article.
The central idea here is that children are shaped by their environment, the people around them and those people's behaviour. They sponge up behaviours of their parents, peers and such.
But... it's not all mimicry and habits. It's also a response to incentives in their life. That's the writer's point about trust... and the marshmello test. Does the child live in a world where trust and patience pay off... or a world where you get what you can while you can? The socio-economic correlation to patience in the marshmello test is a proxy... demonstrating his point.
I think you’ve raised a great topic, and it could serve as the foundation for another post. One study found that the environment plays the most significant role here, especially the nonshared environment (outside siblings/family). This challenges the traditional view that growing up in the same household has a major influence on personality and intelligence.
> then makes cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason. Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
Cultures differ significantly in how they raise their children. My dad grew up in a Bangladeshi village. He has this story where a cousin was sick and asked for lobster (which back then was a widely available food in the villages). His parents told him they’d make it for him the next morning, but he died overnight. My dad always invokes that story when I try to impose limits on my kids. When my brother and I were growing up, they put a lot of expectations on us academically, but no gratuitous self denial in terms of food or toys or anything like that.
By contrast my wife is an old stock American WASP. She has a very different parenting style than my parents. She makes my kids wait for everything and tells them everything they want is too expensive (even though we could easily afford anything they want).
Sometimes you can get a child to not get into your bad habits, but only if they are really bad. I know a women who never drinks because her parents were alcoholics and she doesn't want to follow their path. (her mother went to rehab for it, when she got back the first thing her husband did was pour her two shots and ordered her to drink).
Most of the time you are right though, kids see and follow their parents.
> cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason. Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
You have two kids, one ate ten boxes of marshmallows yesterday, the other didn't eat for two days. Which one is going to wait more for marshmallows?
It's pointing that the Marshmallow test was flawed. Which doesn't surprise me (most social experiments are very flawed).
Basically, when you account for socioeconomic factors, the correlation goes away, or so I heard. Rich kids are more successful in life than poor kids, who knew?
> Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
Ignoring the fact that you inserted a narrative that wasn't present in the article, YES OF COURSE THIS HAS A MAJOR IMPACT.
I'm a half-Dutch, half-Chinese man who spent the first years of my life in Ghana being blissfully happy and welcomed in the local community, and then the rest of my childhood being miserable in a Dutch village because I was excluded from that local community, all because I was "the local ethnic minority".
And I'm half-Asian, with parents from a higher-education background who had a good income. I only had to deal with "diet racism" compared to pretty much any other ethnic minority/social background in the Netherlands.
I've lived this and the fact that people like you keep insisting that my life experiences do not exist because they did not experience it is infuriating.
Anyway, fair points about the phone being a serious issue. But for goodness sake stop pretending that race and socio-economic background has no impact just because it makes you a little uncomfortable.
Honestly, yes this guy's comment screams white guy growing up in a white culture. Like... do you really think your culture is a default and you would've been like you are without your outside influence? Your culture is very specific and no more default than any other.
Hegemony lets you become the “default”. I can use the US dollar to pay for anything I want, anywhere, even if it’s not an official local currency. Try that with any other currency. That’s one small example of why we can indeed call “west” the “default” no matter how much this pisses off anti-colonialism types.
bro, that's not what I mean. What I mean is this guy really thinks his culture did not effect him. Trust me, if you went to Japan and acted exactly as your American upbringing tells you to, you will fuck up the entire social contract there and people will think you're wierd af. Your culture is not a blank canvas. Your culture is something that affects how you are and this guy seems to think otherwise because he is blind to the strong characteristics of his culture, viewing it as default.
Race is not mentioned in the article. Ironically, you are doing the very thing, here, which you claim spoils it.
The mention of culture is not out of place in the article, as the marshmallow test (which features quite prominently in it, including in its actual title) does have different outcomes in different cultures, and, in addition, it is hardly controversial to suppose that the way children are brought up is an important factor in establishing and maintaining a culture's cohesion.
I always wonder how many of the sayings I inherited from my father he inherited from my grandfather that died before I was born. It's like a kind of genetic memory.
I have a ton myself that my Dad would say but couldn't explain, so I don't use them as much.
Two notable examples...
'What do you want, a Dewey button?' as a sarcastic way of saying 'who cares.' He didn't know why. Google says it's probably related to Thomas Dewey.
'Kitty bar the door.' An expression to mean he was going to go all out. He didn't know who kitty was or why he said it. I still have no idea its real etymology.
It looks like Katy or Katie are the more common spellings in the Southern US, although Kitty seems to the standard when talking about hockey. The origin is disputed: https://worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm
It isn't as reliable as something that goes generation to generation transmission, but I think some things skip every other generation; like an organised grandparent leading to a disorganised parent who never had to think about it. Then an organised child because they learned to cover for the parent.
> The hardest part for parents today seems to be putting their phone down.
Kids are great at detecting hypocrisy. You can't tell them to not be addicted to their phone when you yourself are addicted to your phone. You have to set a good example.
I'm not much of an "idle scroller" but I try to limit my phone use to after the kid is in bed. When I visibly use my phone in front of her, I make it a point to show that I'm using it as a tool to do something, and then I put it away when that something is done. If they see you sitting on the couch all evening mindlessly scrolling Instagram, they're going to think that's OK. Just like past kids saw their parents sitting on their couch all evenings watching TV.
I didn't mention race in the post, but culture. I think culture has a significant effect on a person, and to prove my point, I'd refer to the book The Culture Map, which was a revelation for me and explained a lot of things I had noticed while working in a multicultural environment. Genetic factors typically account for about 50% of individual differences in traits like personality, cognition, and psychopathology, leaving the other 50% to environmental influences.
> She'd say weird country sayings I learned from my own Dad, like 'kneehigh to a cricket.'
