Liberalism and cultural disadvantage

While I’m a huge fan of Lareau and her work, and think that it’s very important for philosophers to take account of this sort of thing, I would hesitate to draw too stong of conclusions about the subject of justice from it. For one thing, the fact that a certain type of parenting seems to set up peole for doing well in manifestly unjust system we have doesn’t, of course, mean that this same sort of parenting would be beneficial under a more just system. I must say that I hope the same patern would not exist since I find the middle-class highly structured childhood pretty unpleasent (even if the idea of talking to kids, reasoning with them, expecting them to take part in things, etc. is good.) I don’t think Chris is making this mistake, but it is a potential mistake to think that since one sort of parenting seems to be a big advantage (in some ways) in our unjust system we should focus on things like parenting rather than changing the basic structure, since we don’t know that the same results would obtain in a more just society, and have some reason to doubt it.

” But to endorse that ethic by promoting it or by discouraging its rival would be to make an invidious judgement…”

It certainly would be to make a judgement, but hardly an “invidious” one.

And that should be “attempting to show that distributive justice and the rule of law are compatible.”

Since, in fact, they aren’t.

I’ve long been bemused by the socialist assumption that formal institutions determine all social outcomes. It is obvious that family and cultural influences, which operate outside of any formal setting, are of major if not primary importance.

So it’s nice to see a socialist acknowledge this, even though it inevitably leads toward the blood-chilling proposition that family and cultural life should be formalized, standardized and regulated by the state. How annoying that the main objection to this general course is that it involves “making a judgement”.

Here’s a judgement for you: some cultures are rotten, and civilization would be better off without them. But that is not the business of the state. (And how exactly is “the state” a moral actor? Who is the state?) Since we all live in the same real world, there’s no reason why the rotten cultures can’t be eliminated over time by natural competition.

Of course, for this to happen, it’s important to speak openly about the relative (dis)advantages of different cultures, so that individuals can make informed choices. Socialists don’t like this. Respect for all cultures is of paramount importance (though of course culture doesn’t matter in the least)! Let us maximize cultural diversity, yet ensure social justice by all having the exact same experience of life!

Guh.

[CB: I’ve disemvowelled the completely trollish stuff from you below. Suffice to say that you haven’t read the book and so your comment here is completely irrelevant to the discussion. Nobody said anything about “respect for all cultures” or maximizing “cultural diversity”.]

[aeiou]

We can change the reward structure without commenting on the parenting styles, and thus alter the pay-offs.

So, if I reject decimalism and raise my children base seventeen, we can jigger the system so that won’t be a disadvantage for them?

I’ll get on it right away.

I think a distinction needs to be made between lifestyles that promote or fail to promote full development of moral personality ( so that the child can develop her own meaninglul conception of good ) on one hand and endorsing/priviledging a specific conception of good. One is not in any obvious way doing the latter when one is doing the former.

If this is right then Rawlsian might have following responce to the difficulty Chris is worried about : interfering in parenting styles is justified to the extent that ( and only to the extent that )one is only aiming at ensuring that the child is given an opportunity to develop fully her moral personality but not the sort of lifestyle choice the person would make themselves when their moral personality is fully developped. The latter is left up to each individual. You are saying to the parents look I am not here to tell you what is good but only to help you to help your child to figure out for herself what is good.

If this works Rawlsian gets involved but is not being inconsistent because he is not promoting a specific conception of good over others.

But (and this is matt’s point, I guess) there is no reason for the state to treat the reward structure which makes it the case that great rewards go to children raised a particular way as beyond revision. As Lareau claims, it’s only in combination with the external reward structure that the different styles have the effects they do. We can change the reward structure without commenting on the parenting styles, and thus alter the pay-offs.

We can alter the reward structure so that hardworking, studious kids who (who have parents who strongly encourage such behavior) are not ‘unfairly’ advantaged over ‘free range’ kids who are much less studious (and who have parents who encourage — or at least permit — such behavior)?

OK — how?

And while you’re at it — would you claim that it would also be possible to ‘alter the reward structure’ so that kids who have had 10 years of musical training by age 14 have no advantage over ‘natural growth’ kids who have little or none when it comes to earning a living as a musician? How about the same question with respect to, say, tennis — could we ‘alter the reward structure’ so that Maria Sharapova has no advantage over a ‘natural growth’ kid of the same age who has hardly ever picked up a racquet?

