Some years ago I came across an article by Gertrude Fremling, an economist married to my friend John Lott, on how they had brought up their children. It was much closer to the approach I favor in other contexts than the way we did it.
My immediate reaction to this is that a family is the one situation where a broadly communist approach actually works- a relatively small number of people, who know one another well, and are ideally close blood relatives. My suspicion is that markets in such an environment would normally do more harm than good...
...except of course if the main goal is teaching your children about markets, in which case I can totally understand the thinking.
Indeed. Something about the more market-like setup feels artificial and purposefully created as opposed to naturally emerging. See what I did there, I got communism through emergent order and fully expect to be haunted by Hayek's ghost for a few months now.
I really enjoyed the analysis of "Why did each family do these things so differently?"--reasons like "the advantages of decentralized market decision making are typically greater the larger the number of people being coordinated" and "greater financial pressure as a result" (of having kids younger). And difference in organization levels / motivation to be organized.
When our older kid was quite young, I had the revelation that in parenting, parents should, "Play to their strengths." (My kids were preschoolers during the Age of Facebook and--if I'd used it--Pinterest, so I'd regularly see moms posting the crafts they did with their kids. I'd often interpret the comments on those posts as a swirling vortex of mommy-peer-pressure. Stuff like what activities to do with kids seemed to be a common focus of anxious mommy-thoughts back then. I wonder how, if the opportunity arises, I would encourage moms/parents to "carve out their own paths" instead of having so much focus on the activities that are most advertised in their particular social sub-group.)
Also, I thought of the "play to your strengths" concept mostly in terms of the skills and/or motivations of each parent, but... you highlight that the ENVIRONMENTS created by each family's constraints and/or most-abundant resource-types may have a part to play in dictating how these things are best structured.
Lastly, I LOVE the fact that in your depiction, it very naturally comes out that there can be legit advantages to parenting under some serious financial constraints. :) Sometime, if you haven't heard it, ask my husband to tell the story about when he gave one of our sons (who was rather young at the time) the responsibility of choosing $10 worth of food for the family at ALDI--and 10 $1 bills.
It would be very valuable if you wrote more about your child-rearing philosophy, problems, successes, lessons learned, etc., especially since I understand it was largely based on unschooling, which has limited discussion and evidence.
My immediate reaction to this is that a family is the one situation where a broadly communist approach actually works- a relatively small number of people, who know one another well, and are ideally close blood relatives. My suspicion is that markets in such an environment would normally do more harm than good...
...except of course if the main goal is teaching your children about markets, in which case I can totally understand the thinking.
Indeed. Something about the more market-like setup feels artificial and purposefully created as opposed to naturally emerging. See what I did there, I got communism through emergent order and fully expect to be haunted by Hayek's ghost for a few months now.
Freakonomics did a show on how economists raise kids, and then, more recently, updated it.
(I write a bit about parenting in https://www.losingmyreligions.net/)
I really enjoyed the analysis of "Why did each family do these things so differently?"--reasons like "the advantages of decentralized market decision making are typically greater the larger the number of people being coordinated" and "greater financial pressure as a result" (of having kids younger). And difference in organization levels / motivation to be organized.
When our older kid was quite young, I had the revelation that in parenting, parents should, "Play to their strengths." (My kids were preschoolers during the Age of Facebook and--if I'd used it--Pinterest, so I'd regularly see moms posting the crafts they did with their kids. I'd often interpret the comments on those posts as a swirling vortex of mommy-peer-pressure. Stuff like what activities to do with kids seemed to be a common focus of anxious mommy-thoughts back then. I wonder how, if the opportunity arises, I would encourage moms/parents to "carve out their own paths" instead of having so much focus on the activities that are most advertised in their particular social sub-group.)
Also, I thought of the "play to your strengths" concept mostly in terms of the skills and/or motivations of each parent, but... you highlight that the ENVIRONMENTS created by each family's constraints and/or most-abundant resource-types may have a part to play in dictating how these things are best structured.
Lastly, I LOVE the fact that in your depiction, it very naturally comes out that there can be legit advantages to parenting under some serious financial constraints. :) Sometime, if you haven't heard it, ask my husband to tell the story about when he gave one of our sons (who was rather young at the time) the responsibility of choosing $10 worth of food for the family at ALDI--and 10 $1 bills.
It would be very valuable if you wrote more about your child-rearing philosophy, problems, successes, lessons learned, etc., especially since I understand it was largely based on unschooling, which has limited discussion and evidence.