Swift on Family Values

Didn’t he just think you should eat your children or something?

@harry b: Consider that people who don’t eat their children confer an extreme social advantage on them as compared to children whose parents do eat them. From an egalitarian perspective, it’s not clear that parents should have the right NOT to eat their children.

The book actually sounds very interesting, I might get it for my mother who has always been interested in that kind of stuff and has a birthday coming up. Would you say it’s accessible for an interested layperson, or it it more written for academic audiences ?

I have a quick question on the content of the podcast as well that might sound a little like trolling/(or just ignorance) on my part, but isnt meant to. Swift argues how important the family is in transferring values etc, but primarily (afaict) through the relationships in those families. Do you discount the idea that there is a genetic basis for those values (Swift appears to argue against that claim) ? I’m not sure to what extent there is a genetic basis for things like (what we call) intelligence or certain behavioural norms, what did you find when studying the research etc ?

harry b @7
“Insofar as values transmission has a genetic basis it falls outside the scope of our analysis I think, because it is beyond the control of the parents..”

Surely, isn’t this precisely one of the reasons that people choose their partners carefully?

harry b @9
This doesn’t have to be conscious. IF values are (partly) genetically determined then picking a partner with appropriate values will have the desired affect of increasing the chance that the offspring will have those values. Sexual selection is after all part of the Darwinian process.

… Australian Broadcasting Corporation…

Every time I see the title of this post, I have to remind myself, no, it’s not Jonathon Swift on family values. Which could be worth reading, if such a thing exists.

I read the interview with John Derbyshire in Prospect in full, as well as selections from past articles and books available online. I’ll post the final question from Derbyshire and Swift’s reply in entirety. I’ve no idea whether the tags will work as desired.

The relevant value at stake in this case is presumably autonomy?

Adam Swift’s response strikes me as extremely difficult to defend. I’d have trouble with his argument as a thought experiment. As a suggestion/recommendation for educational and social policies his response is a firebomb. I cited the passage promoting your book on another thread in which Barnes & Noble assert that you and Adam assert that parents do not possess the fundamental right to try to provide advantages for their children. A colleague, in the same thread, asked that you explain yourself more fully, linking his post to short piece in the National Review. I’ve seen enough to see your position as a highly aggressive attack on the authority of a significant subset of all parents – namely parents who raise their children within a faith system that does not fall within your own definition of ‘liberal religious’. Indeed, Swift states explicitly the need ‘properly regulate’ faith and home schooling. I’ve also seen the passages in which you claim that reading to one’s children disadvantages the children of others, and that we need to be aware of the fact. I also read the Limbaugh transcript in full.

I very much hope you will take the time to post a detailed explanation of how critics are twisting your words. Because it seems to me you are forming and advancing a series of highly suspect arguments that severely impinge on the rights of others alongside an attack on bedtime reading that is so silly as to beggar belief. I’m very sorry to learn that Adam has been on the receiving end of some unsavory hate mail. I might easily be able to find people who agree their might be some need in a very few select cases for family services to intercede in a home or faith school, or any school receiving public funding. However, I can’t imagine discussing your ‘disadvantaging others by reading to your own children’ argument with anyone in any situation with anything but incredulity. Am I alone in this? Is there a parent anywhere who feels a twinge of guilt for reading to their children, or who believes that the act of reading to one’s children tilts the playing field unfairly for others?

The hate mail is predictable and quite wrong. The mockery over your claims about reading to our kids is equally predictable and entirely appropriate.

Nope, sorry. Here Adam’s response bolded

Yes. We say that part of the role of the parent is to discharge a duty of care to the child in various ways. And we think part of that duty which parents owe their children is to enable them to live an autonomous life when they reach adulthood. And that rules out certain kinds of upbringing. It doesn’t rule out a liberal religious education in which children are not kept away from alternative possibilities. But we still, in my view, allow parents way too much discretion in shaping their children’s emerging values. We don’t properly regulate either home schooling or faith schooling.

And I’m actually curious about how much attachment theories have penetrated into scholarship that uses psychology (I.e. philosophy, but not necessarily philosophy of science), and how they’re seen versus other psychological theories, if there’s a quick reference or easy way of answering that.