If the idea of ‘altering the reward structure’ is ridiculous in the cases of music and sports (and it clearly is) — why is it any more sensible in the case of academic pursuits?

[aeiou]

If the idea of ‘altering the reward structure’ is ridiculous in the cases of music and sports (and it clearly is)—why is it any more sensible in the case of academic pursuits?

Who said anything about academic pursuits? I’m thinking about criminal pursuits, myself. Clearly, to accomodate the small-but-vital gangster culture, we should eliminate this outdated notion of criminal justice and have the state reward culturally-established behaviors such as drug-dealing, rape and assault.

Chris,
In your #3 above, what sorts of things do you have in mind? I’m just not at all sure what the state can do about, say, the internal life of a family, beyond certain limits of the sort gestured at by zedenek above, that wouldn’t be a pretty massive violation of the priority of the right to the good of the sort any liberal ought to worry about, let alone someone (such as myself) who accepts political liberalism. When I read some people who talk this way (G.A. Cohen, for one) it seems clear that their views are fundamentally non-liberal. That by itself isn’t an argument against them, of course, but if you think some version of liberalism is right then there will be pretty serious limits on the types of action that can be taken.

I think Matt’s right on to invoke the priority of the right over the good. It seems to me that, for Rawls anyway, legitimacy-considerations (aka neutrality with respect to conceptions of the good) are prior to (that is, trump) justice-consideration (aka fair equality of opportunity). Thus, if parenting styles are a major determiner of life-chances, and there’s nothing to be done about those that can be justified in public reason, then there’s nothing that can be done, politically speaking, about this determiner of life chances at all. I don’t see an interal inconistency here- this may just be case in which a comprehensive doctrine with substantial egalitarian elements needs to accomodate to pluralism and adjust the demands it makes as to state action. Unfortunate, perhaps, but, it seems to me, more than acceptable as trade-off if this is the price of a ‘realistic utopia’.

I’m not sure, however, that this is a bullet that needs to be bitten, insofar as policy goes- shouldn’t there be ways to order to (institutional) basic structure so as to reduce the impact of these differences in background when chilren reach adulthood, or to reduce the socio-economic inequalities that (I presume, I haven’t read the book) tend to produce the disparity in parenting styles?

If your parents use “concerted cultivation”, this means your parents are middle class and know enough to follow the current middle class habitus. These are advantages independent of any benefits of “concerted cultivation”.

And I really do think that the advantages to “concerted cultivation” are unproven. “Concerted cultivation” is oriented to things that really are peripheral to modern society. Soccer, art, ballet. It is a type of parental display.

Elite colleges may like the “concerted cultivation” ethos, but this is a by-product of the elite colleges efforts to keep out asians who traditionally tend to emphasise school work rather than extra-curicular activities.

I’ve disemvowelled the completely trollish stuff from you below.

Fair enough, though you might have done better to explain exactly where I went wrong. My comments were in good faith. And I thought the first one was rather funny. Decimalism! Woot!

So, to be plain: suppose we accept this idea that we can engineer formal institutions to level out the outcomes from different kinds of upbringing. From there, you can reach some ridiculous conclusions without crossing any bright line in principle.

Another way of saying the same thing: there are some qualities of the individual which are necessary for success within any non-ridiculous basic structure; and some of these qualities derive from the individual’s upbringing, outside the context of any formal institution.

Successful individuals will have curiosity, literacy, a work ethic, a basic understanding of civics, personal integrity, familiarity with decimal notation, etc. Some cultures (or, if you prefer, family backgrounds) actively stifle one or more of these qualities, to such an extent that no reasonable state effort can instill these qualities despite the culture. It is silly to suppose we can engineer the basic structure so such stifled individuals can succeed.

Far more important I think was that middle-class kids were equipped with a set of negotiating skills (and a sense of entitlement) that would enable them to make institutions suit their needs (and get professionals to be suitably responsive).

Yes, and they are also used to being talked to like adults, having partental decisions explained to them, and having their opinions listened to and valued. But, again, how could government ‘change the reward structure’ so that negotiating skills, critical thinking skills, and self confidence would not confer advantages?

