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The second half of your comment is true, and I don't think anyone has claimed otherwise so the strength of your assertion is unnecessary. On the first half, ch

The second half of your comment is true, and I don't think anyone has claimed otherwise so the strength of your assertion is unnecessary. On the first half, children need boundaries set for them. And unless you are yourself a child rebelling against parental rules, you will find yourself on the barely populated side of the argument.

ddevault 7y ago
I fundamentally disagree with you on the philosophy of parenting. You're not setting boundaries, you're incentivizing them to break rules and teaching your children not to trust you. Children are people, not property, and they ought to be treated as such.
- gcthomas 7y ago
  I don't know how you got the idea of property or lack of trust here: my family know exactly what has been done and how to bypass it — I have taught my children to break unjust rules, but obey just ones based their moral judgement. The DNS filtering is for their protection, not their control. ps. you REALLY ought to make your children wear their seat-belts in the back of the car, freedom be damned. ;)
  - ddevault 7y ago
    >I don't know how you got the idea of property or lack of trust here: my family know exactly what has been done and how to bypass it — I have taught my children to break unjust rules, but obey just ones based their moral judgement. The DNS filtering is for their protection, not their control. If your children know how to break the filters, and they wouldn't get in trouble for doing so, then I retract my statements. >ps. you REALLY ought to make your children wear their seat-belts in the back of the car, freedom be damned. ;) This is not a fair comparison, you are legally obliged to wear a seatbelt in the car. I would not drive my adult friends around if they refused to wear their seatbelt.
    - enitihas 7y ago
      For a better comparison, do you not force your children to take not legally mandatory vaccines, and leave it to their judgement?
      - TheNorthman 7y ago
        Perhaps it hasn't been necessary to force them because he is capable of explaining _why_ they're important, i.e. he is capable of engaging in a dialogue with his children. Also, what kind of weird country do you live in where there even is such a thing as legally mandatory vaccines?
        lliamander 7y ago
        > Perhaps it hasn't been necessary to force them because he is capable of explaining _why_ they're important, i.e. he is capable of engaging in a dialogue with his children. As someone who actually does mainly employ this technique because it is generally more effective (especially with very spirited children), this is a delusional statement. For one thing, children don't always respond in good faith, and some (especially those who are verbally gifted) will try to manipulate the process of dialogue. It's also a bad idea to give them a false impression that something is up for negotiation when it is not.
        TheNorthman 7y ago
        > false impression that something is up for negotiation when it is not. It is up for negotiating, though. If you don't treat them as a rational being _always_ then you never treat them as rational. You don't get to choose when their rationality applies. If you do choose then you're the one who gives "them a false impression that something is up for negotiation when it is not".
        lliamander 7y ago
        > If you do choose then you're the one who gives "them a false impression that something is up for negotiation when it is not". I do not give false impressions because I tell my children when I am giving them an option or an explanation. When they are young, you require certain behavior of them so that they can develop healthy habits. Things like "eat your vegetables", "wash your hands" or "don't take your younger siblings toys out of their hands" are mandatory because it is important for children to develop habits of health, hygiene, and pro-social behavior. I may use positive as well as negative reinforcement, but you cannot expect such behavior out of small children purely through negotiation. When they are older, you grant them more autonomy but require behavior of them as a consequence of the fact that they are your dependents. As a parent, I am both the owner of the house they live in and their legal guardian. That means that I have latitude to set restrictions on their behavior so long as they are a) residents in my house, and b) my legal wards. When they are old enough, they are perfectly within their rights to seek emancipation. The goal, of course, is to set bounds that are both sufficiently liberal and sufficiently reasonable that the (older) child will have no desire to seek complete autonomy prior to the age of majority.
  - subsaharancoder 7y ago
    "based on their moral judgement" this sounds like a subjective standard of morality based purely on personal judgement/feelings/what feels right to me. So what happens when the child opts to do something they feel is moral based on their subjective standard even when others have termed it immoral? How do you reconcile that?