It's also fun when it happens in the other direction: child invents a totally new word, parents think it's funny and copy it, it becomes a word used only within that family, but perhaps it stays around long enough for some of the grandchildren to pick it up. But everyone has to pay attention not to use it outside the home because outsiders would be very confused by it. We have a few words like that.
The race or location of the parent absolutely determines their childhood. This has been studied for decades, and it's called Practice theory. It emerged in the late 20th century and was first outlined in the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu [1].
> Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
This seems like a dishonest characterization of some of the points in the article.
Unfortunately, we do live in a society. A childhood is not just determined by the house the child lives in, but the community the child lives in as well, and the parents are also affected by the community they grew up in, which affects the way they parent.
> Our kid made her own 'phone' out of cardboard as a child, pretending to read and chat on it. That struck me deeply.
as a child of the 80s in an emotionally barren household with domestic violence, I also built myself a whole computer lab out of cardboard boxes at the age of 5 to mimic my father!
>"Now she's 13, knows it all, and doesn't want to be picked up anymore. And I tell you, I wish I never had a smartphone at all."
Geez this hits hard. I've been pretty aware of it though, so I try to spend as much time with my daughter as possible without smothering her. I tell my wife almost daily that she's going to regret not getting off her smartphone and spending more time with her when she could. I'm not some soothsayer, but it seems pretty obvious to me.
Wholeheartedly agree. Can't teach kids to eat broccoli if you don't eat it yourself, they're just too perceptive. I don't like phones myself, but sadly enough, it is becoming hard to keep up with society (e.g. sports groups) or even outright not accepted to be "offline" anymore. It becomes a tricky balancing act to teach your own pre-teens to deal with being left out versus fighting the dopamine goblin. I don't think technology is bad, nor food for that matter, but we really as a society have to overcome our monkey brains. We ought to be better informed about how our brains work, especially as parents responsible for developing brains; and we ought to have basic neurology taught in schools to give the new generation a fighting chance against the rapid pace of technological advancement.
What different does it make? My kids are rarely allowed screens, but they read in excess. They often get into trouble at school because after we go to bed thinking they are asleep they read a book - then the lack of sleep shows up in their behavior.
> The hardest part for parents today seems to be putting their phone down.
> And I tell you, I wish I never had a smartphone at all.
Being self-aware of phone use is 80% of the battle.
I also read a lot on my phone. Most of my screen time is in the books app.
Early on I decided to leave the phone on the charger in the mornings and evenings before the kids are in bed. Problem solved.
The biggest trap I see in my circle is the mental gymnastics of blaming everyone else for their own excessive phone use. It becomes easier to overuse a phone when they blame the algorithm or the companies for “making” them use the phone more than they want. Some people read stories about apps being made to be addictive and feel relieved because it offloads responsibility away from their decision making.
In the addiction treatment world it’s acknowledged that if someone can’t control their own behavior then they need even more controls and accountability, not to cede all responsibility for their actions to the addictive thing they’re drawn to. That usually means making decisions to shape their environment to keep them away from addictive behaviors, but for some reason many people see headlines about “the algorithm” and addictive apps and decide it’s futile to resist.
Making the decision to leave my phone on the charger during kid time was one of the higher ROI decisions I’ve made in my life. I used a smart watch to get any urgent notifications if I really needed them.
I've really tried to stop replying to every bait reply, because I don't think long arguments are productive or that we'll reach a middle ground.
But this for some reason struck a nerve. I never claimed racism at all?
"It's not racism, it's culture" is literally a white supremacist talking point. To be clear, I'm not accusing you of that.
My claim is that you can't make country wide generalizations, and yes, attempting to do so by culture is doing so by race. I'd bet if I brought up how foreigners in Japan score on tests, you'd then claim it's not real Japanese. Because you meant ethnic Japanese people.
But that's way, way harder in the US. Is it white culture, that doesn't really exist? Would you be surprised to learn that most people born in the US today are not white? Is 'American culture' the hispanic immigrant family getting by in Fresno? Or is the the Indian spelling bee winner from Virginia? Or is it the white farmer kid from Nebraska? Or the black inner city kid in Chicago? At some point you have to pick one, they have little 'culture' in common. But I'm not asking anyone to pick one, or defending any race. I'm saying such generalizations are stupid.
Culture pretty heavily implies race, perhaps not location, unless one pretends to be race blind.
> "It's not racism, it's culture" is literally a white supremacist talking point
I was not aware of this, and I always thought (independently, without consuming whatever white-supremacist propaganda might have mentioned this) that it made more sense to realize that cultural differences are really what is at play most of the time when people conflate them with racial differences. Cultural differences also make more sense to frame things in since they are mutable.
The rest is spot on. I became a parent before I was ready, and man, they are little sponges. They learn everything you do, everything you say, embarrassingly so. My 5 year old would lay on the couch to 'rest her back' like me. She'd say weird country sayings I learned from my own Dad, like 'kneehigh to a cricket.' I had a habit of saying 'dicking with' to mean 'messing with' until she got scolded by a teacher at the ripe old age of 7.
The hardest part for parents today seems to be putting their phone down. It's what the kid and Mom have fought about forever, then applied to me. It's so easy to lose yourself in your social media, work, reading, etc. and kids are super receptive to it. But not as that effort, but as having a parent who stares at their phone unattentively. Our kid made her own 'phone' out of cardboard as a child, pretending to read and chat on it. That struck me deeply.
I never had social media, but as a voracious reader still find myself falling into the trap. Kids notice. Kids today have it harder because of that. My parents didn't have the Internet, they created the world we lived in and tailored it to us. I think that's incredibly rare today.
Now she's 13, knows it all, and doesn't want to be picked up anymore. And I tell you, I wish I never had a smartphone at all.