Successful individuals will have curiosity, literacy, a work ethic, a basic understanding of civics, personal integrity, familiarity with decimal notation, etc. Some cultures (or, if you prefer, family backgrounds) actively stifle one or more of these qualities, to such an extent that no reasonable state effort can instill these qualities despite the culture. It is silly to suppose we can engineer the basic structure so such stifled individuals can succeed

This all seems right to me (right down to the final sentence, though I might quibble with the bit about decmialisation if I were confident there were comletely duodecimal societies). There’s no sense in which ANG stifles those qualities, from my reading of Lareau, or, to be honest, that CC enhances them. The two styles differ in many ways, and one creates a greater sense of entitlement, a greater level of confidence in dealing with adults, and instills habits (shaking hands, looking people in the eye) which advantage children (in the long run) relative to others, but without instilling the virtues you describe. Chris’s point about the restricted basic structure is actually quite important here. It is the ethos, not the restricted basic structure, which values a sense of entitlement and the willingness to take advanatge of others, for example; an ethos which valued modesty and honesty-even-when-dishonesty-would-pay-off would have a different utlimate reward structure.

Now, it also seems right to me that some features of CC are bound to benefit kids in the long run, and would do so even if we flattened the formal reward structure completely (because informal rewards are valuable); eg “being talked to like adults, having parental decisions explained to them, and having their opinions listened to and valued” (slocum #27). Maybe this is a good test; if a particular feature of upbringing would bring informal rewards regardless of the structure of the formal reward system, that constsitutes a very good reason to promote it widely (at the very least through the mechanisms mentioned by cd #8). I’m thinking on my feet here; what do you think (CB or anyone else)?

Catherine: I don’t understand your criticism, its too cryptic. Could you explain in more detail? (I’m thinking about all this stuff all the time, and want to get my bearings).

dipnut — not eactly about what you mention, but Lareau is quite good on the fact that different goods are produced by each strategy; but she doesn’t parse it out in any detail. One of the things she does say is that when the ANG kids have the CC lifestyle described to them they rect with pity for the CC kids. I agree with you that there are important respects in which the ANG kids seem better off; they get along much better with their siblings, have more time with their extended families (and their immediate families) and they have much more tim to themselves (and with other kids) without direct adulkt supervision (adults are around, watching over them, but not micromanaging what they are doing with every second of their lives). The book is about 9 and 10 year olds. One thing I think I said in the thread where I recommended the book is that as I found myself adopting more of the ANG features for my own children (in particular, refraining from micromanaging their relationship with each other).

One thing that occurs to me is that we might (stylistically) distinguish the benefits-in-childhood from the benefits-in-adulthood of the strategies. The ANG approach as described in the book seems to produce more benefits-in-childhood, but in combination with the social structure seems to make it harder for those children to get at certain important benefits-in-adulthood than the CC approach.

I don’t sympathize. People want to do well when they have the liberty to do what they want and are shown proof of this or that consequence. You don’t need state enforcement in the dimension of family, you need to produce a good economy with fair work weeks etc to optimize liberty.

One of the things she does say is that when the ANG kids have the CC lifestyle described to them they rect with pity for the CC kids.

No kidding. I haven’t read the book so I don’t have a sense of quite what my ANG disadvantage is, and I do have some unfortunate slacker tendencies I’d prefer to do away with (dissertation? what dissertation?), but it’s hard for me to imagine the lesser success or income or whatever else I’m losing out on would be worth it to be one of those kids. When I think about the qualities that I, and to some extent others seem to like about me it’s hard to imagine how they would have developed with a CC childhood. Here I go valuing qualities not well captured by the distributive paradigm. Corrupted by too much Iris Young.

Setting aside me personal preferences, there’s a sort of perfectionist vs. neutralist dynamic here that seems overstated. For those of us who acknowledge that neither brand of liberalism ought to always trump the other, shouldn’t we acknowledge that there are a set of cases in which brutal, violent state intervention is warranted (child abuse), a set of cases in which no state intervention whatsoever is warranted (say, church attendence), and a messy middle in which there is a real trade-off between the values of perfectionism and neutrality. In the third category of cases, perhaps we should stop worrying so much about determining *when* state interference is acceptable and start worrying about *what kind* of state interference is acceptable. Soft paternalism, voluntary educational programs, etc. are more broadly permissible than than various hard paternalisms. All non-ideologues agree with this already and it almost seems silly stating something so obvious, but it does seem all too absent from this–and many other perfectionist/neutralist debates.