    - drdeca 7y ago
      "based on their moral judgement" could be interpreted as, and I suspect was meant as or roughly as, "based on what they believe is moral". That doesn't imply relativism. (I feel a bit wary about the word "subjective" because I feel like it is used in a number of different ways, and I don't want to get those different meanings mixed up. This is why I said "relativism" rather than "subjective".) I've never been in a position of much authority over a child, so I can't speak from experience on the side of the parent, but from my experience as a former child, my expectation is that often if a child (in the sense of age, not just "offspring regardless of age") disagrees with a moral claim and instruction made by a parent (especially one endorsed by much of society), that talking about it can go fairly well, as far as the parent's goals/beliefs are concerned. The parent is more experienced in life, and often better able to compose arguments, and that combined with even a small amount of claim of authority, can I think go a long way. Of course, there are three main types of disagreements of this kind that I can see: 1) The child believes that an action is permissible (or simply safe), and the parent believes (perhaps knows) that it is not. In this case, it seems reasonable that the child be more willing to default to the parent's perspective, because if the child is right, less is lost if they comply than is lost if the parent is right and the child does not comply. 2) The parent believes that something is morally obligatory, but the child does not believe this. Again, for the same reason, it seems like it would make sense for the child to be more likely to default to what the parent instructs. 3) The parent makes an instruction for sake of convenience which they believe is permissible, but the child believes to be impermissible. In this case it seems more reasonable for the child to resist the instruction more thoroughly. If sufficiently strongly convinced (i.e. if they have a strong enough degree of belief that they are correct) it may be appropriate for the child to refuse, even under risk of punishment, or, in extreme cases, even flee and seek refuge with others. I guess there is another case, which seem less relevant: 4) The child believes that something is obligatory, while the parent believes that it is not obligatory, and instructs the child to not do it. I don't think this situation happens enough to be all that relevant. However, there is also the possibility of a combination of some of these cases. If the child believes that an action is morally forbidden, while the parent believes it is morally obligatory, then this is indeed a difficult situation. If they cannot reach an agreement, then the only thing left to determine what happens is power, but this is not what determines who is in the right. If the child is correct, then they are in the right to refuse as best they can, and if the parent makes them do the thing, the parent is in the wrong. If the parent is correct, then they may be in the right to make the child comply, provided that they means that they do so are commensurate with the severity of the moral issue, and also not more forceful etc. than is necessary. This all seems straightforwards to me. When someone has practical authority over you, it is generally appropriate, insofar as is compatible with acting morally, to act in accordance with their commands-in-the-area-in-which-they-have-authority, but if their commands contravene what is morally required of you, then one ought to do what one is morally required to do (tautologically), not the commands to the contrary. If you are in authority over someone else, you not only have an obligation not to command them to do anything immoral, but if there is something which they believe to be immoral, but which you do not believe to be immoral, and it isn't critical that they do it, out of respect for the possibility that you may be wrong, and also out of respect for their goodness (If something is morally permissible and not morally obligatory, but one incorrectly believes that it is impermissible, as long as one believes that it is impermissible, one should not do it. If you tell someone to do something not-morally-obligatory-nor-supererogatory which they think wrong, and they do it, then you have caused them to behave poorly, which is something you should not do.) it is generally better not to ask that they do it.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    What are you protecting your children from with DNS filtering? As in, what is so incredibly damaging to children that you must bar their access to it?
    - claudiawerner 7y ago
      Perhaps they're referring to pornography, and more extreme pornography on the peripheries that can be pretty easy to find even with a Google image search. I don't have citations at hand right now, but pornography has been shown to have particularly worrying effects on children. It's very reasonable to not want your children to be exposed to porn, just as it is to not want them drinking alcohol.
      - Mindwipe 7y ago
        It hasn't. You don't have these citations to hand because (actual, peer reviewed, factual) evidence does not exist.
