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Why do some families seem so good at passing down success, while others fail?
- fucking_tragedy 11y agoFunny that when affluent white kids start to do drugs it's because they're self-medicating, but when less affluent children have been doing it for decades, for the same reasons, it's bad parenting/genes/culture.
- true_religion 11y agoIn reference to the poor or disadvantaged, people also call drug use and gambling a form of a self-medication. There's nothing novel here.
- darpa_escapee 11y agoPopular consensus is that the poor engage in those activities because they can't plan/are stupid/other Just World fallacy justifications. It's just strange to see the the explanation spelled out clear as day as to why adolescents turn to drugs, but only have it apply to affluent white children. It's almost as if people and those who conduct studies are more sympathetic to people they can identify with.
- cafard 11y agoAccording to one psychologist, perhaps. Having grown up as a fairly affluent white kid, and having seen quite a few definitely affluent white kids in my time, I don't know that I've ever heard the "self-medicating" bit with reference to them.
- frogpelt 11y agoAbsentee parents are bad parents regardless of affluence. But bad parents are bad regardless of whether they are present or absent.
- cafard 11y agoSo where does C.P.E. Bach fit on the Seavey-Sinatra scale? Athletes seem to have have children who do well in athletics; there are three- and perhaps four-generation families in major league baseball, and the NBA has had several two-generation families (Bryant, Barry, Curry). In the arts, one sees less of that. In painting, I can think of the Lippis, in writing I can't get much past the Amises. In the sciences, I can't think offhand of any such names, though I expect the better informed could.
- Corvus 11y agoThe Bernoulli family produced several generations of outstanding mathematicians. According to http://www.storyofmathematics.com/18th_bernoulli.html http://www.storyofmathematics.com/18th_bernoulli.html they were quite competitive among themselves.
- cafard 11y agoThank you. I wasn't sure about their relationships, and too lazy to walk upstairs and check.
- x5n1 11y agoBachs as musicians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_family
- kelukelugames 11y agoThere is a pair where the father proved light is a particle and the song proved it's a wave. Can't remember their names at the moment.
- onedognight 11y agoMathematicians Max and Emmy Noether, and Élie and Henri Cartan.
- Animats 11y agoInteresting subject, terrible article. Two data points for a whole theory. If you like anecdotes on how some famous successful people brought up their kids, here are a few. John D. Rockefeller Jr. was given an allowance as a kid. His father didn't care what he spent it on, but he had to keep proper double-entry books on all his transactions, and these were audited monthly by a professional accountant. Henry Ford II, as he approached driving age, was bugging his grandfather, the original Henry Ford, for a car. He was told he'd get one on his birthday. So, on the appointed day, there was a completely disassembled car, along with all the tools needed to assemble it. It took Ford Jr. about 6 months to get it assembled and running. (Incidentally, the reason Fords still run Ford Motor is a two-tier stock scheme, like Google and Facebook. For many decades, this was very rare, because the NYSE didn't allow multiple classes of common stock. Ford was one of very few exceptions because its founding in 1903 predated that rule.)
- carsongross 11y agoLet me save you all five minutes: the author doesn't know, and doesn't have much interest in research around the topic, but does think it is important that parents be around their kids, and that Frank Sinatra was not.