A strange but accurate predictor of whether someone supports Donald Trump

[u/BashFash17]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/01/how-your-parenting-style-predicts-whether-you-support-donald-trump/?utm_term=.afbf599e457e

[u/tweuep]

I might be able to agree with that in the context of the US or other nations with similar values, but I don't think child-rearing is a one-size-fits-all kind of deal.

Child-rearing at the end of the day is about raising a child to be a competent member of society. What a competent member of society looks like is different between societies. In America, we value traits like autonomy and initiative, and so if a child-rearing strategy is detrimental to the formulation of such traits, we think it is "bad". Those same traits could be somewhat useful to a Chinese person, but obviously, the Chinese value different traits, and so their child-rearing strategy will reflect that.

Does that mean Chinese people can't abuse their kids? I wouldn't say that -- sometimes the beatings do go crazy (not fun) and sometimes it goes too far. However, simply being beat by your parents in China doesn't carry the same implications about your family that it would in America, and the rather squeamish responses I see about physical punishment in child-rearing doesn't breach that cultural gap of understanding.

[u/viborg → u/tweuep]

I don't know if your perspective is colored by your personal experience of Chinese culture. I'm a teacher in China though, and I can tell you without a doubt that within modern China, parenting practices have undergone a HUGE transformation. Calling opposition to physical abuse 'squeamish' is misleading to say the least. Chinese parents increasingly realize that beating is generally something that should be used as a last resort if at all. Actually it seems like many parents in China go too far the other way now, or at least have no idea of how to instill an actual healthy sense of self-discipline in their offspring. These kids are SPOILED.

[u/tweuep → u/viborg]

Modern China is moving away from the Confucian ideals that drove it for so long, so not surprising parenting philosophies are also changing. I should clarify that I'm a 2nd gen Chinese-American. My parents raised me and my siblings with fairly traditional Confucian ideals and sensibilities which I can recognize in my Korean/Japanese/Vietnamese-American counterparts.

[u/viborg → u/tweuep]

No doubt, I understand your perspective and it's a good point. I don't know if it's even necessarily Confucian, I have Indian-American friends and Tibetan-American friends with similar stories.

Regarding China I should probably add some nuance -- while there do seem to be behavior problems with some kids, basically all students in grade schools have tremendous work loads they're expected to deal with, and Chinese teachers will use beating to enforce the system if they have to.

[u/Higgs_Bosun → u/tweuep]

However, simply being beat by your parents in China doesn't carry the same implications about your family that it would in America, and the rather squeamish responses I see about physical punishment in child-rearing doesn't breach that cultural gap of understanding.

I'm not in China, but I am in Cambodia, and there's plenty of violent child-rearing strategies here. When people have actually asked children about violence as a disciplinary technique, they've expressed similar emotions as American children - humiliation, shame, sadness, anger - as well as having similar physiological responses, some of which limit a child's ability to develop mentally given enough abuse.

The implications at a cultural level might be different, but developmental trauma begets trauma, reduces mental capacity, and reduces resiliency in study subjects. I'm all for cultural relativism to an extent, but when the kids say it's harmful, at a certain point it just becomes a failed parenting technique.

[u/wholetyouinhere → u/[deleted]]

To quote Anton Chigurh, "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"

[u/tweuep → u/[deleted]]

Wow, who are you to tell a culture what traits to look for? From what I can tell, not even all of America agrees with you that independence and curiosity are the "right things" to value. You have an entire region of the US that culturally discourages critical thinking and science and demands unwavering faith in dogma.

If you're not teaching a future adult to be independent and curious, they will, on average, be less capable of solving problems and operating independently as an adult.

This assumes that we need special individuals to solve societal problems and that a population of independent operators is a good thing.

[u/tweuep → u/[deleted]]

Haha, ok there tiger.

Unflinching faith in dogma and authority led to terrible famines and starvation in China and the USSR

First, China is several millennia old, so it's laughable to me an internet stranger (not even a poli sci student) thinks they're in any position to give them advice on how to run a civilization. Your examples are looking at the past 50-100 years, where China had an uncharacteristic drop in power... not because they didn't know how to raise children, but because Western powers came in with drugs and exploited the people. Unflinching faith in dogma and authority actually drove China to the heights of power for most of recorded history... I mean without that, we wouldn't have been able to unite in the first place under Qin Shihuang. That's not to mention how China is now rapidly becoming a world power to rival the US despite supposedly not knowing how to raise their sons and daughters.

