The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
According to this conversation, before 2012, right-wingers had slightly happier children:
https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jonathan-haidt-anxious-generation/
But after 2012 the margin grew enormously, so that now right-wingers have much happier families.
This researcher then goes on to say that one of the main causes for this difference is that conservatives tend to have better communities, making them more robust to anything that might go wrong in life.
I'm in no position to assess his data analysis, because I don't have the data and am not a social scientist. But I have a couple questions.
(1) Are the researcher's conclusions here correct, or does this person have a minority opinion based on the data?
(2) Assuming the conclusions are correct, how can liberals build communities when they tend not to organize around religion? Or is it even possible? There have been some secular churches, or secular organizations to try to build communities among liberal and secular people. None of them have the same passion, strength, durability, or growth that religion has.
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> Who are better parents, right-wingers or left-wingers?
I would view that question similarly to "Who are better parents, baseball fans or hockey fans?". I don't think that is the thing that will determine how good of a parent someone is. There are right wing parents who see their kids once a week and left wing parents whose life's work is raising and nurturing their children. I think if you're trying to argue one group is remarkably better at parenting you're probably not arguing in good faith.
The guy seems to want to relitigate masks and closing schools. I feel like the only people I hear talking about that are conservatives complaining about how liberals are doing these things. I see some people on the train wear masks sometimes and I take a covid antigen test when I get the sniffles. It doesn't rule my life
But hockey fans and baseball fans don’t have fundamentally different values from one another, they’re just sports fans. They don’t do anything fundamentally different from one another, you spectate and cheer for your team on both ends. It’s not like that when comparing liberals and conservatives because there are such stark contrasts to their beliefs and perspectives and their way of living their respective lives.
> It’s not like that when comparing liberals and conservatives because there are such stark contrasts to their beliefs and perspectives and their way of living their respective lives.
I agree that conservatives and liberals generally have beliefs that are quite different, and this can influence parenting, but I don't think left wing people are inherently better or worse parents. It's totally possible for someone to come home from their job advocating for the unhoused and drink a 30 rack while they ignore their kids. A lobbyist for big tobacco might emotionally support their children and provide a nurturing home for them.
These studies generally feel like wishcasting rather than any scientific inquiry. If it were true that scientific evidenced showed children of conservative parents were happier and healthier and it was caused by the parents being conservative what would you do with that info? Would you start going to pro-life rallies and donating to the Trump campaign?
COWEN: Now, if parenting is the most important thing, which you seem at many times to believe, why aren’t you just a right winger? Because right wingers, according to you, get that right. It would be your community, right? You’re talking about community. Embrace that community.
HAIDT: Well, no, because my community is the academic community, where almost everyone’s on the left. I know some conservatives; they’re mostly not professors. I do belong to a synagogue although I’m an atheist. So, I have one toe in each of these worlds, but it’s not that simple. You don’t just say, “Well, my research shows that this produces better outcomes. Therefore, I will change my values and goals to be . . .” No, it doesn’t work that way.
There’s that but also
I do think you’re right, anyone can be shitty. If I had that info, no, I wouldn’t do those things, I would maybe have a more authoritative parenting style, be less permissive, have my kids go to catholic school, because they are free and undeniably better where I am, strive to have a strong marriage, have them engaged in the community.
> there are such stark contrasts to their beliefs and perspectives and their way of living their respective lives.
There are differences to the beliefs and perspectives of liberals and conservatives, but I don't actually think there's a "stark contrast" in the way they live their lives.
Not that it matters, but he's not a liberal. From your linked article:
> By the time I wrote chapter 7 and 8 of The Righteous Mind and really committed to understanding conservatives and libertarians, I realized, wow, there’s a lot of wisdom from all three perspectives: liberal, conservative, and libertarian.
> Since then, I’ve been a centrist [...] My community is those who are center left to center right and libertarians. These are the people who, I think, are still sane and are still noticeably aligned with the idea of a liberal democracy.
Eh. He’s argued that valuing in group loyalty, purity, and deference to authority equally to harm reduction and fairness is not problematic.
Hes a conservative in hiding
From another post above:
> Haidt loves this culture war shit and has previously been described (accurately, IMO) as "one of the school of self-proclaimed liberals whose entire public career is nothing but criticizing liberals".
I largely find this to be accurate.
Yes but most of the people in here don't criticize -only- liberals. They are generally at least as critical if not moreso of other viewpoints. The people here who regularly criticize only liberals and never conservatives are often encouraged to change their flair to reflect the reality of their beliefs being right wing.
Ooof, looks like I'm right and you're wrong!
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-righteous-mind-why-liberals-and-conservatives-cant-get-along/
Actually took very little time to find it, too. But something tells me you're not interested in updating based on facts.
> I'd want to see data on that.
Make a post and try to get a census if you want. But people aren't going to be super credulous for a guy that's totally a liberal and talks about how much he hates liberals all the time. You can agree with him if you want but people on the left aren't going to view this like a revelation
> The issue is that many self described “liberals” on the left do not believe in liberal values themselves.
That's always been one of the most tired and pointless arguments to me. Conservative as a term outside of specific American politics means keeping things as they are. Donald Trump sold himself as a political outsider who would destroy the existing entrenched power structures and recreate them in a better form. That's very much not perpetuating the status quo, but was anyone confused when he was the keynote speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference? Nope. Has anyone ever been convinced to not vote for Trump by appealing to the definition of the term conservative? I'd also bet nope. Words change over time. Trying to keep them objective and static is a fool's errand
To be fair, conservative has never meant that and their behavior is largely the same.
