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Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

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Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#581

Post by protomolecule »

oblio wrote: post #497
screye wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People aren't having enough children. Every extra hurdle is going to reduce the number of people who end up parents. > Potentially break the cycles of bad parenting You can't break cycles of bad parenting, because they are 2nd order effects of cycles of trauma. And cycles of trauma have been a fundamental part of human civilization since we've existed. We absolutely should teach compassion, good parenting 101s and ba…

> People aren't having enough children. Every extra hurdle is going to reduce the number of people who end up parents. There's 8 billion of us. Reducing the number of (unfit, unwilling, unplanned) parents is a net positive.

If no one will have kids these 8 billion will go to zero in about 100 years.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#582

Post by steve_adams_86 »

jl6 wrote: post #11

> New research shows that when fathers are present and emotionally invested in children’s lives, they are more likely to develop a stronger sense of self-worth and excel in everything from school to relationships. Regardless of the debate on how tough (or not) love should be, the absent fathers issue seems like something concrete and impactful that we should be trying to address.

Though the statistics speak loudly enough, my anecdotal experience with a bit whose father abandoned him has been harrowing. It’s deeply disturbing to him. Even having a father figure step in to take care of him doesn’t fill that void or resolve much distress. It seems it will be a lifelong issue to some degree.

I didn’t quite believe it at first. Over time it has become abundantly clear. Boys without dads, not even someone to step in to support them, are often swimming upstream at best.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#583

Post by zimpenfish »

zo1 wrote: post #556
esarbe wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about means-providing instead? Poverty is not a choice but dictated by economic circumstances. If you want to "fix" humanity, it's not by taking away a universal right from humans, but by making sure that their needs are are taken care of.

I think that's what I meant, perhaps I used the wrong word. So we "test" that they have the "means" to provide a roof and food for their children? And yeah, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be helping them at the same time

> So we "test" that they have the "means" to provide a roof and food for their children?

But when? Pre-conception seems like the best choice and yep, they have $$$. Oh, no, month 2 of the pregnancy has a complication which wipes out $$ of their money. Still, good to go. Oh no, there's a birth complication and that's another $$ wiped out. Basically on the edge of financial viability now - do you take the baby away? Then there's, say, a global economic meltdown and our unlucky parents are now wildly underwater - do you take the baby away? Or the landlord decides to jack up the rent or sell the building or ...

It's a nice idea but ultimately unworkable unless you can predict the future.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#584

Post by staunton »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #559
screye wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People aren't having enough children. Every extra hurdle is going to reduce the number of people who end up parents. > Potentially break the cycles of bad parenting You can't break cycles of bad parenting, because they are 2nd order effects of cycles of trauma. And cycles of trauma have been a fundamental part of human civilization since we've existed. We absolutely should teach compassion, good parenting 101s and ba…

> People aren't having enough children. By what metric? Economics? Economics, ironically, is the reason I don't have more kids. My family is doing, what I would consider, "quite well", but we'd still be pretty fucked with one more mouth to feed, the need for a larger car and possibly larger house. I truly don't know how people that aren't that far below us on the resources / income scale have any hope of comfortable…

> I truly don't know how people that aren't that far below us on the resources / income scale have any hope of comfortable retirement prior to actual death.

"Comfortable retirement" is a luxury of the recent past. It wasn't a concept for most of human history and will stop being one for most people fairly soon.

If anything, for most of human history, having someone to take care of you when you're old has been a primary incentive to have kids.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#585

Post by kortilla »

NhanH wrote: post #466
noname2021 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interesting - one way to test the efficacy of something like this might be to compare median outcomes of adopted kids (whose parents went through some parenting education) with that of the non adopted general population (after controlling for other factors). Now which PhD candidate will bite :)

Hard to imagine how to design such study: (close to) 100% of people that adopt kid WANTED to have kid, and planned for them. Some XX% number of people having kid via pregnancy wasn't planning for them, and some even smaller YY% number doesn't want the kid at all. Not to mention that unless the adoption of kids are done blind by parents, there has to be some biases there. As an example out of my ass, kids with behavio…

Compare adoptions of infants (handles the behavior issue) with parents who took blatant processes to improve pregnancy odds (IVF, etc).

