Remember our post from way back when about the cost of raising a child totaling about $250K? Well, economist Bryan Caplan decided to take a closer look as to exactly why (and how we can lower that cost). The Week summarizes:
So... we're spending too much on kids?
"In a nutshell," says Sierra Black at Strollerderby, "Caplan believes that parents are 'overcharging' themselves for their children." By committing to intense tactics like attachment parenting, which requires moms to carry newborns non-stop and respond to their every desire, they're unnecessarily robbing themselves of time. Parents also feel obligated to spend a fortune on lessons of every kind, and an endless stream of educational videos and toys.And all that expensive attention is really unnecessary?
Yes. Caplan says the bottom line is that nature — the kids' genes — mostly determines who they'll be; the power of nurture, he says, is minimal. Research on twins and adopted children shows that kids raised by highly educated parents with big vocabularies, for example, tend to know more words when they're tiny. But by the time they reach age 12, "the effect of enriched upbringing on vocabulary was barely visible," Caplan says in The New York Times.
Link (Photo: Caitlin Caplan)
In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, feared, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot. - Mark Twain
Please allow some room for error as I'm not a practicing developmentalist. I am familiar with most of the major works including Jean Piaget. I guess my thoughts were a little archaic, harkening back to Piaget's developmental stages which I knew to be obsolete. To me, it's a bit like referencing the triune brain-model, it's considered obsolete, but it is still extremely useful. I'm of the opinion that there are no "stages" that aren't arbitrary.
With that said, I think my point remains that, as Diana Baumrind might agree, authoritative parenting, that focuses on the child's growth into adult-hood is paramount to any other form of parenting that is geared toward pleasing the child or controlling the child.
Thanks for the update, I'm going to look into the experiment you mentioned ASAP.
As far as "turning her upbringing into a multi-million dollar yadda-yadda-yadda", that's pretty easy to do when you have multi-millions of dollars to start with, plus advisors and employees doing most of the work for you.