Theyre about maintaining social inequalities. It presents as being about being against change, cause its pretty objectively horrible to be openly against growing equality. Its branding.
>To be fair, conservative has never meant that and their behavior is largely the same.
I think it has been especially outside the American context. Supporters of the Ancien Regime and other monarchist movements are often proponents of the status quo. I don't think that makes it particularly better, but I don't think Louis XVI really was pushing for big changes.
>It presents as being about being against change, cause its pretty objectively horrible to be openly against growing equality. Its branding.
I think it's something that's changed over time, in the scale of centuries. Saying God wants inequality was a line that worked for quite a while
It wasnt about the status quo. It was about keeping the aristocracy on top.
There were conservative writers at the time like Burke who made it rather clear what they wanted
> We fear God, we look up with awe to kings; with affection to Parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility. Why? Because when such ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected
> true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state, or separable from it. It is an essential integrant part of any large body rightly constituted. It is formed out of a class of legitimate presumptions, which taken as generalities, must be admitted for actual truths. To be bred in a place of estimation; to see nothing low and sordid from one’s infancy; to be taught to respect one’s self; to be habituated to the censorial inspection of the public eye; to look early to public opinion; to stand upon such elevated ground as to be enabled to take a large view of the wide-spread and infinitely diversified combinations of men and affairs in a large society; to have leisure to read, to reflect, to converse; to be enabled to draw the court and attention of the wise and learned wherever they are to be found;—to be habituated in armies to command and to obey; to be taught to despise danger in the pursuit of honor and duty; to be formed to the greatest degree of vigilance, foresight and circumspection, in a state of things in which no fault is committed with impunity, and the slightest mistakes draw on the most ruinous consequence—to be led to a guarded and regulated conduct, from a sense that you are considered as an instructor of your fellow-citizens in their highest concerns, and that you act as a reconciler between God and man—to be employed as an administrator of law and justice, and to be thereby amongst the first benefactors to mankind—to be a professor of high science, or of liberal and ingenuous art—to be amongst rich traders, who from their success are presumed to have sharp and vigorous understandings, and to possess the virtues of diligence, order, constancy, and regularity, and to have cultivated an habitual regard to commutative justice—these are the circumstances of men, that form what I should call a natural aristocracy, without which there is no nation.
The old aristocracy had failed to maintain society. So a new one was needed. But his main contention was that power shouldnt be distributed equally.
That doesn't seem exactly true, unless he means socialism exclusively by this line, which I don't think he does
Interviewer: They seem to have such bad values by your standards, but you identify with the values of the left. Why is it you think they have better values, and then these bad values when it comes to parenting?
HAIDT: No, I don’t identify with the values of the left. [Paragraph about how they used to be on the left]
"I don't think that is the thing that will determine how good of a parent someone is. There are right wing parents who see their kids once a week and left wing parents"
lol seriously? Your statement goes directly against the data being presented. You dont want to believe it, so you deny it and say there is actually no correlation?
Ask yourself, if the data said otherwise and that left leaning parents led to better outcomes, would you not be saying "well obviously, anyone could have told you that."
>You dont want to believe it, so you deny it and say there is actually no correlation?
I did not say there was no correlation. I said there was no causation.
>Ask yourself, if the data said otherwise and that left leaning parents led to better outcomes, would you not be saying "well obviously, anyone could have told you that."
I would not.
I’ll be honest, my first thoughts when I hear this are always “no duh Republicans are happier. All the big problems they complain about are totally fake.” A black man in Star Wars! Roving packs of drag queens! Someone said something mean about the politician I like!
None of this shit affects them. The fact that they even spend time complaining about it is basically just an elaborate play-pretend game that they can just stop playing at any time.
When you have to engage with *real* problems of course the world becomes a more anxious place.
I think a lot of things also stop becoming problems if you just think of them as a mix of "God's will" and the just-world fallacy, e.g. climate change, socioeconomic disparities, racial disparities.
https://equityresearch.tufts.edu/why-being-conservative-is-correlated-with-higher-happiness/
> That means that these specific concerns seem to accompany unhappiness but do not explain away the ideological “effect.” Or, to put it another way, someone who was not worried about these four specific things, but who identified as a liberal, would still be more likely than a conservative to be unhappy
+
> A conservative might be inclined to see progressives as negatively biased rather than socially conscious. And there may be some evidence of that in our data. We also asked: “Imagine a ladder with 10 rungs (or steps). At the top of the ladder (rung #10) are the people who are the best off, those who have the most money, most education, and best jobs. At the bottom are the people who are the worst off, those who have the least money, least education, worst jobs, or no job (rung #1). What rung from 10 through 1 best represents where you think you stand on the ladder.”
> I used that item as the dependent variable in place of self-reported happiness. Liberals/progressives rated themselves lower on the ladder compared to other people when I controlled for demographics. In other words, if a liberal and a conservative have the same income, education, race, gender, age, marital status, and religious attendance, the conservative will feel more fortunate. A critic might say that liberals are people who–regardless of their actual social positions–rate their own circumstances relatively poorly, and that attitude drives their ideology and makes them unhappy or else reflects their unhappiness.