That gets you two categories of people do definitely want kids, and only one is subject to the classes, interviews, and checkups.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#586

Post by steve_adams_86 »

m5r wrote: post #465
ineedasername wrote: post #95

This plays out at all levels. I felt extremely insulted just a few days ago when my youngest’s preschool held a gathering to celebrate their “graduation” to pre-school. At least 4 times mothers were called on to step forward— once to have a song sung to them, another to receive a flower, etc. Fathers were not mentioned at all. This prompted me to look around, get a rough sense of the distribution… Counting the kids &…

[flagged]

It isn’t meaningless. Those children are being told and showed repeatedly that their moms are their primary parents, and dads are an afterthought.

Men are secondary parents in a lot of households, and it’s not okay. Both for dads themselves and their kids.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#587

Post by didntcheck »

hnaccount141 wrote: post #207
Natsu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I think a lot of people who don't see themselves as "biased" still carry a lot of bias when it comes to gender, and it has an impact. ... > toxic masculinity Maybe we could make progress by tabooing words that frame being male as a bad thing?

The term "toxic masculinity" doesn't imply that masculinity is inherently toxic any more than the term "burnt toast" implies that toast is inherently burnt. Toxic masculinity refers specifically to expressing and enforcing masculinity in a way that's harmful (to men as well as women). Teaching boys to epxress masculinity through strength, assertiveness, self-reliance, etc. is totally healthy in moderation. Teaching b…

Frankly there's ubiquitous motte and bailey on this topic. People will claim the term just means "harmful stereotypes that make men feel they need to be macho", but then use the term in an entirely different way to shame any masculine behavior, no matter how harmless. The correct term for that definition would be "internalized misandry". People claim they're being trying to help men while taking brazen delight in bashing them with this "compassionate" term. If men are the victim, why are they being blamed again?

If I started going on about "toxic femininity" (e.g. gossiping and character assassinating rather than confronting people directly, or favoring groupthink over independent thought), then I'd rightly be called a misogynist for clearly trying to blame women for these negative human behaviors. Femininity is seen as a protected and positive trait, while masculinity is so shunned that even saying we shouldn't bash it is seen as suspicious

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#588

Post by localplume »

hadlock wrote: post #446
noname2021 wrote: post #444

Here's a thought and I am writing this as I don my kevlar flame retardant jacket. For most things in life where we could impact the lives of other people materially - driving is a good example - we ensure some minimal amount of training before letting people perform that activity. However with parenting we have nothing and the result it seems is we pay with a ton more resources downstream in the way of therapy, deten…

The daylight between instituting a parenting license and eugenics is not very much.

[dead]

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#589

Post by saiya-jin »

nprateem wrote: post #489
noname2021 wrote: post #444

Here's a thought and I am writing this as I don my kevlar flame retardant jacket. For most things in life where we could impact the lives of other people materially - driving is a good example - we ensure some minimal amount of training before letting people perform that activity. However with parenting we have nothing and the result it seems is we pay with a ton more resources downstream in the way of therapy, deten…

[flagged]

Well if they mention their dad is in prison its a bit too late to sterilize, don't you think? If folks in prisons are rather less educated and have lower IQ than average, they are having children earlier in life than average... all this means that you probably won't catch the issue 'at the source' in most cases so to say.

That goes without even going into morals, bad incentives and overall this-is-not-a-good-idea-in-democracy stuff. Imagine if, instead of these severe punishments, you would try to make people better human beings in prisons, teach them skills they can use for honest life once getting out and actually properly help them out? Most folks in prisons are not career criminals, not when they enter the system. I know, very non-righteous-conservative-living-by-bible approach. Instead, ie in US prison record ruins your life, and population generally doesn't give a fuck, you went to prison, you deserved it, now suffer and suffer more, you are sub-human.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#590

Post by KronisLV »

noname2021 wrote: post #444

Here's a thought and I am writing this as I don my kevlar flame retardant jacket. For most things in life where we could impact the lives of other people materially - driving is a good example - we ensure some minimal amount of training before letting people perform that activity. However with parenting we have nothing and the result it seems is we pay with a ton more resources downstream in the way of therapy, deten…

> For most things in life where we could impact the lives of other people materially - driving is a good example - we ensure some minimal amount of training before letting people perform that activity.

> How about some minimal coaching so that all parents are aware of the state of the art in child psychology and techniques to do better as parents.

In my country, we had a housekeeping class in school, that taught everything from basic cooking skills, to safety with electrical appliances. There was also a woodworking class, where you were taught how to use various tools correctly and safely. Later, in university, there were courses that concerned things like paying taxes in more detail, employment law and how small businesses work etc.

I think that parenting classes sound like a good idea. It can also help people figure out when they're absolutely not ready for something or are not comfortable with it - like happened to me and getting a driver's license.

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