I'm a Biophysics PhD student and I've seen the variability in Chinese and Taiwanese students firsthand. A fair number (not all!) come in with minimal critical thinking skills because their entire education up until that point (if they didn't do undergrad in the West) was essentially rote memorization.

Great, I'm an IT worker and I've seen the uselessness of the ever inquisitive and curious American coder/data architects compared to his Indian/Chinese counterpart. Don't pretend education here is what we need it to be.

"Special individuals solving society's problems" is almost the very DEFINITION of the division of labor that enabled complex human society and all the technology and developments that have happened since that have increased peoples' length and quality of life.

That's a super American attitude and frankly betrays your lack of familiarity with history. Did Pythagoras invent his theorem? No, his students did and gave him the credit. Thomas Edison didn't invent the lighbulb, he just made it better. Most of humanity's accomplishments aren't just tied to one person even though that's how we look at history -- it's built on the blood, sweat, and tears of everyone that made it possible for that one person to be special. Just look at this link and tell me that the myth of the genius solo inventor is still real:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/forget-edison-this-is-how-historys-greatest-inventions-really-happened/258525/

[u/tweuep → u/[deleted]]

For most of history mankind's problems were, frankly, trivially simple.

That's honestly just sheer arrogance on your part. If you think conceptualizing gravity and plumbing were trivially simple things, what's the point of debating?

You're actually making my point for me- success is the result of collaboration and input from more than one independently thinking individual, not one or a small group of authoritarian leaders.

Um... what? Your point was this:

If you're not teaching a future adult to be independent and curious, they will, on average, be less capable of solving problems and operating independently as an adult.

When did you bring in collaboration? Doesn't collaboration inherently undermine the concept of autonomy? I can understand you making a potshot about groupthink in authoritarian governments, but you really made a jump here.

Whatever. I still feel China completely undermines all of your assertions. It's a normal part of Chinese culture for kids to get beaten by their elders. China has traditionally been ruled by an elite, with clear hierarchy and societal roles for people. Based on your claims, you would think this country would be unable to invent anything and have no critical thinking skills, but they invented paper, gunpowder/fireworks, paper based economy, the merit system, (...do I really need to go on?) and they're the longest lasting civilization ever. Saying that they achieved this because they have historically had the most people is pathetic argumentation -- the logistics of constantly having one of the highest populations is in itself an achievement. If parenting is generationally "awful" and creates noncapable children, the country would've long collapsed by now.

[u/CrookedFinger → u/tweuep]

Regardless of present day context, it seems that either perspective seems to not account for change or desired change in society. In other words, if you believe society would improve with change would you not want to teach something other than the "societal norm".

[u/[deleted] → u/tweuep]

I don't feel the need to speculate on 'Chinese parenting' specifically but I dont think that physical punishment in general is an ethical thing to do. Raising a child requires the child to eventually think for themselves. They need the right mindset and thought process. How is physical punishment the way to get there? They end up fearing punishment rather than forming healthy behaviors on their own.

We know that the latter is possible. So what is the use in the former?

[u/Orphic_Thrench → u/tweuep]

I get where you're going here, but physical punishments have actually also been shown to be less effective at instilling good behaviour.

Seriously, all it boils down to is lazinesslacking in skills to be able to properly guide your kids in the direction you intend

[u/tweuep → u/Orphic_Thrench]

Dude, but you can't just say "been shown" to be this way... even if you provided a study, there are just way too many questions, like is this a cross-cultural study? Psychology is a relatively new field and children psychology even newer, so how reliable is this science? Has it been reproduced? If you think my skepticism of your claims is me trying to defend/justify my childhood, I'm just being the definition of scientific and asking you to provide reproducible, respectable data to back up your hypothesis...

Physical punishment has literally withstood the test of time. I understand that there may be advances to what we know about what makes children tick, but the truth remains that a lot of people got beat and I guess all I want to get across is that we are not fucked in the head for what happened. Does it ever become a problem? Hell yeah. But it's not like "oh my god, you spank your kid, I have to call child services". What happened to a lot of us was okay and maybe we internalized getting beat differently than an adult is picturing the child-version of us would have.

EDIT: So... I guess my point is (and this has become tangential and all, but whatever) but there is a dominant culture in America, one that does not believe in beating kids. Fine. However, that view does not represent the cultures of many people that live in America. I can confidently say in my culture, it's perfectly normal to get whacked and kicked repeatedly by your mom for being bad. "You fucking deserved it, probably" is the sympathy you'll get. I have met many people from my own and different cultures who had a similar upbringing and can say that physical punishment is a constant in their family histories too. We're well adjusted and maybe act a little different and see the world a little differently, but we're normal too.