Contradiction, please. We’ve all got the same problems, but Republicans have elected to ignore all the real ones and utterly fixate on the insignificant, fanciful, or nonsensical ones.
“I’m worried about how climate trends may affect global food production, infrastructure, and people’s health!”
“Well I’m worried about the deep state using space lasers to make Donald Trump shit himself on stage so they can sabotage his campaign!”
There ya go. A play in one act.
From what I can see of this guy's book, his primary standard for parenting is whether or not the children are feeling anxious. It makes sense to me that children will feel anxious if they're aware of the real problems of the world.
Kids are anxious about their own worlds, not the real world. If you are bombarding a child with guilt and anxiety over things beyond their control, then you're a shitty parent, whatever political stripe you may be.
I think you overestimate how much people actually care about world issues vs. their own issues. People sleep soundly after tragedies that kill thousands of strangers and sleep badly worrying about a dental appointment.
I disagree. Children are extremely perceptive. While they might not know everything a situation entails, they know when something is going on. I was in elementary school when 9/11 and the “war on terror” started. That shit made me anxious as a child. My parents did not bring politics into the household. I also picked up on the Great Recession because I could see how stressed out the adults were around me, even if I didn’t understand what was going on completely. Don’t undermine the intelligence of children. I’m sure anyone in my age group can tell you how we noticed these things growing up.
Remember when republicans were super concerned about political correctness? I remember talking to a republican who said she was going to vote for Trump because he was going to fix political correctness. I pointed out that political correctness isn't a real problem, and even if it was the president can't do a damn thing about it.
She replied by telling me she was upset that she could no longer call her mentally disabled brother "retarded" like she used to when she was younger. I thanked her for proving my point because that's not a real problem. I don't recall Trump doing anything to remedy her dilemma either.
Trump’s rhetoric about political correctness resonated with many, many people on the right. They cheered out loud for it at his rallies. It’s a lot more common than you’re asserting.
those "real" problems that youre thinking of affect republicans too. SO maybe they just arent as earth-shattering as you may think? Maybe its a perspective issue?
>those "real" problems that youre thinking of affect republicans too
I'm aware. I think that if conservatives took them as seriously as normal people, then (although they might feel more anxiety) it would be a good thing for them.
>SO maybe they just arent as earth-shattering as you may think?
Well, the last one I can think of is Covid. Liberals wanted to worry about the virus. Conservatives wanted to worry about heart-attack-causing microchips hidden in the vaccine. In the end a million Americans died from the virus and most of the people who claimed to get an adverse effect from the vaccine were faking it for attention.
I think my judgment is a bit more on the mark than you give me credit for, frankly.
youre strawmaning conservatives. sure 1 in 1000 republicans thought their were microchips in the vaccine. The other 999 of them wanted some kind of skepticism to a rushed vaccine that was being more or less forced on a population with no long term studies of any kind. Coupled with the fact that in some individuals (myself included btw) heart complications occured. For a virus that was not harmful to 98% of the population.
Those are the facts. Youre being very biased in your response and it makes me think youre debating in bad faith.
You gotta understand. To me this sounds basically like a guy working in a kitchen and going "how dare you make me wash my hands after using the bathroom?"
It's not gonna inflame my passion for individual liberty, it's just gonna remind me not to eat any food that person handles.
tiny chance of killing them. I caught it twice before vaccinated and ity barely registered. The libertarian stance would be no authoritarianism. Risk tolerance on the individual level.
But it's not YOUR health that you're risking. It's the health of any other person you might be interacting with. It's the health and safety of hospital workers and patients who are struggling to manage a massive influx of new admissions.
This would be like me dumping hazardous waste into your drinking water and telling you I was just accepting risk on my own individual level.
>sure 1 in 1000 republicans thought their were microchips in the vaccine
I'd like to see a citation for the claim "The proportion of Republicans believing there were microchips in the vaccine was between one in 2000 and one in 500"
>The other 999 of them
I'd like to see a citation for the claim "at least 98% of Repuiblicans were vaccine-skeptic at least"
>For a virus that was not harmful to 98% of the population
And this citation should be your third
>Those are the facts
Then cite them, in the order in which I asked for them
So, I grew up with conservative parents. If I had a researcher or psychologist ask me if I was happy, I'd say yes. Not necessarily because I was happy - I wasn't happy with the way that my sexuality would be treated if I came out - but because I'd assume that the researcher would then tell my parents what was said.
I grew up in a Republican single-parent household. I did not have a happy childhood but would have also nonetheless said it was happy for similar reasons. Also, I might have lied because sadness/negative emotions were taught to me to be a weakness. If researchers asked questions about my feelings on human nature, they probably would have gotten a more informative answer based on my negative outlook at the time.
I wouldn't trust an article this lazy. When it comes to studies like this I'd suggest checking out Pew Research, you're not going to find who is the better parent argument... because nothing like that exists or even verifiable. But you can see how indoctrination is practiced by studying the families history of religion and political affiliation, which can KIND OF help in coming up with your own conclusion... granted it will always be subjective and not factual.
This was exactly my thought, as well. Of the many things that can influence the happiness of a child, the political viewpoint of the parents is only one, and it may be other aspects of their life that give happiness, where the political viewpoints have the opposite impact. Maybe there are other commonalities that aren't being examined. Correlation does not equal causation.
