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My least favorite pg essay. It's too easy to generalize about parenting, and so little of this essay applies to me. 1. Raising a kid in the city, and quite ha

My least favorite pg essay. It's too easy to generalize about parenting, and so little of this essay applies to me. 1. Raising a kid in the city, and quite happily. 2. No prohibitions on swears in my house. Just at Grandma's, and only because it would offend her, not because swearing is inherently bad. 3. He goes to a school where they only teach you how to read, write, and do basic math. Everything else is a child-led research project. 4. We don't lie about turkeys. Turkeys are not very smart, and have no concept of "wanting to die." If he asked this question, I'd explore vegetarian options with him. 5. Pastafarians. He can make his own spiritual allegiences when he feels the desire to do so. 6. Drugs and sex haven't come up much, beyond the basic "where do babies come from" conversation. We've done that, he's satisfied for now. On and on. I'm not the only parent like me, either. Be careful about generalizations.

mynameishere 18y ago
Turkeys are not very smart, and have no concept of "wanting to die." Turkeys are very smart birds and their behavior is very finely geared around not dying.
- dgabriel 18y ago
  Exactly. There aren't suicidal turkeys; they get slaughtered and cleaned and cooked. Why is that so horrifying for a child?
  - scott_s 18y ago
    I think children tend to project their own concept of being alive onto other creatures. Basically, they assume the turkey is, in some way, like them. While I think a turkey clearly does not have the same understanding of mortality that we do, I also think that they clearly don't want to die. Basic survival is a common trait of any successful species. The concept of want is different, though, since they have a much more primitive type of consciousness.
  - mrtron 18y ago
    Growing up in a farming community, death was common and not hidden from children. The more horrific thing for me as a kid was discovering: "Today’s domesticated turkeys are anatomically manipulated to be so heavy and large breasted, because breast meat is the most desirable and therefore commands the best price, that they are now incapable of breeding naturally." So, there are people who have to perform this artificially for the males and then for the females. In fact, since turkeys are now raised in mega-farms, there are people with this as their career.
    - mynameishere 18y ago
      Watch and enjoy: http://www.findinternettv.com/Video,item,1838332278.aspx http://www.findinternettv.com/Video,item,1838332278.aspx
    - Prrometheus 18y ago
      Responding to half your post, there are cultures (such as farms) where death is dealt with more frankly, and it doesn't seem to cause harm to children outside of making them more practical.
      - scott_s 18y ago
        I think the key is that it's the parents who are uncomfortable with death, since they don't have to deal with it on a daily basis, either.
      - paddy_m 18y ago
        One time I called my friend with some land in Texas, his 7 year old daughter picked up the phone. I asked "Can I speak with you Dad?", She said "sure he is feeding the chickens". I asked, "Do you name the chickens?". She replied "No, because we eat them, they taste good". Very innocent, cute response, from a very well adjusted kid.
        te_platt 18y ago
        My inlaws once raised a couple of turkeys. They did name them. Thanksgiving and Christmas. They tasted good.
  - hugh 18y ago
    Perhaps because children tend to assume animals are a lot smarter than they actually are (I remember that I used to), and that their experiences are more equivalent to human experiences. I wonder whether this is natural, or whether it comes from the fact that children spend all their time watching movies and reading books about intelligent anthropomorphic animals.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
jpeterson 18y ago
I predict that you are in for some rough times when he gets a little older.
- dgabriel 18y ago
  So is every parent.
pg 18y ago
Lying to your kids is like the kind of intellectual fashion I wrote about in "What You Can't Say." No parent thinks they lie to their kids-- except of course in necessary or harmless ways-- just as no one thinks what they believe is an intellectual fashion. But in retrospect it turns out most parents do, just as in retrospect it turns out most people's beliefs are influenced by intellectual fashions. So if one has a strong conviction that lying to their kids is not an issue, that's not necessarily the kind of evidence one can trust. Plenty of parents you'd consider to be lying outrageously to their kids also think that.
- dgabriel 18y ago
  The examples you presented to illustrate your argument ring false in my experience, and the premise seems flawed as a result. They may seem correct to you, depending on how your circle of friends behave. It might be more correct to say everybody lies outrageously to everybody else, and sometimes one person is a parent and one person is a child.
  - pchristensen 18y ago
    I agreed that the essay could use more examples. I understand that the examples might seem silly in 100 years (or even 10), but it would have benefited from things like "In 2008, many parents told their kids X"