        claudiawerner 7y ago
        "Additionally, there is meta-analytic evidence to indicate that viewing more pornography and viewing extreme pornography is associated with the sexual objectification of women and more aggressive attitudes (Hald et al., 2010)[0]. Some longitudinal findings link sexual aggression and use of violent pornography, for example, one study of 10-15 year olds in the US found that those who intentionally viewed violent X-rated materials were nearly six times more likely than others to report sexually aggressive behaviour (Ybarra et al. 2011)[1]."[2] [0] Hald, G.M., Malamuth, N.M., & Yuen, C. (2010). Pornography and attitudes supporting violence against women: Revisiting the relationship in non-experimental studies. Aggressive Behavior.36, 14-20. doi: 10.1002/ab.20328 [1] Ybarra, M.L., Mitchell, K.J., Hamburger, M., Diener-West, M. & Leaf, P.J. (2011). X-rated material and perpetration of sexually aggressive behavior among children and adolescents: Is there a link? Aggressive Behavior, 37, 1–18. [2] Victoria et al. (2016). Identifying the routes by which children view pornography online: implications for future policy-makers seeking to limit viewing report of expert panel for DCMS. Technical Report. Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
- Diederich 7y ago
  > Children are people, not property, and they ought to be treated as such. Children certainly aren't property, and they certainly are people. Immature, 'work in progress' people. Our autistic son is a person, and not property. At the age of 17 years, he also has a reasonable command of language. The only reason he can talk today is because we spent years using various techniques to strongly encourage him to learn language. Most of these were positive reinforcement: do this thing and you'll get something you want. Some were negative reinforcement: if you do this other thing, then you lose something you want. This was an enormous and draining work. At the age of six, he was evaluated by a world class group of autism experts in the SF bay area, and we were told, point blank, that he would never speak. It's true that this is a special case, but it's meant to clearly illustrate the underlying truth: to have positive outcomes, most children require variable amounts of coercion. More to the point: I agree that it's relatively easy for most people and many children to work around DNS based censorship. I think it can be useful in some cases, but not as many as its proponents believe. It's still a useful tool.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    >It's true that this is a special case, but it's meant to clearly illustrate the underlying truth: to have positive outcomes, most children require variable amounts of coercion. Because it's a special case it doesn't actually illustrate this "underlying truth". I think this kind of coercion tries to normalize kids, to make them more like parents think all the other kids are like. However, it's quite common that parents, for some reason, don't seem to understand (remember) what kids are actually like. Coercing a child can backfire disastrously. It can make them dependent on you and thus unable to deal with life later on. It can make them reject you and rebel against you and the values you try to teach them. What I'm trying to say is that this isn't predictable. There is no straightforward "children need coercion" type thing. If my parents had tried to be as controlling as many people in this thread seem to be, then I would probably never have spoken to them as an adult.

ddevault 7y ago

I fundamentally disagree with you on the philosophy of parenting. You're not setting boundaries, you're incentivizing them to break rules and teaching your children not to trust you. Children are people, not property, and they ought to be treated as such.

gcthomas 7y ago
I don't know how you got the idea of property or lack of trust here: my family know exactly what has been done and how to bypass it — I have taught my children to break unjust rules, but obey just ones based their moral judgement. The DNS filtering is for their protection, not their control. ps. you REALLY ought to make your children wear their seat-belts in the back of the car, freedom be damned. ;)
- ddevault 7y ago
  >I don't know how you got the idea of property or lack of trust here: my family know exactly what has been done and how to bypass it — I have taught my children to break unjust rules, but obey just ones based their moral judgement. The DNS filtering is for their protection, not their control. If your children know how to break the filters, and they wouldn't get in trouble for doing so, then I retract my statements. >ps. you REALLY ought to make your children wear their seat-belts in the back of the car, freedom be damned. ;) This is not a fair comparison, you are legally obliged to wear a seatbelt in the car. I would not drive my adult friends around if they refused to wear their seatbelt.
  - enitihas 7y ago
    For a better comparison, do you not force your children to take not legally mandatory vaccines, and leave it to their judgement?
    - TheNorthman 7y ago
      Perhaps it hasn't been necessary to force them because he is capable of explaining _why_ they're important, i.e. he is capable of engaging in a dialogue with his children. Also, what kind of weird country do you live in where there even is such a thing as legally mandatory vaccines?
      - lliamander 7y ago
        > Perhaps it hasn't been necessary to force them because he is capable of explaining _why_ they're important, i.e. he is capable of engaging in a dialogue with his children. As someone who actually does mainly employ this technique because it is generally more effective (especially with very spirited children), this is a delusional statement. For one thing, children don't always respond in good faith, and some (especially those who are verbally gifted) will try to manipulate the process of dialogue. It's also a bad idea to give them a false impression that something is up for negotiation when it is not.
