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Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

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11–20 of 172 posts

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#11

But consider also: > It is a well-documented fact that by the age of 5 monolingual White children will have heard 30 million fewer words in languages other than English than bilingual children of color. In addition, they will have had a complete lack of exposure to the richness of non-standardized varieties of English that characterize the homes of many children of color. This language gap increases the longer these…

nvm

Did you bother reading the title which is: "What if we talked about monolingual White children the way we talk about low-income children of color?"

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#12
My dad is from a rural area. He doesn't know how to talk intimately or how to reveal emotions. This puzzeled me a lot and made communication between us difficult.

I found out later that most men in his village are like that. A lot of feelings are being swallowed in silence and not talked about. A real "word gap". I wonder if it has to do with poverty (it's a poor village) like the article says.

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#13

A cynical explanation is that they talk less because on some level they know that talking tends to reveal needs that require money to meet.

I think if you are worried about money (or stressed in general), you will find it more difficult to engage in the sorts of conversations that are good to have with children.

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#14

A cynical explanation is that they talk less because on some level they know that talking tends to reveal needs that require money to meet.

Or because they’re working multiple jobs/overtime and do all the chores themselves. Wealthier people have stay at home parents and pay other people to do the housekeeping.

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#15
post #4

A somewhat suspicious aspect of these claims is that not all of the studies actually attempt to isolate poverty as a causal factor of tersity, rather than tersity and poverty sharing a causal factor (which a priori seems much more likely to me). One of the studies does use time-of-month vs tersity, to attempt to control for such shared factors, but time-of-month seems like a questionably accurate (if clever) proxy va…

I believe it was also coupled with survey data about how many times the parents experienced financial stress.

If being more terse at the end-of-the-month can be reliably reproduced, what other causitive factor would you propose? And why would it apply to some families but not others? What hints do you have that lead you to the conclusion that poverty and terseness probably share a common cause?

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#17

My dad is from a rural area. He doesn't know how to talk intimately or how to reveal emotions. This puzzeled me a lot and made communication between us difficult. I found out later that most men in his village are like that. A lot of feelings are being swallowed in silence and not talked about. A real "word gap". I wonder if it has to do with poverty (it's a poor village) like the article says.

It's a male thing, nothing to do with poverty.

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#18
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nvm

Did you bother reading the title which is: "What if we talked about monolingual White children the way we talk about low-income children of color?"

Thank you for clearing that up.

However, I’m not sure how this idea is helpful. We can pretend everything is made up and it’s only power structures that impose reality on people but it’s not helpful. In the end you have to consider society is and will be and you can either participate in it in reality or you can cynically scoff at how it’s all make believe anyways and live miserably.

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#19
post #3

In the first experiment, researchers sought to observe how parents would interact with their children (in this case, 3-year-olds) after the parents were asked to describe times in which they had recently experienced scarcity. A control group of parents were instead asked to describe other recent activities. How many studies like this need to not replicate before we stop treating them seriously?

There was a report by a psychologist who said Native American mascots have a negative effect on children of native Americans.

This may or may not be the case or may be true in some specific circumstances (Redskins, for example) but may not be true for all, however, many high schools are changing their team names based on this one study/conclusion which was funded by a tribe. Which is fine, but usually when there is a conflict of interest one wants to have additional independent studies that come to a similar conclusion.

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#20

My dad is from a rural area. He doesn't know how to talk intimately or how to reveal emotions. This puzzeled me a lot and made communication between us difficult. I found out later that most men in his village are like that. A lot of feelings are being swallowed in silence and not talked about. A real "word gap". I wonder if it has to do with poverty (it's a poor village) like the article says.

It's a male thing, nothing to do with poverty.

I heard by his referred to jokingly as the Real Man Starter Kit, aka the set of values that everyone thinks are requisite.
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