American parenting is killing the American marriage (2014)

In terms of a single society it would make more economic sense to stop having children, import foreign collage graduates, and execute people once they reach retirement age.

But society, luckily, isn't some autonomous macro-organism that can treat people like individual cells in your body. So when we say that we value babies above all else that's a projection of the individual aspirations of the members of that society.

An average member of society will care much more about the health of their family and children than maximizing the GDP of their country, and government policy and rhetoric luckily at least partially reflects this.

> School districts are weirdly tied to real estate in the U.S.

Rich people want nicer schools. These same people have a lot of influence and or control in our society, so they dictate how the money was divvied up, to make sure their kids got the best.

In many other countries the money is put into a large "pot" and then redistributed from that. So most schools per student budget is similar but with adjustments for cost of living. The US is actually the odd duck for how monied some public schools are, while depriving almost impoverishing others.

Charter schools only make the situation worse, since many utilise public funds while also charging parents (so effectively a private school that keeps poor kids out, but gets to utilise public money to do so).

College graduates are "better" than the whole population? Wow.

I completely disagree and as a college graduate I would never say something like that.

He has a perfectly valid economic argument. He's not saying it's the sunk cost that provides the value, it's the added overall value they provide by having a college education. The cost of getting that education could be a reasonable proxy for the value of the education, though imperfect.

People usually make the sunk cost mistake when they aren't evaluating the immediate potential of the options, just the emotional tie to the money invested. That's not the case here.

This isn't a bad train of thought, though I wonder if this says more about Millennial narcissism than it does about the "religion of parenting".

I think this has more to do with a kind of ethical posturing ("I am holier than thou") than it is about a sacred cow. There are parents who will give up their own interests for the sake of their children's interest, and not because there is peer-pressure to do so, or as a way to gain status within the community, or to be tyrannized by a cultural myth.

So thinking about it more, I think this article is BS -- not because the issues it raises are not true, but because it focused on the wrong thing.

There is also a spiritual and psychological transformation that takes place with becoming a parent.

Philosopher Ken Wilber had written extensively about modernity, and the way it throws pre-modern ideas such as the Great Chain of Being out the window, leaving members of modernity disconnected with their place in the universe. That's not to say that pre-modern ideas where they just told you where your place is a good idea. On the other hand, existential angst and a constant wondering of your place in society, in the world, in the universe as a whole is a constant them in the cultures of modernity.

What does this have to do with parenting? The idea of the Great Chain of Being is a kind of stand-in, or abstractions, that Ken Wilber claims ties the pre-modern religion together. They disagree on a lot of things, but one thing that is present in the religious teachings is putting the human experience in context of the cosmos as a whole. The search for the meaning of life was a search for your origins, of where you came from -- a search for who you were "born" from. It might seem obvious that your body was born from the DNA of both of your parents; however, where did they come from? If you trace things up your lineage, you still come to the question, "Where did life originate from?"

To use the mythic language in the context of the Great Chain of Being, you were "born" from the universe.

To become a parent is to experience -- just a little bit -- of what it is like for the universe to give life and creation. It might be accidental or intentional. Someone might enter this stage with naivete or with great wisdom. There are a lot of things you might have railed against growing up, but now as a parent, it makes you think and wonder.

My point is that, if you were to strip away the ethical posturing and political correctness, what you are left with is not a re-examination of parenting, that there is a sacred cow to be slaughtered. Parenting is an re-examination of your self and your place and purpose within the universe. Your growth does not stop there. You might gain a better appreciation of how things come together.