        TheNorthman 7y ago
        > false impression that something is up for negotiation when it is not. It is up for negotiating, though. If you don't treat them as a rational being _always_ then you never treat them as rational. You don't get to choose when their rationality applies. If you do choose then you're the one who gives "them a false impression that something is up for negotiation when it is not".
        lliamander 7y ago
        > If you do choose then you're the one who gives "them a false impression that something is up for negotiation when it is not". I do not give false impressions because I tell my children when I am giving them an option or an explanation. When they are young, you require certain behavior of them so that they can develop healthy habits. Things like "eat your vegetables", "wash your hands" or "don't take your younger siblings toys out of their hands" are mandatory because it is important for children to develop habits of health, hygiene, and pro-social behavior. I may use positive as well as negative reinforcement, but you cannot expect such behavior out of small children purely through negotiation. When they are older, you grant them more autonomy but require behavior of them as a consequence of the fact that they are your dependents. As a parent, I am both the owner of the house they live in and their legal guardian. That means that I have latitude to set restrictions on their behavior so long as they are a) residents in my house, and b) my legal wards. When they are old enough, they are perfectly within their rights to seek emancipation. The goal, of course, is to set bounds that are both sufficiently liberal and sufficiently reasonable that the (older) child will have no desire to seek complete autonomy prior to the age of majority.
- subsaharancoder 7y ago
  "based on their moral judgement" this sounds like a subjective standard of morality based purely on personal judgement/feelings/what feels right to me. So what happens when the child opts to do something they feel is moral based on their subjective standard even when others have termed it immoral? How do you reconcile that?
  - drdeca 7y ago
    "based on their moral judgement" could be interpreted as, and I suspect was meant as or roughly as, "based on what they believe is moral". That doesn't imply relativism. (I feel a bit wary about the word "subjective" because I feel like it is used in a number of different ways, and I don't want to get those different meanings mixed up. This is why I said "relativism" rather than "subjective".) I've never been in a position of much authority over a child, so I can't speak from experience on the side of the parent, but from my experience as a former child, my expectation is that often if a child (in the sense of age, not just "offspring regardless of age") disagrees with a moral claim and instruction made by a parent (especially one endorsed by much of society), that talking about it can go fairly well, as far as the parent's goals/beliefs are concerned. The parent is more experienced in life, and often better able to compose arguments, and that combined with even a small amount of claim of authority, can I think go a long way. Of course, there are three main types of disagreements of this kind that I can see: 1) The child believes that an action is permissible (or simply safe), and the parent believes (perhaps knows) that it is not. In this case, it seems reasonable that the child be more willing to default to the parent's perspective, because if the child is right, less is lost if they comply than is lost if the parent is right and the child does not comply. 2) The parent believes that something is morally obligatory, but the child does not believe this. Again, for the same reason, it seems like it would make sense for the child to be more likely to default to what the parent instructs. 3) The parent makes an instruction for sake of convenience which they believe is permissible, but the child believes to be impermissible. In this case it seems more reasonable for the child to resist the instruction more thoroughly. If sufficiently strongly convinced (i.e. if they have a strong enough degree of belief that they are correct) it may be appropriate for the child to refuse, even under risk of punishment, or, in extreme cases, even flee and seek refuge with others. I guess there is another case, which seem less relevant: 4) The child believes that something is obligatory, while the parent believes that it is not obligatory, and instructs the child to not do it. I don't think this situation happens enough to be all that relevant. However, there is also the possibility of a combination of some of these cases. If the child believes that an action is morally forbidden, while the parent believes it is morally obligatory, then this is indeed a difficult situation. If they cannot reach an agreement, then the only thing left to determine what happens is power, but this is not what determines who is in the right. If the child is correct, then they are in the right to refuse as best they can, and if the parent makes them do the thing, the parent is in the wrong. If the parent is correct, then they may be in the right to make the child comply, provided that they means that they do so are commensurate with the severity of the moral issue, and also not more forceful etc. than is necessary. This all seems straightforwards to me. When someone has practical authority over you, it is generally appropriate, insofar as is compatible with acting morally, to act in accordance with their commands-in-the-area-in-which-they-have-authority, but if their commands contravene what is morally required of you, then one ought to do what one is morally required to do (tautologically), not the commands to the contrary. If you are in authority over someone else, you not only have an obligation not to command them to do anything immoral, but if there is something which they believe to be immoral, but which you do not believe to be immoral, and it isn't critical that they do it, out of respect for the possibility that you may be wrong, and also out of respect for their goodness (If something is morally permissible and not morally obligatory, but one incorrectly believes that it is impermissible, as long as one believes that it is impermissible, one should not do it. If you tell someone to do something not-morally-obligatory-nor-supererogatory which they think wrong, and they do it, then you have caused them to behave poorly, which is something you should not do.) it is generally better not to ask that they do it.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  What are you protecting your children from with DNS filtering? As in, what is so incredibly damaging to children that you must bar their access to it?
