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Sunday Reading: Freakonomics

The “good father” in me wants to think I have some kind of influence on the type of person my kid will become…

Sundays? What Have I Been Reading About Parenting?

Don’t know how many of you skeptical parents out there have picked up a copy of the pop-sociology book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Levitt and Dubner. It came out a few years ago. I ignored it previously, but stumbling across it again I spent the weekend picking through my own gratis version, and (as I kick off a slightly skewed variation on this experimental little blog) I thought I’d note to my tiny audience that therein contains an interesting (perhaps awkward) chapter or two between its covers leaning into the territory of skeptical parenting. I couldn’t help but cringe at some of the assertions being made based on (what seemed to my little eyes) highly subjective correlations in the authors’ data. And that said, it is a pop-reference book meant to appeal to a weekender audience. But the authors seem to spend a lot of text convincing us to be skeptical of broad assertions and suspect of researched analysis, then dropping bombshells of their own and expecting the reader to nod enthusiastically.

Perhaps my own due-diligence is lacking, but it seems that the prefacing anecdote about the ‘rogue economist’ who somehow divines patterns from his numbers doesn’t give me the warm fuzzy feelings the authors’ are likely anticipating from the average reader.

I direct your attention to chapter 5 titled “the negligible effects of good parenting on education” wherein a lengthy discussion of correlation versus causation and regression analysis foreshadows the section’s assertion that parenting style has little impact on the end-resulting child. The authors’ argument seems to suggest the nature versus nurture debate towards the “nature” side, and at a basic level pulling statistics and education study data in defense of the idea that genes and socio-economic status are far more important than efforts put forth by parents to “raise their kids right” (no matter what one’s definition of “right” happens to be — religious, moral, intellectual, or otherwise). While this is another nail in the coffin of the kiddie-flash-card-baby-einstein industry — and the “good father” in me wants to think I have some kind of influence on the type of person my kid will become — the skeptical parent in me needs to ask: is there something missing in this analysis? As I mentioned before, the authors’ conclusions seem to be drawn from some sort of “gut” analysis of the numbers — or at least that’s impression I got — so while the idea contains some morsels of “common sense” interpretation (again, Baby Mozart et al.) I’m not sure the skeptical parent should jump on the Freakonomics parenting bandwagon right yet.

The SkepDad Blog is meant to casually reflect on questions surrounding parenting and raising kids to become critical thinkers by asking questions and examining parenting ideas with a skeptical eye for facts and science. Each article is one dad's personal opinion, backed (where relevant) by literature and published research, or otherwise based on personal experiences and insights. SkepDad welcomes balanced discussion, comments, and ideas.

April 27, 2008 by Brad
Filed as: Encounters of the Mind, Skepdad thoughts

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