Pie Fight

Patience capital and non-cognitive development

Download patience_capital_and_the_demise_of_the_aristocracy.pdf

I'm not sure I buy the premise of the above paper on 'Patience capital and the demise of the aristocracy', but it's an interesting one, and some of the arguments are interesting. For instance, there's a good point about the fact that urban artisans had a life characterised by a steep income slope (making nothing as an apprentice, pretty little as a journeyman, and hopefully a good deal more as a master) that encouraged long-term planning and financial discipline; this in contrast to those (both poor and rich) in rural areas, for whom the land was worth basically the same when they were 20 as when they were 60. For the latter, lifetime income had more of a tendency to be flat from year to year; thus notions of investment in the future and the accumulation of capital would have been less salient - or so goes the theory. (See bottom of page for data on the landed aristocracy's attitude to business.)

Most interesting for my studies, though, is the notion of patience capital (think the Marshmallow Test, and the ways in which parents strive to teach their children patience and other key non-cognitive skills) is an interesting one.

It may be particularly related to positive outcomes for low-income children who attend decent daycare programmes, argue some. Remember, these kids - eg in the Abecedarian or Perry High Scope project - tend not to show greater cognitive development than their peers over time, but they do show better outcomes. Here's a snippet:

Heckman (2000)
and Heckman and Krueger (2003) review the evidence from a large number of
programs targeting disadvantaged children through family development sup-
port. They show that most programs were successful in permanently raising the
treated children’s non-cognitive skills, turning them more motivated to learn,
less likely to engage in crime, and altogether more future-oriented than children
of non-treated families. On the other hand, the programs were less successful in
raising cognitive skills as measured by IQ test scores.3 The most effective pro-
grams where those targeted to children at a young age, although positive effects
are also documented for programs targeting adolescents. These studies show
how important family transmission is in this particular form of human capital
accumulation, of which the notion of patience discussed in this paper is a com-
ponent. Similar conclusions are reached by a number of studies in child develop-
ment psychology (see e.g., Goleman 1995, Shonkoff and Philips 2000 and Taylor,
McGue, and Iacono 2000). Coleman and Hoffer (1983) argue that the emphasis
on patience and self-discipline is the key of the effectiveness of Catholic schools
in the US. [p 8]

There's also an argument in there that would be useful for understanding cultural transmission, eg through engaging in Lareau-ish analysis of parenting styles:

In our model, in contrast, parents invest in their children’s patience. In this re-
spect, our paper is related to the growing literature on cultural transmission (e.g.,
Bisin and Verdier 2000 and 2001, Hauk and Saez-Marti 2002, Saez-Marti and
Zenou 2004).5 In this literature, parents evaluate their children’s life prospects
from the standpoint of their own preferences, and actively try to manipulate chil-
dren’s preference to induce choices that parents regard as desirable. As these
papers, we argue that economic incentives are crucial in determining the effort
parents exert in affecting their children’s preferences. [p 10]

OK, up above  I promised data on the landed aristocracy's attitudes to business.  (it's really worth having a look at the table in the pdf; for some reason I can't seem to paste it into this post.)

Table 2 reports the professional choice of Cambridge graduates during
the period 1750–1899. The vast majority of students at Cambridge during this pe-
riod were sons of members of the landowning class, so their professional choices
(other than landowning) give us a good idea of which professions younger sons
entered. Strikingly, until 1850, not a single graduate got involved in banking or
business (widely defined as any “profit-oriented activity”), and even after 1850
the percentage remains surprisingly low.

The Nurture Assumption

I reckon that Harris is making a valuable point re the powerful influence of group socialisation, but is overstating her case against parental influence. If I've got time, I'll see what others say. Here's one short rebuttal: a critique from Jerome Kagan. And here's a much longer one from Mary Eberstadt, who has both kudos and criticisms for Harris. On the latter, she agrees with me that, when it comes to scientific standards, Harris is quite lenient on research that supports her position (eg ev psych) but much stricter on research that goes against it. This causes the whole argument to teeter a bit too close to polemic or advocacy for my taste.

On the whole, my biggest problem with her argument is that she seems to be saying that if parents don't have a lot of effect on a kid's personality - and maybe they don't - then they don't have a lot of effect on the kid and his/her life. A personality is not a life. Her second daughter may have been rebellious and non-academic, but that doesn't mean that having two loving parents didn't shape her life and improve her chances. Throughout the book, Harris conflates effect on personality with effect on one's life; this is a very big step too far, it seems to me.

How parents show love to their children

Gilllian Evans argues that the key difference between her and common as shit Sharon is that, as a mc mum, Gillian uses education as a means of forging a strong relationship with her children, whereas Sharon, as a (representative?) wc mum, is more likely to feel that efforts to educate her children actively interfere with showing them love and kindness. For instance, when her children were young, Gillian read to them repeatedly as a means of bonding and showing them affection - this results in them being very familiar and comfortable with reading, but also with them associating it with lovely things. And Evans feels that kids first they associate reading with love and bonding, only then later coming to love it for its own sake. In contrast, Sharon, who reads poorly and does not associate reading with pleasure, showed her love for her children through other means, eg by giving them more freedom to grow naturally, and by playing and joshing with them more.

