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

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81–90 of 172 posts

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

#81

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…

Is this grounded in a peer reviewed paper? Bilingualism - while awesome, does not track well with skill development (maths / science) in other areas even in immersion type programs where there is no further language barrier. Non-standardized varieties of ANY language also are negatively correlated with positive outcomes. So folks speaking pidgen or strong dialects of spanish etc also struggle. Families - even immigra…

> Is this grounded in a peer reviewed paper?

1) No, it's satire, as the author says it's a "flip-the-script" type piece.

2) But peer-reviewed papers in the subjective "humanities" don't prove anything, peer-reviewed or not.

I'm from the Detroit area, where the city council and mayors have been black for decades, so I'll refer to that experience.

This kind of satire and relativism doesn't help black children in failing schools, caused by black civic leadership and parental failure.

You can listen to interviews with Dr. Thomas Sowell, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman about the importance of the nuclear family and education to black children. They talk about racism discussions today as a distraction from the above, and are quick to correct interviewers who bring that up as a cause in 2021.

Since almost 80% of black families don't have an adult male around, I'm not sure how the family structure can be fixed at this point.

Black leaders are warning whites that they are on the same path to family destruction as shown in statistics with single-parent households, and it's advice that should be listened to.

(Dr. Thomas Sowell's argument is that blacks had higher marriage rates than whites in the 1950s, and government involvement changed the incentives (welfare, SNAP, etc.) so that most black households are headed by single woman parents now.

Also, to directly address the "flip-the-script" narrative, Dr. Sowell is not a fan of ebonics, so the entire premise of the satire is simply nonsense. The author was flexing his cleverness, not contributing a solution to a serious problem.

Government interference via the family courts are doing the same thing to white families today, with 70+% of divorces initiated by women because of favorable alimony, child support and welfare available.)

If you've heard of any prescriptions for improving the outcomes for black children in situations like Detroit, I'd appreciate if you can provide any links. I haven't seen any yet, and I've had my eyes open for decades.

(Note that Detroit civic boosters face the problem that when they do lure outside companies into Detroit, the poor results of the education system don't get locals hired.)

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

#82
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?

I'm glad you posted and took the the time to check it, because intuitively I would agree with the headline, less money = more stress = less talking (probably not for everybody, but most people will talk less when under stress, especially over time).

At the limit, this is "my parents couldn't afford proper care for a debilitating diesease" vs they could. There is one group there that would talk more.

if you're poor, broke, alcholic, meth head, on heroin, you're probably not gonna be talking to your kids as much as someone who is not.

To see that idea with a self survey is kinda hilarious. kutgw to get this stuff right.

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

#84
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as there is demand for a "safe" explanation for The Gap, an immense amount of spurious research will be funded and lauded.

Stop dog whistling.

There are multiple performance and outcome gaps that are unequivocal in research across multiple disciplines. There lots of debate about what causes them. None of them necessarily imply anything permanent/immutable about any group.

Plugging your ears and crying ethical foul impoverishes the discussion and all it’s observers.

You could instead add real arguments to the debate. That enriches the discussion.

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

#85
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?

Do you hold an oracle which tells you which studies will not replicate, or is there some particular trait of the study that provably doesn't replicate?

[deleted]

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

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It fits my world view so it must be true. Jokin aside I've seen way better studies of this kind where the parents would wear a mic at home and they would then do a word count, word analysis, etc.

Wouldn't this method have its own issues with observation awareness biases?

No they don’t know what you’re observing for specifically

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

#88
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This isn't an inherently male trait, it's something that's done to boys from an early age in some societies. Men are conditioned to behave this way from an early age, and IMO it's a great tragedy.

How do you come to the conclusion it is taught and why do you think it is a tragedy? I find endless discussion of things is useless and not helpful, that's why men do most the important stuff while women mainly discuss it endlessly without adding anything valuable and useful. Keeping your emotions in check and not whinging is a virtue, not a tragedy.

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

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So native Americans tribes have for the majority almost been wiped out and eradicated due to something not very far from genocide (or at the minimum, a very targeted policy of extermination) And somehow you think that schools that have nothing to do with those people finally changing their very questionable names is due to a “conflict of interest of a psychologist”? Not because it was just racist?

It could be argued that using that symbolism is more a form of respect than it is a form of racism. I don't think people who decided those names actively participated in the genocide, and objectively, they used those names and that symbolism as an ideal to look up to, they used it as a warrior symbol for their team. It could also be argued that it dilutes the image/culture/history and probably a bunch more things by…

> It could be argued that using that symbolism is more a form of respect than it is a form of racism.

Broadly speaking, the symbolism being used is usually either an obvious caricature of the real thing (see: the former Washington Redskins), or uses cultural and religious elements that are at best kind of offensive in the context of being used as a sportsball logo (see: most uses of peace pipe or war bonnet imagery).

There are exceptions, but they're of the kind that generally come with either somebody actually doing the research or people of the given group actually participating locally.

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