Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 215 posts

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#181

Post by DoreenMichele »

watwut wrote: post #176
DoreenMichele wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids also really did play outside unsupervised more and/or with siblings, cousins and friends to help keep them safe instead of an adult. I think some larger fabric of social life has changed and we can't figure out how to translate historical parenting patterns into modern life in a way that makes sense. I think a lot of parents feel very stressed right now and that fosters these weird conclusions that "if only X pi…

I think that a lot of stress would go down if we stepped away from the idea that parent must be that superhuman entity always perfect always present always in control. I have noted how quick people are to call parents lazy when parents choose action that is practical to them. If parent looks at phone at playground, parent is lazy and don't care and neglectful. Just, chill, people. If parent is active, then it is heli…

The cruelties of familiar children, like siblings, cousins and neighbor kids, are typically presumed to be less harmful than the cruelties of random strangers who may be pedophiles etc.

I'm not saying its necessarily true. I'm just saying it tends to be less feared.

Another thing that has changed is that people move a lot more. My parents bought a house when I was three. I graduated high school with kids I went to kindergarten with. Historically, buying a house for life was much more normal. Knowing the same people for many years made it easier to calculate risks.

One of the reasons we have the saying "better the devil you know" is because familiarity allows you to adapt and figure out coping mechanisms for known problems. Unfamiliar territory routinely endangers you in unexpected ways at unexpected times. Being caught unprepared can easily have worse outcomes than familiar problems, even if those familiar problems are potentially equally dangerous.

Americans haven't really learned yet good metrics for when to butt out and when to feel responsible in some way for people they don't know all that well. So, as a group, we butt in a lot when we shouldn't.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#182

Post by wahern »

jordigh wrote: post #27

I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly…

I don't think it's petty, but I think maybe people should be a little more charitable. If you point-blank asked the writer whether she considered Mexicans Western, I have little doubt (though we can't be sure) she would respond in the affirmative. The issue is context.

What seemed to happen here was the idea that the Mayan parenting method has seeped into the broader Mexican culture to varying degrees. I don't know the extent to which that is true (maybe strong geographic component), but that's the idea that the author is reporting on. That's the context that was setup. From there sloppy writing and sloppy language made it easy to equivocate cultures and, finally, make a seemingly absurd distinction between Mexican culture, as a whole, and Western culture. Some of the blame should be placed at the feet of her scholarly sources, if the author's quotations and paraphrasing are accurate

Also, FWIW from 1970s to 1990s there was the Chicano cultural movement in the U.S. (and perhaps Mexico?) that sought to distinguish and emphasis indigenous Mexican cultures from Western culture. I don't think there's denying that as compared to the U.S. the national identity of many Mexicans is complicated by the fact that indigenous identities and cultures are far stronger, in numbers and emphasis. (And this is different than the hyphenated American identities, or the identities of 1st and 2nd generation immigrants. And it's different from Native Americans in the U.S. because they're disenfranchised and have no political power.) That reality can be difficult for Americans of any ethnicity to fully appreciate, but especially for white Americans. It's not that white Americans don't understand complex identities. There are plenty of people who strongly self-identify as Irish-American, Italian-American, Mexican-American, etc. It's just that many of these identities no longer conflict with the broader national identity (particularly the former) and so they have little experience navigating the tensions that other people struggle with, particularly with nuances around vocabulary and context.

It's definitely worth pointing out. But people don't respond well to opprobrium. Resentment is harsh. Do you really mean resentment or just frustration? To my mind resentment implies you feel no shared identity with Americans, which conflicts with your statement about having a shared Western identity. I'm a white American who has traveled enough (including in Mexico) to not only feel a shared identity with Mexicans, but one much stronger and closer than simply Western. I couldn't even begin to articulate the bounds of that identity (the precise bounds are no doubt peculiar to each individual), but I feel it when I travel (to Asia, to Europe) and I have a conviction that it exists, objectively and independently, whether people realize it or not.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#183

Post by zaroth »

johnchristopher wrote: post #156
Bakary wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any notable SF works where it's more or less impossible to estimate the culture and era of the author?