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    Perhaps they're referring to pornography, and more extreme pornography on the peripheries that can be pretty easy to find even with a Google image search. I don't have citations at hand right now, but pornography has been shown to have particularly worrying effects on children. It's very reasonable to not want your children to be exposed to porn, just as it is to not want them drinking alcohol.
    - Mindwipe 7y ago
      It hasn't. You don't have these citations to hand because (actual, peer reviewed, factual) evidence does not exist.
      - claudiawerner 7y ago
        "Additionally, there is meta-analytic evidence to indicate that viewing more pornography and viewing extreme pornography is associated with the sexual objectification of women and more aggressive attitudes (Hald et al., 2010)[0]. Some longitudinal findings link sexual aggression and use of violent pornography, for example, one study of 10-15 year olds in the US found that those who intentionally viewed violent X-rated materials were nearly six times more likely than others to report sexually aggressive behaviour (Ybarra et al. 2011)[1]."[2] [0] Hald, G.M., Malamuth, N.M., & Yuen, C. (2010). Pornography and attitudes supporting violence against women: Revisiting the relationship in non-experimental studies. Aggressive Behavior.36, 14-20. doi: 10.1002/ab.20328 [1] Ybarra, M.L., Mitchell, K.J., Hamburger, M., Diener-West, M. & Leaf, P.J. (2011). X-rated material and perpetration of sexually aggressive behavior among children and adolescents: Is there a link? Aggressive Behavior, 37, 1–18. [2] Victoria et al. (2016). Identifying the routes by which children view pornography online: implications for future policy-makers seeking to limit viewing report of expert panel for DCMS. Technical Report. Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
Diederich 7y ago
> Children are people, not property, and they ought to be treated as such. Children certainly aren't property, and they certainly are people. Immature, 'work in progress' people. Our autistic son is a person, and not property. At the age of 17 years, he also has a reasonable command of language. The only reason he can talk today is because we spent years using various techniques to strongly encourage him to learn language. Most of these were positive reinforcement: do this thing and you'll get something you want. Some were negative reinforcement: if you do this other thing, then you lose something you want. This was an enormous and draining work. At the age of six, he was evaluated by a world class group of autism experts in the SF bay area, and we were told, point blank, that he would never speak. It's true that this is a special case, but it's meant to clearly illustrate the underlying truth: to have positive outcomes, most children require variable amounts of coercion. More to the point: I agree that it's relatively easy for most people and many children to work around DNS based censorship. I think it can be useful in some cases, but not as many as its proponents believe. It's still a useful tool.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >It's true that this is a special case, but it's meant to clearly illustrate the underlying truth: to have positive outcomes, most children require variable amounts of coercion. Because it's a special case it doesn't actually illustrate this "underlying truth". I think this kind of coercion tries to normalize kids, to make them more like parents think all the other kids are like. However, it's quite common that parents, for some reason, don't seem to understand (remember) what kids are actually like. Coercing a child can backfire disastrously. It can make them dependent on you and thus unable to deal with life later on. It can make them reject you and rebel against you and the values you try to teach them. What I'm trying to say is that this isn't predictable. There is no straightforward "children need coercion" type thing. If my parents had tried to be as controlling as many people in this thread seem to be, then I would probably never have spoken to them as an adult.