…requires the state to take a stand on the relative value of different conceptions of the good.

You appear to be missing a step. How likely is it that whatever stand the state winds up taking will have anything to do with your conception of the relative value of the good?

If this was adopted in NZ, I think there’s a fair chance the state would create a list of things that are good that are so vague it would cover pretty much everything, and who knows what would be implemented on the ground?

One can think of governments that would come up with a very restrictive, illiberal list too.

That’s a point for neutralism that certainly ought to be considered when weighing perfectionism against neutralism, Tracy. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking it ought to be dispositive. The form of argument that goes “we shouldn’t do this justice-promoting thing because some future bad or misguided people might use this as a pretense to do something injustice-promoting thing” could a) be used against any state action imaginable in some form, and b) overlooks the real possibility that people who want to use the state to do bad things will, when in power, quite possibly find another pretext to do those bad things they want to do.

de Long links to a WaPo piece on the close friendship between JKGalbraith and AMSchlesinger Jr. One bit that caught my attention with regard to this post was

Cambridge in the ’50s was a wonderfully social place. Not to mention well lubricated. Galbraith and Schlesinger were both regulars at a Sunday evening cocktail hour at the home of …

I cannot imagine this nowadays. Very junior faculty are generally too busy doing research or trying to recuperate from the past week/prepare for the coming week to do this. And that’s before they have children. Once children are on the scene, (or at least once the first is more than about 15 months) this falls by the wayside for 10-15 years because Sunday evening becomes a time either to get the household ready for the coming week or to recover from the day’s routine of soccer/baseball/basketball/(fill in the sport of your choice).

I imagine that feminism (that bane of gracious living for the male of the species) has also had its impact on this score.

I haven’t read Lareau, but are we certain that CC is going to reproduce a liberal upper middle class? Or will it reproduce a conservative or libertarian one? Kids herded through countless extracurriculars as well as the usual grade and SAT pressure may well rebel, not only spending the first three years of college getting wasted, but deciding that they don’t want the nanny state, at any price.

The forced activities create hostility: I spent years listening to my sisters play the piano allegro fortissimo (regardless of the piece) because they wanted to get practice over with. Sounded like machine-gun fire. I got out of it only because I am partly deaf and completely tone-deaf to music.

PS on the piano: I wear hearing aids, which amplify loud and high notes. Sorry if this wasn’t clear.

A crucial assumption of Harris’s book is that parents are trying to reproduce their own traits in their kids. Drop that assumption and the book is less interesting. Also, her book is mainly about the conferring of personality traits not of advantage. Her own theory (which she offers only as a conjecture, but elaborates in detail) is that communities of parents influence the traits and dispositions of communities of children; I’d like to have seen Lareau discuss this, because it doesn’t seem (to me) so at odds with her own approach as the structure of her book (individual kids in individual chapters) might make it seem. So, I’m very impressed with the Harris in some ways, but don’t quite know how to take it as an intervention in this debate. teddy — having read Harris you should read Lareau (you know, if you have time etc) and think about each in the lgiht of the other.

teddy and CB — teddy is right that it is not a demonstration, and that is not what it claims to be (at least I don’t think it is). It illustrates and makes vivid a set of conjectured causal claims. But the Rothstein conjecture I referred to in my first comment, if made more confidently and broadly, would imply that what she observes is, in fact, epiphenomenal.

re 28

“…and one creates a greater sense of entitlement, a greater level of confidence in dealing with adults, and instills habits (shaking hands, looking people in the eye) which advantage children (in the long run) relative to others, but without instilling the virtues you describe.”

These habits are the ones that the Bangladeshi microcreditors require, and that Nussbaum (and co) find so inspiring. Confidence can be instilled in part through practicing things like eye contact, firm handshakes and the like. It doesn’t have to be done by pushy parents, but can be learned later on. Think of job retraining schemes, or career counselors in college giving practice interviews, etc. Seems like a society could decide that such skills were valuable and start encouraging them through schools but especially targeting the ANR kids – vocational programs, scouts, whatever. The goal would be to teach skills useful to all (commnunication, presence, self-respect) not to signal chosenness.