In both cases, the mother is actively expressing love for her children, but only in the case of the mc mum is it in a way that better enables the child to succeed in an education-centred society.

What we know how to do, and what we don't

Following up on the NYT article I posted on a day or two ago, Yglesias quotes Jal Mehta, who says:

"We still know more about creating more good schools than we do about creating good school systems."

I would add that what we also don't know much about is creating good parents. We know what good parents do, but we don't know how to inculcate good parenting. That's true in terms of parenting that improves a child's educational outcomes, and is probably true for a whole load of other metrics as well - eg parenting that reduces a child's tendency to engage in criminal activity.

Parenting styles and education

Elizabeth looks at a NYT Magazine cover article on parenting styles on low-income eduational outcomes.

(Tough doesn't entirely dismiss the role of poverty, but concludes that parenting matters more: "True, every poor child would benefit from having more books in his home and more nutritious food to eat (and money certainly makes it easier to carry out a program of concerted cultivation). But the real advantages that middle-class children gain come from more elusive processes: the language that their parents use, the attitudes toward life that they convey.")

She also links to a discussion of this at TPM, where there is a link to an earlier NYT article making a somewhat different argument.

No time for discussion now, but it looks straight up my alley.

And here's what Ezra says. Nothing special, really, but I'll link to it anyway.

Yglesias's discussions is more interesting. And here, Jon Chait makes the obvious (but still well made) point that while KIPP might work, and the right might cite this as evidence that ending the rich-poor education gap is just a matter of will, the reality is that it takes a whole helluva a lot of money. The education system used to depend on bright women being excluded from most other employment sectors. Now that they're not, the only way to make up the employment quality gap is with that most magic of all elixirs, money. As Chait wryly notes, we're not going to recitfy such a dire imbalance by depending on the kindness of strangers.

Fighting a puma with a rubber band

More interesting results in teh annals of addressing the symptoms of poverty rather than poverty itself: a new sex ed programme has failed to reduce teen pregnancy rates. The kids preferred the programme to the old way of teaching sex ed, and that's good, but the conception rate did not drop. The administrators blame this on the fact that teen pregnancy is the product of a complex set of poverty-driven factors. Kids may learn more about sex and how to prevent pregnancies, but if getting pregnant is still seen as at least as good an option as not, then nothing's going to change.

Technocratic parenting

Govt will be sending "supernannies" into 77 areas suffering from high levels of youth antisocial behaviour.

What we're seeing here, I think, is the re-rise of the technocrats and the culture of the expert, but in the home rather than in the public sphere. There's the idea of children as projects and parenting as a technological, industrial process. Perhaps this is something to explore in my diss.

What's the matter with kids these days?

Poverty, poverty and more poverty, says Polly Toynbee. She's right: poverty produces problems that can't be surmounted by patchwork policies. Poverty's what must be addressed.

Paramountcy Principle Playground

Well, that's not actually what it's called, but in Japan, there's a new "super-safe" playground for worrisome parents.

The paramountcy principle, by the way, says that in all actitivites involving children, the children's "safety and welfare" should be the primary concern. How we can lump safety and welfare into one bundle is beyond me, as is the idea that everything should always take a backseat to safety.

Fishing for diss

I'm still feeling around in the half-light for the question I want my dissertation to answer. Eileen Munro's article on for CPAG on whether or not tracking can benefit childrne from impoverished families gives me some ideas, but doesn't set me on a track that feels right. One option is to look at this somewhat philosophically, and try to answer the question, "If so many experts say that the only real widespread solution to helping children in poverty is to reduce poverty, why does the government (or governments) focus so much effort on fighting the symptoms of poverty rather than the root cause? What roles do key liberal ideas play - eg the idea that citizens are consumers, and if we just give citizens in general and the poor in particular enough information, they will make the right choices?

One thing I don't want to do is go down the "analysing child protection services" route. I'm certainly much more interested in how parenting practices differ by class, than in the actual mechanisms of dealing with problems.

One possible question would be: "We are constantly told that education is the key to success as an adult. Poor people are presumably told this over and over. To what extent do they (as a big broad general group) believe this. Why don't more impoverished parents push their children harder in education? What are the differences between those who do and those who don't? Eg Indian families and poor white Brits. Where is the gap between the liberal idea that if presented with information people will take advantage of it, and the reality? Or is it primarily a lack of quality services - ie if there were better schools and academic resources for the poor, would they do better, and is that what we should be trying to fix?"

In both of the above scenarios, I'm interested in whether or not government is pulling the right levers or the wrong ones, and if the latter, why? Ideology?

Or I could go back to risk and perceptions of risk. It would certainly be funner to do something on risk in play, against the risks of not playing so freely. If I do something on risk and its perceptions, the key questions to investigate would be regarding why we perceive their to be more risk nowadays. (Or does "we" only refer to middle class parents?) Certainly there are a variety of reasons - is there anything positive that parents get out of assuming exaggerated amounts of risk?

Another possibility along these lines would be children and play, though to the best of my knowledge, things such as getting rid of recess only happen in teh US, and I don't want to do something exclusively on my former home.

Whatever I do, I'll choose something fun.