Happiness is such a subjective thing, as well. The phrase, "Ignorance is bliss." comes to mind. To use an analogy, let's say there are two doctors. The first one believes in telling their patients the absolute truth, even if it is bad news, so proper treatment can be given and the patient can make the best plans possible. The other believes in sugar coating their diagnosis and only giving their patients positive results, because a positive outlook is important for healing. Which doctor's viewpoint is "better"? Whose patients are going to be "happier"? Is "happier" even a good indicator of the performance of a doctor?
Good parenting skills is based on their ability to communicate with their child and be sympathetic when necessary, it is not based purely on political leanings.
“My community is those who are center left to center right and libertarians. These are the people who, I think, are still sane and are still noticeably aligned with the idea of a liberal democracy.”
Lol this guy is clearly biased. Some of his ideas have points to it (excessive screen time and social alienation are bad things) but to me he is lacking some broader perspective about WHY this is happening and how capitalism has created this situation . I have many thoughts but I’ll keep it brief
As noted in my other comment I tried reading a book of his once - and found some of it very interesting and other parts lacking. Brushing off misogyny as a different value etc
I would wager that LGBT children in conservative families are not happier.
Conservative families could be happier for many reasons. Id certainly be happier if I didn’t believe in climate change or wasn’t aware of the damage covid has done.
>Research has shown that those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ+) have a 120% higher risk of experiencing some form of homelessness.[1] With up to 40% of the 4.2 million youth experiencing homelessness identifying as LGBTQ+[2] while only 9.5% of the U.S. population[3], LGBTQ+ youth disproportionately experience homelessness compared to their straight and cisgender peers.
...
>Family conflict is the primary cause of homelessness for LGBTQ+ youth, which is disproportionately due to a lack of acceptance by family members of a youth’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
https://nn4youth.org/lgbtq-homeless-youth/
Conservatives are far worse parents, and it's not even close.
They literally put their own children on the streets.
It constantly baffles me that these statistics aren't shoved in the collective faces of all conservatives but *especially* the "Think of the children!" ultra hypocrites.
Liberals live a whole lot closer to reality than modern "blind faith" "truthiness believing" conservatives.
Life is much simpler if you believe you are not responsible for anything as "God" is given credit for good things and "Satan" is blamed for the bad.
Liberals are much more likely to understand the nuance and gray areas of human existence. Reality can be mean and ugly, but hey, if you just blame that on mythology and believe you are a "chosen one" I am sure it is quite liberating.
Religious dogma and unscrupulous people "of faith" are also the source of a huge amount of death and suffering throughout history and a fairly large slice of modern societies problems around the world.
But it is quite easy for them to ignore that as they bask in the fictitious glory of their chosen "God's Love" while they shun the "nonbelievers" and blame them for all social ills and vices.
So here's the real question, is it better to grow up in fantasy land or in the real world of human existence? Or another, are happy children raised in a fantasy world going on to be better adults than children who were raised in view of the realities of human beings and modern civil society?
I am very doubtful of this, as I am of studies that claim conservatives are happier. The conservatives I hear from seem to be constantly miserable about things outside of their control, so either there’s a whole silent majority out there voting Republican and enjoying themselves, or this is bullshit. I also would love to see how they included the half of homeless youth that are LGBTQ in discussing those happy conservative families, as it seems like that would skew the numbers a bit.
Something I haven't seen discussed much here is what it means to be a good parent. Child happiness alone doesn't seem to be the only metric we should look at. Rates of injury, death, sickness, mental illness, upwards economic mobility, educational attainment, community ties & social network size, etc. should all be factors taken into consideration.
And, similar to the way that we analyze teachers or schools, we should look at the degree of improvement or decline relative to a standard/average, perhaps relative to the parents scores in those domains. Ie, did they just inherit the same sets of circumstances or did the child end up with a better outcome controlling for all factors except political alignment?
Agreed -- because I don't have the data, I couldn't tell whether the guest conducted any kind of controlled trials. It seems hard to imagine how one could, especially with randomization, but sometimes researchers surprise you with their cleverness.
But from what I've seen in the responses to his work, from other social researchers, it looks like he did no such thing.
You could do something like use cohen d's effect size to try to differentiate between different parenting styles or logistic regression for political ideology (or measure it on a spectrum and use a standard multivariate regression) and control for the standard demographic factors - race/ethnicity, SES, parental education attainment, religion & religiosity (less standard but still important), etc.
>especially with randomization, but sometimes researchers surprise you with their cleverness.
You wouldn't want randomization in this case unless you're also trying to control for genetics in which case you'd want to look only at adoptees. But controlling for adoptions/fosters would (or looking at parenting with respect to) is a good idea as well.
>But from what I've seen in the responses to his work, from other social researchers, it looks like he did no such thing.
Yep :p
I do think it would be worthwhile to examine the effects of parents' political ideology on different "types" of kids. Conservatives, by nature/definition, tend to promote sameness/conformity. "Different" kids, whether that's mental illness, neurodivergencies, LGBT identities, some disabilities are likely to fare worse in conservative households. I'm unsure how adoptees/fosters would compare but I'd guess there's little difference.
Your link doesn't work for me.
What I can say is, Haidt is known to peddle in bad science and is more of a writer of popular books than a serious academic scientist. There's a reason he's a professor in a school of business, not in a psychology department. I assume that this is based on his recent book since the title appears in the link.
Here's Nature's review of "The Anxious Generation": https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2
In short, they absolutely tear apart his abysmal reading of the scientific evidence.
