Raise More Kids (Continued)

choi

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I can not reply to the original posting. The screen shows four squares, which can not be read.


The following was published on Sunday, a day after the WSJ book review on Saturday. Authors and editors of the two were unlikely to know existence of the other. I modified just now the origfinal posting to add the following to that posting.

Motoko Rich, Nature? Nurture? Not So Fast ...  Paradoxically, the kind of parents who follow debates about parenting may be those with the least to worry about. New York Times, Apr 17, 2011 (title in print).
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/weekinreview/17nurture.html?scp=3&sq=caplan&st=cse

Quote:

"But does a wealthier parent who forces a child to practice piano 20 hours a week make a huge difference to her overall well-being? 'We don’t really know,' said Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, a professor of child development at Columbia.

"'We don’t know what part of parenting is critical,' he [Bruce Sacerdote, the Dartmouth College economist] said.

My comment:
(a) The article appeared in page 3 of the section of Week in Review of the Sunday paper. The front page of the section contained a teaser for the article: Who Really Cares How Yuppies Raise Their Kids?
(b) The report cites
Bruce Sacerdote, What Happens When We Randomly Assign Children to Families? National Bureau of Ecopnomic Research (NBER), November 2004 (Working Paper 10894).
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10894.pdf

Please read Abstract. "Very similar results obtain when I use the father's [compared to mother's, in Table 3 and Abstract] outcome instead of the mother's (not shown)." web page 15.

(c) Unlike an experiment in physics and chemistry--and in bi9ology, to a certain extent--which allows control group and experimental group whose difference is just an variable, an experiment can rarely be done on humans. And an experiment on humans can hardly control variables between the two groups (the most a scientist can do is to make the two groups similar).
(d) In US, federal government does not put its nose in family matters. States keeps a respecful distance, for it is generally accepted there is no right or wrong way of raising children, as long as there is no abuse. Thus no state in the union has criminalized spanking in the HOME. Look at the maps in
Corporal punishment in the home
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporal_punishment_in_the_home
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