A Question: There should be more than two child-rearing strategies in the US: how do the church-centered families (where childhood is monitored and micromanaged, but with different activities and standards of success)? Does it vary by the ‘ism of the church, or race/income? Do they have completely new approaches or what?

Harris actually got the idea of writing the book from the surprising failure of the behavior genetic research to find any impact of shared family influences on children’s psychology. To give just one striking example, biologically unrelated children that are adopted and raised in the same family show virtually zero correlation in IQ, personality traits etc. in adulthood. This robust empirical result should give us pause when trying to infer hastily the causal impact of parenting styles. Harry B, what is your take on the relevance of behavior genetics for these issues?

You are all only talking about parenting effecting children in the later years as far a social skills, attitudes, and extra-curiccular oportunities, but there is a more basic and perhaps profound advantage beyone the ability to shake someones hand.

It is absoloutly undisputible that poor kids start school intellectually less prepared that middle-class kids (trying to phrase that accurately). There are some studies that claim to show that the way you intereact with your infant effects brain development. Basically, they say that the more you hold, talk to, read to, and play with you child the “better” the brain develops in terms of language and thinking ability. Even if this is not true, there is little doubt that reading and speaking and teaching your young child is going to preapred them better for school than if you do nothing. And schools today start much earlier with the academics than they used to. Kindergartners are expected to learn to read and a lot more. And it is also indisputible that kids who start “behind” remains behind. They never catch up. So either way the CC style of parenting young children creates an permanent advatage. The CC style is even a more important question if when you consider the possible effects on brain development.

guest, #32: “Surface articulacy?” The ability to explain oneself is absolutely crucial in almost any business environment. It’s not a proxy for genuine ability; it is genuine ability.

Well, yes, ‘articulacy’ is definitely A skill, but you’ve been fooled if you haven’t recognized people (ESPECIALLY in a “business environment”) who possess a glib gift of gab, but who possess essentially NO other talent.

“Surface articulacy” may arguably be a necessary ability, perhaps, but it is in itself certainly not a sufficient ability. I’ve met plenty of people for whom a “surface articulacy” has certainly been a proxy for actual ability.

They tend to do quite well in a business environment.

Um, they have abb1, since Pinker just gets it from Harris.

Um, no. Pinker and Harris both get the theory of zero family influence from behavior genetics research.

“I’ve met plenty of people for whom a “surface articulacy” has certainly been a proxy for actual ability.

They tend to do quite well in a business environment.”

You are claiming that “surface articulacy” helps you do quite well in a business environment, but still it is not “actual ability”. Hmmm…

I have something of a concern about “sense of entitlement”, because I grew up around enough rich familities to see that it was often a substitute for “reason to feel capable”. See the presidency for a particularly vivid example. Feeling confident that one can get a reasonably fair hearing because one knows how to speak the languages of power isn’t at all the same thing as expecting that power will come your way.

What do you mean exactly by “whiny” sense of middle-class entitlement? How outrageous is it for those whose taxes pay for the shining institutions of the state to feel “entitled” to the services they purport to provide?

“I think the claim is that a talent for bullshit can help your career in a business environment (or in politics for that matter), but that no-one would knowingly select someone as their CEO (or in most other roles) whose only talent was for bullshit (spin doctors on the other hand …).”

First, of course, that was not the claim at all, and you do yourself no credit by so patently distorting the discussion. The claim was that being articulate was not an actual ability, even though it obviously helps in a business environment. That claim is false – ariculacy *is* indeed a very important ability,in all walks of life and certainly in business. If Middle Class children are in fact being raised with this ability, then they are being better prepared for life and for business.