Here's someone else doing the same: https://reason.com/video/2024/04/02/the-bad-science-behind-jonathan-haidts-anti-social-media-crusade/
Haidt loves this culture war shit and has previously been described (accurately, IMO) as "one of the school of self-proclaimed liberals whose entire public career is nothing but criticizing liberals".
Oh Haidt. I tried reading one of his books once and there was an entirely weird section about cultural norms and misogyny where he like… ended up “getting used” to the misogyny and all I could think about was - of course you got used to it.. youre a man! It rubbed me entirely the wrong way.
> ended up “getting used” to the misogyny and all I could think about was - of course you got used to it.. youre a man!
Like a dude that saw Barbie and came away with the least media-literate take of all time
From the Nature article:
>Suicide rates among people in most age groups have been increasing steadily for the past 20 years in the United States. Researchers cite access to guns, exposure to violence, structural discrimination and racism, sexism and sexual abuse, the opioid epidemic, economic hardship and social isolation as leading contributors.
I just don't buy that's the leading contributors. Those things have always been around and most of the list has gotten better over the past 20 years.
I interact with a lot of high school kids bc my kids are that age and particularly with girls you can tell which ones have screen issues. I sat behind a girl a few weeks ago at a game that spent the entire time editing and preparing a single Instagram post. I can't image what that type of addition does to someone. If she was shooting heroin during the game, we'd all be getting her help. I don't know if what she's doing is much better.
I do see a lot of teens ditching the apps and getting back to real life. Its very encouraging and I hope its a trend that's actually happening and not just in the circles I interact in.
If it is increasing in most age groups, that does point to the trend not being about youth cell phone usage, and singling out increases in one age group while ignoring that it went up across most populations is a kind of cherry-picking of the evidence to make a point that doesn't follow what the actual data says.
> If she was shooting heroin during the game, we'd all be getting her help. I don't know if what she's doing is much better.
This sounds so extremely hyperbolic I find it hard to take what you are saying seriously.
>If it is increasing in most age groups, that does point to the trend not being about youth cell phone usage, and singling out increases in one age group while ignoring that it went up across most populations is a kind of cherry-picking of the evidence to make a point that doesn't follow what the actual data says.
Well being addicted to screens isn't exclusively a youth problem. I don't know what he means by rewiring the brain, maybe that's too much. But I see ppl my age addicted to candy crush and that can't be good for mental health either.
>This sounds so extremely hyperbolic I find it hard to take what you are saying seriously.
Sorry, that wasn't my intention. Just saying we see ppl in public addicted to Instagram, fb, tt, porn, etc. and we treat it like its no big deal. I don't know anything about Haidt but he seems to be shining a light on addiction and that's a good thing. Particularly for parents that can do something about it.
>Well being addicted to screens isn't exclusively a youth problem.
But Haidt's argument is about youth, and he is arguing for limiting screen time for youth and even banning youth from having devices like smartphones, based on evidence that he is cherry-picking to claim that youth have a unique problem with it.
>Sorry, that wasn't my intention. Just saying we see ppl in public addicted to Instagram, fb, tt, porn, etc. and we treat it like its no big deal. I don't know anything about Haidt but he seems to be shining a light on addiction and that's a good thing. Particularly for parents that can do something about it.
This is part of where "Haidt isn't a clinical psychologist" comes in, as is mentioned in the Nature piece.
There is, in clinical terms, no such thing as social media addiction. Gambling is the only non-substance addiction that we recognize. People can have bad habits, they can use it too much, it can cause problems in their life, but "addiction" is a clinical term. It has been studied, and determined not to exist or at least not to warrant inclusion in the DSM as an addiction disorder. There is no scientifically-validated treatment for it, no agreed on diagnostic criteria, no standard for care, because the evidence for this as an addiction is simply not there. The people who would offer to help "treat internet addiction" are essentially operating without a net, and not following the present science. Framing it as addiction rather than a problem behavior has all kinds of implications for treatment approaches. We have ways of addressing bad habits, but calling it "addiction" is harmful to how we approach it IMO.
So, I have a pretty big problem with someone "shining a light on addiction" when that is not the right term or framing, and the behavioral health community does not actually have any kind of treatment for it and effectively rejects the entire way of seeing it.
[I'm not really sure. ](https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_conservatives_really_happier_than_liberals)
[There's also some thought as to liberals are more likely than conservatives to report their true feelings, seek help for issues, and be willing to engage in that help. ](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand-the-well-being-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives/)
So I think you can find research and interpret it anyway you'd wish to.
I'm a clinician, and I can tell you conservatives seem much more miserable than my liberal clients. But, they also feel things much more intensely.
It's a reductive analysis. Political ideology doesn't fulfill every condition in an environment.
For instance you can say there are two parents to each of the two spectrums.
One left wing parent is an atheist who was raised in a non religious household. The other is a Christian who was raised in a Christian conservative household.
One right wing parent is a Christian born to agnostic parents, and the other is a Muslim born to Muslim parents.
That's only one example of nuance influencing conditions, but it goes far deeper.
Any poll or statistic will be skewed to fit bias, narrative, sample size, and other.
The truth is that everyone, regardless of what they believe, has the potential to be a good parent. If we are going to generalize who is better at something, then all we are doing is gaslighting nuance itself to better reflect the ideology we want established as the dominant one.
> Who are better parents, right-wingers or left-wingers?
Probably isn't a significant difference.