    - r7000 18y ago
      Is that not implied? We can assume an author is writing about the present and recent past unless told otherwise told.
      - pchristensen 18y ago
        In the notes, he mentions concern for how the readers 100 years from now will view his essays.
        18y ago
brent 18y ago
There is an exception to every rule. You can't cover every base in a short essay. I'm sure his next few paragraphs were going to make explicit his exclusion of the extremely progressive.
imp 18y ago
I'm glad there are more enlightened parents out there like you. I completely agreed with every point he made because that's how I was raised. It never occured to me that some parents might actually be honest with their kids.
jamess 18y ago
For their own sake, don't let your kids be vegetarian until they're at least 16, that's the worst disservice you could ever do them. I speak as a vegetarian myself, but you've got to be pragmatic. Your kids need animal protein right up until their brains are done developing. It doesn't have to be very much animal protein, as little as a teaspoon a day does the trick, but there is no artificial or vegetable substitute yet derived that will work. Personally, I think either letting or forcing a child to become vegetarian borders very close on child abuse. You'd be actively and artificially limiting their chances in life.
- cia_plant 18y ago
  The American Dietetic Association, at least, disagrees: "Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence." http://www.eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg/ada/hs.xsl/advocacy_933_ENU_HTML.htm http://www.eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg/ada/hs.xsl/advocacy_933... Can you at least offer a source for your shocking claims?
  - jamess 18y ago
    Erm, hardly shocking. It has been established since at least the 80s that vitamin B12 is essential for brain development, and any number of large scale developmental studies have been carried out to that effect.There are no non-animal sources for vitamin B12. If you find any doctor of medicine who will recommend a vegan or vegetarian diet to either a breast feeding mother or to a child, then they ought to be struck off. Simply Googling for "vitamin B12 brain development" will return you any number of papers on the subject, but most of them are behind their respective journal's paywalls unfortunately. However, the fact their abstracts include works like "cerebral atrophy" might give you some idea of their content.
    - cia_plant 18y ago
      Unless you are a strict vegetarian (vegan), you can obtain B12 from eggs or dairy products. Most vegans are well aware of the danger of B12 deficiency, and either take supplements or eat foods fortified with B12. B12 supplements are inexpensive and widely available. So how exactly is B12 a serious problem for vegetarians?
Prrometheus 18y ago
Congratulations. You're a very rare parent, in my experience. The essay is based on PG's observations of what he believes to be the majority of families. Essay's targeted to the edge cases tend to have small audiences.
pchristensen 18y ago
A couple questions regarding your points: 1) which city, and how urban? I keep trying to convince my wife that the city (Chicago in my case) is ok and I'm gathering data 3) that sounds like a great school - public or private? name? I'd love to find a school like that.
- dgabriel 18y ago
  I live in Cambridge, MA. While it's not inner city, it's not the burbs, either. I have several parent friends who live in NYC, Austin, and DC, as well. Chicago sounds like a great city to raise a child. My son goes to a Montessori school, and it's perfect for him. He's already defining his own curriculum, and starting to work on being responsible for setting and accomplishing his own goals (he's 6). However, YMMV with Montessori programs. Some are much better than others.
- tptacek 18y ago
  I grew up in Chicago and raise 2 kids in Oak Park, which is to Chicago what Brooklyn is to Manhattan. Speaking of Brooklyn, one of my two business partners is going to be raising a kid there as well. The problem with big cities and children is school systems; you can get around that by paying for explicit private schools, or the de facto private school systems you get in the near suburbs.
r7000 18y ago
Essays must use generalizations. There are always exceptions to any possible example. However, you are probably reinforcing many, many other deep-seated cultural norms that were not used as examples. Some that may even drop out of favour in the future.
dpapathanasiou 18y ago
My least favorite pg essay. I agree; it's even worse than the one on philosophy.
- xcombinator 18y ago
  Me too. I use to like PG essays, I don't like this. I don't remember being lied by my parent's. I used to ask my father a lot, and he as a scientist replied. Then I started reading books. They didn't hide anything.
outofocus 18y ago
But generalizations are just that... general. The essay doesn't apply to my parenting but I enjoyed reading it anyway because I know that it applies to many other parents. I could identify with aspects of it because I survived public schools. You made the decisions to raise your child as you are for specific reasons. I can't imagine that this article doesn't touch onto some of the motivators behind your parenting style.

