Comments on: What parents want their kids to be like.

By: BruceR

BruceR — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 05:45:11 +0000

Critical thinking. The others are second-order effects.

By: SusanC

SusanC — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 21:27:35 +0000

Sam suggests “capable of avoiding/overcoming depression” – I’d agree with that.

I don’t have children, but if I did, my wish would be that didn’t suffer the bad effects that autism can somtimes bring.

I don’t want to want to name an attribute from the original list. Many of them make me think “be careful of what you wish for, you may get it”.

By: eweininger

eweininger — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 16:41:56 +0000

I did wonder – but then forgot – if this was a canned list of criteria. In that case I would suspect the results of being skewed in favour of the least obnoxious option.

Indeed, though I suspect that “obnoxious” can mean different things to different parents.

One of Kohn’s arguments was that certain ways of ranking or prioritizing these sorts of characteristics reflected an underlying parental valuation of “self-direction” while others reflected a valuation of “conformity to external authority”. Notice that while “honesty” is the big winner in the linked data, “obeys” is up there; as is “good sense and judgement”.

But that said, you can put me down for “not obnoxious” too.

By: vince

vince — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 11:59:37 +0000

Compassion.

Compassion breeds kindness and if one has enough compassion to forgive oneself there may be honesty as well.

By: Ereshkigal

Ereshkigal — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 05:14:11 +0000

Interesting that the rule is “a single quality”. I suppose that wishing one’s children were multi-dimensional would violate the rule?

Interesting, too, that so few commenters have confined themselves to one quality.

Perhaps that reflects the nature of our language, through which we sub-specialize our humanness into lesser definitions, none of which sufficiently captures “the quality” we try to describe.

I had only three rules for my children to follow; I could not further reduce the rules without sacrificing clarity or intent.

I don’t think that I possess a vocabulary rich enough to condense into one quality that which I wish for my children.

By: Laura

Laura — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 02:02:35 +0000

I want my kids to be ironic. A highly underrated quality in children.

If not ironic, then decent and kind are good things.

By: e-tat

e-tat — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 01:41:35 +0000

eweininger, thanks for that. I did wonder – but then forgot – if this was a canned list of criteria. In that case I would suspect the results of being skewed in favour of the least obnoxious option.

By: harry b

harry b — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 01:25:12 +0000

I think the people (like me) who put kindness ahead of honesty meant kindness, not oozing “kindness”. There’s a difference.

I suspect that ‘decent’ and ‘moral’ are both cheats, because too much is packed into them (certainly when I use “decent” I mean some complex combination of some of the traits on offer in the study). But the same may well be true of kindness (as abb1 carefully warns—I definitely meant “kindness to people” and not to cats etc).

By: rfs

rfs — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 01:11:43 +0000

Geez, all the good ones are taken. How about “stylish”?

Actually, at this point, I’d settle for “potty trained.”

By: tylerh

tylerh — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 00:13:26 +0000

My wife and I are big fans of the “if you can’t explain it 25 words or less, you don’t understand it” paradigm. Before we had kids we applied this to ourselves. I got it down to, “Moral and Hardworking. If I can only get one, then Moral.” My wife, genius that she is, got it down to one word: “Decent.”

I strongly suggest that you lunatics who put “kindness” ahead of “honesty” spend some time with a bunch of four year olds: some of the most brutally manipulative kids out there ooze “kindness.”

By: triticale

triticale — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 22:52:41 +0000

Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent.

By: Jo Wolff

Jo Wolff — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:48:26 +0000

Did anyone ever see the (very bad) tv film ‘The Stepford Children’? How about ‘to be his/her own person’?.

By: eweininger

eweininger — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 18:38:22 +0000

The data reported in the link looks like it was derived from the type of survey that Mel Kohn used to field back in the 60s and 70s. Kohn argued that SES and social class could explain childrearing values as a result of the differential work conditions people experienced (i.e. variation in “intellectual flexibility”, authority or lack thereof on the job, etc.) He would present parents with a set of child characteristics similar to this one, and then ask them to rank them or to rate each one in terms of the importance it had for them. The responses would then be analyzed for underlying patterns, and these would then be correlated with measures of the respondents’ working conditions.

The results were generally quite confirmatory. But I leave it to others to speculate about the working conditions of your typical CT commentator.

A small aside: I do recall Kohn mentioning at some point that you get rather different answers to this sort of question if it’s phrased in terms of “a child” as opposed to “your child”.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 18:25:16 +0000

My parents raised my brother and myself with the idea that they wanted us to be people that they would want to be friends with. When my kid’s born (s/he’s one day overdue now!!), that’s my idea.

Friendship (or friendshipworthiness) is a large constellation of virtues, though.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 18:16:58 +0000

I wanted my son to be honest, fair, and considerate of others, and he is. I now wish I had raised him to be somewhat more arrogant, competitive, and greedy, because nice guys often do finish last.

Hyperbolic, yes, but I mean that.