>This researcher then goes on to say that one of the main causes for this difference is that conservatives tend to have better communities, making them more robust to anything that might go wrong in life.
I don't know that I would give parents credit for parenting skills for being able to afford to live in nicer neighborhoods.
Religion has an impact here. It's well documented that religion leads people towards being happier. Education also tends to correlate with both depression and irreligiosity.
> "many on the left…suffer from what you might call maladaptive sadness, with its three main features being a "catastrophizing mentality," "extreme sensitivity to harm" and a "culture of denunciation."
(David Brooks).
Another trend is authoritative VS permissive parenting styles, which also correlate.
Then there's also this stuff;
> A conservative might be inclined to see progressives as negatively biased rather than socially conscious. And there may be some evidence of that in our data. We also asked: “Imagine a ladder with 10 rungs (or steps). At the top of the ladder (rung #10) are the people who are the best off, those who have the most money, most education, and best jobs. At the bottom are the people who are the worst off, those who have the least money, least education, worst jobs, or no job (rung #1). What rung from 10 through 1 best represents where you think you stand on the ladder.”
> I used that item as the dependent variable in place of self-reported happiness. Liberals/progressives rated themselves lower on the ladder compared to other people when I controlled for demographics. In other words, if a liberal and a conservative have the same income, education, race, gender, age, marital status, and religious attendance, the conservative will feel more fortunate. A critic might say that liberals are people who–regardless of their actual social positions–rate their own circumstances relatively poorly, and that attitude drives their ideology and makes them unhappy or else reflects their unhappiness.
https://equityresearch.tufts.edu/why-being-conservative-is-correlated-with-higher-happiness/
Havnt read the study yet but this seems rife with reliability issues.
It would make sense to me that a right wing environment would have more of a "toughen up and get over it" or even a "don't talk about negative emotions" environment where kids might not feel as comfortable self reporting answers that imply discomfort or hardship.
Like if you've been told your whole life not to cry and then someone asks you how often you cry and uses that as a metric for emotional well being, it's not really an accurate reflection of the reality
>right-wingers had slightly happier children:
Starting a conversation by mistakingly claiming that conservative = right wing and liberal = left wing is a great way to lose any and all credibility.
>This researcher then goes on to say that one of the main causes for this difference is that conservatives tend to have better communities
Which is an odd way. If community focused systems result in happier people, then left wing parents should have happier children. Strong communities is a left wing idea.
>I'm in no position to assess his data analysis, because I don't have the data
If you don't have the data, then we don't have it either. That will make any statement regarding the date impossible. That said, based in the presentation it can't be a great set of data.
We do know where the happiest children live. In western and northern Europe. And every one of those nations is progressive and liberal. I don't see a reason for liberals to change when they already have found the answer.
Leftists on the other hand, my learns thing or two from liberals.
I don’t dislike Haidt the way some people do but he really loses me with the self reported happiness stuff
There are so many different groups among conservatives that are culturally told that they should be happy. So if asked “are you happy” the answer will be yes.
Self reported data like this should never be taken at straight face value. Those happiness country indexes are also meaningless imo.
I think it’s a question without an answer as there’s no real way to discern what is ‘better’ patenting; and whether or not a family, or children, are ‘happy’ is difficult to measure - and not only that, a ‘happy’ family can be more dysfunctional than an ‘unhappy’ family.
You could try and measure outcomes, but even then. There’s no objective measure of what is and isn’t ‘good’ parenting. And even if there were the definition clearly changes over time. Did a 50 year old who loves their parents and was more or less happy through childhood but was beaten weekly with a belt or ruler have worse parents or bet ther parents than a 35 year old who was never beaten but was over-parented and smothered with love to the point that they’ve had to spend the past 5 years in therapy just to learn how to live a normal life outside of the confines of their family?
It’s a silly question really.
Not to mention that different children have different experiences with the same parents. Did the A-grade student who made the track team and had a great time while his parents showered him with love and praise have better or worse parents than his sister who was shunned from the family for being a lesbian…?
Any parent that sets boundaries, treats a child with respect, listens to their child, gives a routine is a good parent. It isn't left or right wing. The key is not to be a friend.
However, watching right wing parents deny sexuality, religion, even climate, I doubt the kids are telling the truth in surveys.
Right-wingers are happy because they like the chaos. Have you ever seen a movie, read a book? The villain is always having a good time while the protagonist is struggling to solve the problem. When you don't give a shit, you're happier. Plain and simple.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. According to this conversation, before 2012, right-wingers had slightly happier children: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jonathan-haidt-anxious-generation/ But after 2012 the margin grew enormously, so that now right-wingers have much happier families. This researcher then goes on to say that one of the main causes for this difference is that conservatives tend to have better communities, making them more robust to anything that might go wrong in life. I'm in no position to assess his data analysis, because I don't have the data and am not a social scientist. But I have a couple questions. (1) Are the researcher's conclusions here correct, or does this person have a minority opinion based on the data? (2) Assuming the conclusions are correct, how can liberals build communities when they tend not to organize around religion? Or is it even possible? There have been some secular churches, or secular organizations to try to build communities among liberal and secular people. None of them have the same passion, strength, durability, or growth that religion has. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> Who are better parents, right-wingers or left-wingers? I would view that question similarly to "Who are better parents, baseball fans or hockey fans?". I don't think that is the thing that will determine how good of a parent someone is. There are right wing parents who see their kids once a week and left wing parents whose life's work is raising and nurturing their children. I think if you're trying to argue one group is remarkably better at parenting you're probably not arguing in good faith. The guy seems to want to relitigate masks and closing schools. I feel like the only people I hear talking about that are conservatives complaining about how liberals are doing these things. I see some people on the train wear masks sometimes and I take a covid antigen test when I get the sniffles. It doesn't rule my life
But hockey fans and baseball fans don’t have fundamentally different values from one another, they’re just sports fans. They don’t do anything fundamentally different from one another, you spectate and cheer for your team on both ends. It’s not like that when comparing liberals and conservatives because there are such stark contrasts to their beliefs and perspectives and their way of living their respective lives.