It's an SF precursor but it seems to me few people know that Frankenstein comes from a book written by a woman 200 years ago (I just realized it's that old. Surprised no one produced a 200th anniversary movie).

And now a story on the front page about her mom!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280561

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#184

Post by [deleted] »

theBobBob wrote: post #75

I remember when I moved away for college I was so shocked at how quite a few people basically couldn't look after themselves at all. I ended up teaching one guy I lived with how to do the most basic things. I actually had to show him how to put a duvet cover on, how to boil rice, how to use a washing machine, the fact that if a chicken fillet is 50% pink on the inside is not yet finished. He had never done any of the…

[deleted]

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#185

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jacobolus wrote: post #39
azernik wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article seems to think it's lack of time: ================================= Sure, toddlers may want to help, but let's face reality here. At first, they really can't do much. They can be clumsy, destructive and even enraging. Their involvement in chores often slows things down or makes a mess. For this reason, many parents in Western culture rebuff a toddler's offer to help, Mejia-Arauz says. "We have mothers tel…

People think it saves time and trouble to push their kids around in strollers instead of letting them walk (very slowly at first), set them in walled cribs for 12 hours per day instead of letting them move about, sit them in high chairs to eat, get them to play in small fenced places with no sharp corners, let them stay in little rolling walker chairs, pre-process all their food into mush, not let them climb up or do…

There's a couple of outliers in your list IMO.

Long-legged "high" chairs raise the child to a comfortable table height. How else do you expect then to sit at the same table as much taller people?

Giving soft food, to people with no teeth, also just seems entirely sensible. We pretty much all just ate the same food at family meals, but even then we'd mush vegetables and pre-chew meat (from about 5-6 months). Otherwise the child is just going to be swallowing under-chewed food and have digestive problems.

People marvel at how our 2yo walks but a few hundred meters (it's bizarre!), if they're not doing a couple of K a day how do you even tire them out! When they're too big for a sling they need to walk.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#186

Post by aethertap »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #120
scotty79 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because she does not want to. Then either you do it or if you too don't want to do it just leave it undone. Most chores are optional anyways.

If you are a house-wife or -man doing chores related to your home and family is literally your job. How can you argument with "don't want to"?

There are still choices to be made with finite time. Do you spend extra time helping your son understand his algebra and let the laundry accumulate for a day? Do you spend the time to cook from scratch or spend the extra money to buy prepared food? Economics applies everywhere, including the running of a household and use of time.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#187

Post by nnforall »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #58
jordigh wrote: post #27

I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly…

> Mayans and I are by now part of the greater western world "Western" is used as short-hand for the cultures "that have some origin or association with Europe. The term also applies beyond Europe to countries and cultures whose histories are strongly connected to Europe by immigration, colonization, or influence." Modern Mexican culture could be argued to be "Western". It would be difficult, on the other hand, to arg…

I am USian. I have never liked the ambiguity of "American".

Also, are Greeks "Western"? Are Italians? Croations? Austrians? What is "Western"? As a child it was confusing to me that those east of the Bering Sea are westerners and those west of the Bering Sea are eastern.

To be very USian, I was also puzzled as a child why Ohio was midwestern. It seems mideastern to me. I would call Utah midwestern.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#188

Post by Torwald »

jordigh wrote: post #27

I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly…

I am 40 and from Europe, when I was in school, "latin" America, that's how it's called, was clearly considered West.

What you are experiencing is something that seems to arise from the US only in more recent times, maybe the last 15 years or so.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#189

Post by manuu80 »

Maybe in this case is because of some aboriginal custom. However, in poor communities near the big south american capitals, these behaviors are often a result of not having many chances when growing up. These, and other reasons as the sense of belonging, are widely studied in teen pregnancy field.

Re: How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

#190

Post by baxtr »

Bakary wrote: post #144
baxtr wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to use words to differentiate, there have to be some break points. The same could be asked by Russian. They are mostly of Christian Faith, and, speak a language that is very similar to some European languages. If I remember right, Huntington (Clash of Civilizations) introduced the Ukraine, Turkey and Australia as countries that needed to make a decision which part they wanted to belong to finally. Maybe,…

What alternative does Australia have?

Asia
Post reply on HN