The Parent Stack

From There’s Evidence on How to Raise Children, but Are Parents Listening? by Emily Oster. It is subtitled, "Day-to-day individual choices matter less than we think, but national policies seem to matter a lot."

Kind of all over the place but the core argument is that there are a range of basic parenting practices which if done at all well and reasonably consistently, deliver great childhood outcomes.

Regular food in sufficient but moderate amounts.

Regular meal schedules.

Regular sleeping patterns.

Conversational engagement with adults.

Exposure to non-family member adults.

Regular reading sessions of parent with child.

Stable adult relationships.

Consistent adult modeling of desired behaviors.

Nothing surprising here.

Oster mentions

Better-off children in the United States do not benefit just from hearing more words, or having higher-quality day care, or having more stable family lives. They benefit from all these things together, and more.

This is similar to Scott Adams' idea of a talent stack. Exceptional performance is, often as not, a product of the exceptional combination of specific talents (talent stack) as it is exceptional performance in any one of the talents.

Call the basics here The Parent Stack. Do all these things with some consistency to an acceptable minimum or performance and great things happen.

Parents don't have to read X number of books, Y number of times a day, for Z number of days. They just need to read frequently to children. Parent's don't have to serve organic free range eggs garnished with parma ham for breakfast. The kid just needs a balanced, occasionally varied meal on a routine schedule.

I am in full agreement with this main point. Be sensible, be moderate, be caring, and be consistent and you will have delivered virtually everything a child needs to do well.

No need for reading programs, special food, special experiences, etc. I.e. no need to cater to parenting fads.

And yet many of our parenting discussions are driven by, effectively, elite concerns. What is the best organic formula? Food mills versus “baby-led weaning.” Breast-feeding for one year, or two? And, of course, preschool philosophy. These concerns occupy thoughts and Facebook discussions, but they also occupy the news media, at least some of the time.

There was coverage of the fascination with European formula, for example. And who can forget the Time magazine breast-feeding cover asking if you are “Mom Enough” (Implication: No).

By and large, such choices matter very little. But the focus on them distracts from problems that are more central for policy. What we do in day-to-day parenting may matter less than we think, but what we do over all to serve the nation’s children may matter quite a bit more.

Indeed.

Competitive parenting is just another form of virtue signaling and status climbing. It will all be alright. Watch The Andy Griffith Show and do what Sheriff Taylor does. Everything will work out well.

There is an interesting idea lurking in here and it is one with broad application.

It is not the specifics which matter, though they can be important, it is the aggregate system which delivers the outcomes.

Oster doesn't mention it but there is some pretty strong evidence that children's peers have as much or more influence on outcomes as do parental practices.

I think this is often misinterpreted as parents don't matter. But they do. Who do you thinks chooses their children's peers. Parents do. Not usually on a one by one basis accepting this one and rejecting that one. No. Parents choose their children's peers by choosing their own parental peers, choosing the neighborhood in which they live, choosing the church they attend, etc.

In parallel, to Oster's point, it is not individual fads which matter, it is the stack of habits and practices which make the difference.

So, be an adult. Create the social environment in which your children will grow. Create the habits and practices which create a good life and model those to your children. Be committed but moderate.

Sounds easy and boring but we are talking about kids and human parents here. Nothing is easy or boring. It is a challenge.

But the template is straight-forward and conceptually easy. You just have to have confidence, patience and perseverance when all about are losing theirs.

If—
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Beyond this commonsensical core message, Oster confuses the situation by switching back and forth between personal practice and public policy.

This is the dilemma for the Mandarin Class. What needs to be done is no secret, isn't particularly hard and is certainly not expensive.

And yet many parents, for any of a variety of reasons, find it difficult to weave together the basic parent stack.

And when those basics are missing, the consequences can be hard on children, as resilient as they often are.

And from a public policy/education policy perspective, what can be done? The problem is with the adults, not the child. But the state, appropriately, has limited capacity to intervene. We have a term for governments who are responsible for raising children instead of parents. It is not a pleasant term.

This is one of the most unpleasant trade-offs for all citizens in a freedom based society. We depend on limited government and therefore constrain it from interfering with family except in the most dangerous of conditions. But by so limiting government intervention with incapable or ineffective parenting, we are also knowingly potentially submitting children to risk and discomfort. We are also accepting differential outcomes for such children.

Too often, the interventions we do offer are focused on silver-bullet or elaborate solutions which fail. Coaching and educating parents in the basics of the core parenting stack might go some ways but without control and authority, we cannot guaranty outcomes. It is one of those circumstances where the treatment (government intervention) is often worse than the symptom (inneffective parenting).

I have no answer. But I think it important, and that Oster is correct, to note and share the idea that parenting skills and behaviors are relatively easy, cheap, and widespread. Any intervention should be cautious and limited owing to the risk of making it worse.

But with that approach, we acknowledge that children may be disadvantaged through no fault or action on their part. That is a hard pill to swallow.