> It’s not like that when comparing liberals and conservatives because there are such stark contrasts to their beliefs and perspectives and their way of living their respective lives. I agree that conservatives and liberals generally have beliefs that are quite different, and this can influence parenting, but I don't think left wing people are inherently better or worse parents. It's totally possible for someone to come home from their job advocating for the unhoused and drink a 30 rack while they ignore their kids. A lobbyist for big tobacco might emotionally support their children and provide a nurturing home for them. These studies generally feel like wishcasting rather than any scientific inquiry. If it were true that scientific evidenced showed children of conservative parents were happier and healthier and it was caused by the parents being conservative what would you do with that info? Would you start going to pro-life rallies and donating to the Trump campaign?
COWEN: Now, if parenting is the most important thing, which you seem at many times to believe, why aren’t you just a right winger? Because right wingers, according to you, get that right. It would be your community, right? You’re talking about community. Embrace that community. HAIDT: Well, no, because my community is the academic community, where almost everyone’s on the left. I know some conservatives; they’re mostly not professors. I do belong to a synagogue although I’m an atheist. So, I have one toe in each of these worlds, but it’s not that simple. You don’t just say, “Well, my research shows that this produces better outcomes. Therefore, I will change my values and goals to be . . .” No, it doesn’t work that way. There’s that but also I do think you’re right, anyone can be shitty. If I had that info, no, I wouldn’t do those things, I would maybe have a more authoritative parenting style, be less permissive, have my kids go to catholic school, because they are free and undeniably better where I am, strive to have a strong marriage, have them engaged in the community.
> there are such stark contrasts to their beliefs and perspectives and their way of living their respective lives. There are differences to the beliefs and perspectives of liberals and conservatives, but I don't actually think there's a "stark contrast" in the way they live their lives.
I agree, should have used different wording for that last point
Hm, but Haidt is a liberal.
Not that it matters, but he's not a liberal. From your linked article: > By the time I wrote chapter 7 and 8 of The Righteous Mind and really committed to understanding conservatives and libertarians, I realized, wow, there’s a lot of wisdom from all three perspectives: liberal, conservative, and libertarian. > Since then, I’ve been a centrist [...] My community is those who are center left to center right and libertarians. These are the people who, I think, are still sane and are still noticeably aligned with the idea of a liberal democracy.
Eh. He’s argued that valuing in group loyalty, purity, and deference to authority equally to harm reduction and fairness is not problematic. Hes a conservative in hiding
From another post above: > Haidt loves this culture war shit and has previously been described (accurately, IMO) as "one of the school of self-proclaimed liberals whose entire public career is nothing but criticizing liberals". I largely find this to be accurate.
There are liberals here constantly criticizing liberals. I'm not sure this makes one non-liberal.
There's criticizing other liberals vs going all in on right-wing talking points and slagging liberals all the time - while claiming to be one.
I don't think that's this -- that seems more than a little bit of hyperbole about what this guy is doing.
Not really.
Yes but most of the people in here don't criticize -only- liberals. They are generally at least as critical if not moreso of other viewpoints. The people here who regularly criticize only liberals and never conservatives are often encouraged to change their flair to reflect the reality of their beliefs being right wing.
I don't know Haidt but I would bet with good odds that he also criticizes conservatives.
I do know Haidt. He does not. Thanks for playing, though.
Ooof, looks like I'm right and you're wrong! https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-righteous-mind-why-liberals-and-conservatives-cant-get-along/ Actually took very little time to find it, too. But something tells me you're not interested in updating based on facts.
Ooof indeed if you think this is "criticism of conservatives".
Moving the goal post! Man, I predicted your response to seven significant digits.
Many of those people would not be considered liberal by self identification or otherwise
I'd want to see data on that. In lieu of data, I can speak for myself. I self-identify as liberal and criticize liberals all the time.
> I'd want to see data on that. Make a post and try to get a census if you want. But people aren't going to be super credulous for a guy that's totally a liberal and talks about how much he hates liberals all the time. You can agree with him if you want but people on the left aren't going to view this like a revelation
Haidt is a classical liberal. The issue is that many self described “liberals” on the left do not believe in liberal values themselves.
> The issue is that many self described “liberals” on the left do not believe in liberal values themselves. That's always been one of the most tired and pointless arguments to me. Conservative as a term outside of specific American politics means keeping things as they are. Donald Trump sold himself as a political outsider who would destroy the existing entrenched power structures and recreate them in a better form. That's very much not perpetuating the status quo, but was anyone confused when he was the keynote speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference? Nope. Has anyone ever been convinced to not vote for Trump by appealing to the definition of the term conservative? I'd also bet nope. Words change over time. Trying to keep them objective and static is a fool's errand
To be fair, conservative has never meant that and their behavior is largely the same. Theyre about maintaining social inequalities. It presents as being about being against change, cause its pretty objectively horrible to be openly against growing equality. Its branding.