mynameishere 18y ago

Turkeys are not very smart, and have no concept of "wanting to die." Turkeys are very smart birds and their behavior is very finely geared around not dying.

dgabriel 18y ago
Exactly. There aren't suicidal turkeys; they get slaughtered and cleaned and cooked. Why is that so horrifying for a child?
- scott_s 18y ago
  I think children tend to project their own concept of being alive onto other creatures. Basically, they assume the turkey is, in some way, like them. While I think a turkey clearly does not have the same understanding of mortality that we do, I also think that they clearly don't want to die. Basic survival is a common trait of any successful species. The concept of want is different, though, since they have a much more primitive type of consciousness.
- mrtron 18y ago
  Growing up in a farming community, death was common and not hidden from children. The more horrific thing for me as a kid was discovering: "Today’s domesticated turkeys are anatomically manipulated to be so heavy and large breasted, because breast meat is the most desirable and therefore commands the best price, that they are now incapable of breeding naturally." So, there are people who have to perform this artificially for the males and then for the females. In fact, since turkeys are now raised in mega-farms, there are people with this as their career.
  - mynameishere 18y ago
    Watch and enjoy: http://www.findinternettv.com/Video,item,1838332278.aspx http://www.findinternettv.com/Video,item,1838332278.aspx
  - Prrometheus 18y ago
    Responding to half your post, there are cultures (such as farms) where death is dealt with more frankly, and it doesn't seem to cause harm to children outside of making them more practical.
    - scott_s 18y ago
      I think the key is that it's the parents who are uncomfortable with death, since they don't have to deal with it on a daily basis, either.
    - paddy_m 18y ago
      One time I called my friend with some land in Texas, his 7 year old daughter picked up the phone. I asked "Can I speak with you Dad?", She said "sure he is feeding the chickens". I asked, "Do you name the chickens?". She replied "No, because we eat them, they taste good". Very innocent, cute response, from a very well adjusted kid.
      - te_platt 18y ago
        My inlaws once raised a couple of turkeys. They did name them. Thanksgiving and Christmas. They tasted good.
- hugh 18y ago
  Perhaps because children tend to assume animals are a lot smarter than they actually are (I remember that I used to), and that their experiences are more equivalent to human experiences. I wonder whether this is natural, or whether it comes from the fact that children spend all their time watching movies and reading books about intelligent anthropomorphic animals.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

jpeterson 18y ago

I predict that you are in for some rough times when he gets a little older.

dgabriel 18y ago
So is every parent.

pg 18y ago

Lying to your kids is like the kind of intellectual fashion I wrote about in "What You Can't Say." No parent thinks they lie to their kids-- except of course in necessary or harmless ways-- just as no one thinks what they believe is an intellectual fashion. But in retrospect it turns out most parents do, just as in retrospect it turns out most people's beliefs are influenced by intellectual fashions. So if one has a strong conviction that lying to their kids is not an issue, that's not necessarily the kind of evidence one can trust. Plenty of parents you'd consider to be lying outrageously to their kids also think that.

dgabriel 18y ago
The examples you presented to illustrate your argument ring false in my experience, and the premise seems flawed as a result. They may seem correct to you, depending on how your circle of friends behave. It might be more correct to say everybody lies outrageously to everybody else, and sometimes one person is a parent and one person is a child.
- pchristensen 18y ago
  I agreed that the essay could use more examples. I understand that the examples might seem silly in 100 years (or even 10), but it would have benefited from things like "In 2008, many parents told their kids X"
  - r7000 18y ago
    Is that not implied? We can assume an author is writing about the present and recent past unless told otherwise told.
    - pchristensen 18y ago
      In the notes, he mentions concern for how the readers 100 years from now will view his essays.
      - 18y ago

brent 18y ago

There is an exception to every rule. You can't cover every base in a short essay. I'm sure his next few paragraphs were going to make explicit his exclusion of the extremely progressive.