Salesmanship. Con-artists and hucksters are people who use their salesmanship skills in an illegal manner. Salesmanship is a very important skill in the contemporary western life, hard to overrate…

Am I wrong in thinking that there’s a basic assumption here that income is a suitable measure for “success”?

paul,

I’m not sure that you are wrong, but you’re not exactly right. All sorts of goods come packaged together in our society; income, status, interesting jobs, health insurance (in the US), and, if Michael Marmot’s The Status Syndrome is right, longevity and good health. So what the CC parents are doing is preparing their children better for the competition for those goods, which is, within a generation at least, largely positional. But it is also the case that (as both CB and I keep implying) if you measured success in terms of moral character, for example, there’s no reason at all to suppose that the CC parents are preparing their kids for success in that sense, and some reason to suppose they are doing worse.

“articulacy simpliciter was never up for discussion but rather “surface articulacy” (scroll up for original context) i.e. the mere gift of the gab”

Oh I get it. Similarly virtue simpliciter is not a virtue, since if one has no brain, then one is not able to make any moral evaluations. And in general for X simpliciter. So you have managed to provide a context in which what you have said is not patently false – bravo! – but only at the expense of making it so contentless it has no relevance to anything.

Again, the Middle Class is apparently able to impart articulacy to its children. This is a virtue. It helps them later in life and in business, as well it should.

Maybe I’m missing something obvious–but wouldn’t “income” and “status” be definitionally tied tightly if income is defined carefully (“one’s ability to command resources” or something like that)? It seems like income measures the resources one can use, and status the resources one can provide–is there any way of separating the two.

66 – The idea is that (arguably, debatably) children have a “right-in-trust” against their parents and/or larger society to ensure that the children become adults who are capable of autonomously choosing a conception of the good.
…
Their sense of entitlement and striving—not to mention their normative peer group of “high achievers”—make them unable in some sense to become authors of their own lives to the degree required by the right to an open future.

In what sense? As compared to what?

As compared to kids who are not expected to achieve, where the highest opening in life for a girl is to become a bank teller at a bank, where you might be expected to drop out of school at 14 to work on the family farm? (Drawing examples from my own family’s history). How does the ANG style lead to children who have more of an ability to autonomously choose a conception of the good? This is the first time I think I’ve heard the argument that education (in the form of music lessons, after-school tutoring, etc) and encouraging your kids to have their own opinions reduces a person’s ability to become authors of their own lives.

…a lot of small farmers…

…or watch-makers.

Harry’s comment, I think, brings us back to Chris’s original post, with a bit of a twist:
“All sorts of goods come packaged together in our society; income, status, interesting jobs, health insurance … longevity and good health. … But it is also the case that (as both CB and I keep implying) if you measured success in terms of moral character, for example…”

This thread is an argument about what is the good life, and several interlocutors and I think that,m as far as defining the good life goes, we’d rather have the state focus on equality (of outcomes, yes!) in observable goods like income, wealth, and health, rather than trying to come up with some definition of moral, mental, or spiritual excellence (that way lies theocracy!).

And it is a fact that income and wealth give individuals certain very important positive freedoms: at a most basic level, they eliminate the need to steal, cheat, or prostitute oneself (in any number of senses) in order to make a living.

At a higher level, they provide the leisure time needed to pursue things like literature, art, and philosophy (not to mention supporting universities and similar institutions with their voluntary contributions or taces).

They will be authors of their lives in a “first-level” sense—choosing whether to go to law school or med school, and whether to drive the BMW or the Hummer—but not be authors of their lives in a “meta” sense captured by the idea of a right to an open future.

And ANG kids will somehow be more authors of their lives in a “meta” sense?

I am considering my friends from uni, and some of them have made choices other than ones between law school and med school and the BMW and the Hummer. Eg I have a friend who obtained the engineering degree and now spends her time working on temp admin jobs one after another while saving money for travel. I have another friend who obtained the science degree and now charges around the country on various animal-saving jobs. I have a friend with the B.Com who spent a year living with a tribe in a remote Amazonian area (he wasn’t studying them in any formal sense, just hanging out). I have a friend who quit the corporate accountant job to live in a small town and raise children. I have lost track of a university mate who went to Africa to build appliances suitable for use in deeply rural environments (presumably email wasn’t high on his list of priorities). A schoolmate was off to try and become a ballerina, a cousin quit a $90,000/year job to teach primary school.

As for me – I don’t know what a Hummer is, but I have owned a BMW. It cost a grand total of 440 pounds. :) I decided I prefer Toyotas.

Top executive positions are filled with bullies. There are definite advantages.