imp 18y ago

I'm glad there are more enlightened parents out there like you. I completely agreed with every point he made because that's how I was raised. It never occured to me that some parents might actually be honest with their kids.

jamess 18y ago

For their own sake, don't let your kids be vegetarian until they're at least 16, that's the worst disservice you could ever do them. I speak as a vegetarian myself, but you've got to be pragmatic. Your kids need animal protein right up until their brains are done developing. It doesn't have to be very much animal protein, as little as a teaspoon a day does the trick, but there is no artificial or vegetable substitute yet derived that will work. Personally, I think either letting or forcing a child to become vegetarian borders very close on child abuse. You'd be actively and artificially limiting their chances in life.

cia_plant 18y ago
The American Dietetic Association, at least, disagrees: "Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence." http://www.eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg/ada/hs.xsl/advocacy_933_ENU_HTML.htm http://www.eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg/ada/hs.xsl/advocacy_933... Can you at least offer a source for your shocking claims?
- jamess 18y ago
  Erm, hardly shocking. It has been established since at least the 80s that vitamin B12 is essential for brain development, and any number of large scale developmental studies have been carried out to that effect.There are no non-animal sources for vitamin B12. If you find any doctor of medicine who will recommend a vegan or vegetarian diet to either a breast feeding mother or to a child, then they ought to be struck off. Simply Googling for "vitamin B12 brain development" will return you any number of papers on the subject, but most of them are behind their respective journal's paywalls unfortunately. However, the fact their abstracts include works like "cerebral atrophy" might give you some idea of their content.
  - cia_plant 18y ago
    Unless you are a strict vegetarian (vegan), you can obtain B12 from eggs or dairy products. Most vegans are well aware of the danger of B12 deficiency, and either take supplements or eat foods fortified with B12. B12 supplements are inexpensive and widely available. So how exactly is B12 a serious problem for vegetarians?

Prrometheus 18y ago

Congratulations. You're a very rare parent, in my experience. The essay is based on PG's observations of what he believes to be the majority of families. Essay's targeted to the edge cases tend to have small audiences.

pchristensen 18y ago

A couple questions regarding your points: 1) which city, and how urban? I keep trying to convince my wife that the city (Chicago in my case) is ok and I'm gathering data 3) that sounds like a great school - public or private? name? I'd love to find a school like that.

dgabriel 18y ago
I live in Cambridge, MA. While it's not inner city, it's not the burbs, either. I have several parent friends who live in NYC, Austin, and DC, as well. Chicago sounds like a great city to raise a child. My son goes to a Montessori school, and it's perfect for him. He's already defining his own curriculum, and starting to work on being responsible for setting and accomplishing his own goals (he's 6). However, YMMV with Montessori programs. Some are much better than others.
tptacek 18y ago
I grew up in Chicago and raise 2 kids in Oak Park, which is to Chicago what Brooklyn is to Manhattan. Speaking of Brooklyn, one of my two business partners is going to be raising a kid there as well. The problem with big cities and children is school systems; you can get around that by paying for explicit private schools, or the de facto private school systems you get in the near suburbs.

r7000 18y ago

Essays must use generalizations. There are always exceptions to any possible example. However, you are probably reinforcing many, many other deep-seated cultural norms that were not used as examples. Some that may even drop out of favour in the future.

dpapathanasiou 18y ago

My least favorite pg essay. I agree; it's even worse than the one on philosophy.

xcombinator 18y ago
Me too. I use to like PG essays, I don't like this. I don't remember being lied by my parent's. I used to ask my father a lot, and he as a scientist replied. Then I started reading books. They didn't hide anything.

outofocus 18y ago

But generalizations are just that... general. The essay doesn't apply to my parenting but I enjoyed reading it anyway because I know that it applies to many other parents. I could identify with aspects of it because I survived public schools. You made the decisions to raise your child as you are for specific reasons. I can't imagine that this article doesn't touch onto some of the motivators behind your parenting style.