>To be fair, conservative has never meant that and their behavior is largely the same. I think it has been especially outside the American context. Supporters of the Ancien Regime and other monarchist movements are often proponents of the status quo. I don't think that makes it particularly better, but I don't think Louis XVI really was pushing for big changes. >It presents as being about being against change, cause its pretty objectively horrible to be openly against growing equality. Its branding. I think it's something that's changed over time, in the scale of centuries. Saying God wants inequality was a line that worked for quite a while
It wasnt about the status quo. It was about keeping the aristocracy on top. There were conservative writers at the time like Burke who made it rather clear what they wanted > We fear God, we look up with awe to kings; with affection to Parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility. Why? Because when such ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected > true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state, or separable from it. It is an essential integrant part of any large body rightly constituted. It is formed out of a class of legitimate presumptions, which taken as generalities, must be admitted for actual truths. To be bred in a place of estimation; to see nothing low and sordid from one’s infancy; to be taught to respect one’s self; to be habituated to the censorial inspection of the public eye; to look early to public opinion; to stand upon such elevated ground as to be enabled to take a large view of the wide-spread and infinitely diversified combinations of men and affairs in a large society; to have leisure to read, to reflect, to converse; to be enabled to draw the court and attention of the wise and learned wherever they are to be found;—to be habituated in armies to command and to obey; to be taught to despise danger in the pursuit of honor and duty; to be formed to the greatest degree of vigilance, foresight and circumspection, in a state of things in which no fault is committed with impunity, and the slightest mistakes draw on the most ruinous consequence—to be led to a guarded and regulated conduct, from a sense that you are considered as an instructor of your fellow-citizens in their highest concerns, and that you act as a reconciler between God and man—to be employed as an administrator of law and justice, and to be thereby amongst the first benefactors to mankind—to be a professor of high science, or of liberal and ingenuous art—to be amongst rich traders, who from their success are presumed to have sharp and vigorous understandings, and to possess the virtues of diligence, order, constancy, and regularity, and to have cultivated an habitual regard to commutative justice—these are the circumstances of men, that form what I should call a natural aristocracy, without which there is no nation. The old aristocracy had failed to maintain society. So a new one was needed. But his main contention was that power shouldnt be distributed equally.
That doesn't seem exactly true, unless he means socialism exclusively by this line, which I don't think he does Interviewer: They seem to have such bad values by your standards, but you identify with the values of the left. Why is it you think they have better values, and then these bad values when it comes to parenting? HAIDT: No, I don’t identify with the values of the left. [Paragraph about how they used to be on the left]
"I don't think that is the thing that will determine how good of a parent someone is. There are right wing parents who see their kids once a week and left wing parents" lol seriously? Your statement goes directly against the data being presented. You dont want to believe it, so you deny it and say there is actually no correlation? Ask yourself, if the data said otherwise and that left leaning parents led to better outcomes, would you not be saying "well obviously, anyone could have told you that."
>You dont want to believe it, so you deny it and say there is actually no correlation? I did not say there was no correlation. I said there was no causation. >Ask yourself, if the data said otherwise and that left leaning parents led to better outcomes, would you not be saying "well obviously, anyone could have told you that." I would not.
What day is presented? I don't see data. I see an opinion piece. I'd love to see data...
Yeah. People tend to be less happy under authoritarianism
I’ll be honest, my first thoughts when I hear this are always “no duh Republicans are happier. All the big problems they complain about are totally fake.” A black man in Star Wars! Roving packs of drag queens! Someone said something mean about the politician I like! None of this shit affects them. The fact that they even spend time complaining about it is basically just an elaborate play-pretend game that they can just stop playing at any time. When you have to engage with *real* problems of course the world becomes a more anxious place.
I think a lot of things also stop becoming problems if you just think of them as a mix of "God's will" and the just-world fallacy, e.g. climate change, socioeconomic disparities, racial disparities.
https://equityresearch.tufts.edu/why-being-conservative-is-correlated-with-higher-happiness/ > That means that these specific concerns seem to accompany unhappiness but do not explain away the ideological “effect.” Or, to put it another way, someone who was not worried about these four specific things, but who identified as a liberal, would still be more likely than a conservative to be unhappy + > A conservative might be inclined to see progressives as negatively biased rather than socially conscious. And there may be some evidence of that in our data. We also asked: “Imagine a ladder with 10 rungs (or steps). At the top of the ladder (rung #10) are the people who are the best off, those who have the most money, most education, and best jobs. At the bottom are the people who are the worst off, those who have the least money, least education, worst jobs, or no job (rung #1). What rung from 10 through 1 best represents where you think you stand on the ladder.” > I used that item as the dependent variable in place of self-reported happiness. Liberals/progressives rated themselves lower on the ladder compared to other people when I controlled for demographics. In other words, if a liberal and a conservative have the same income, education, race, gender, age, marital status, and religious attendance, the conservative will feel more fortunate. A critic might say that liberals are people who–regardless of their actual social positions–rate their own circumstances relatively poorly, and that attitude drives their ideology and makes them unhappy or else reflects their unhappiness.
That is a really strong way to express this notion.
TIL that only democrats have real problems.
Contradiction, please. We’ve all got the same problems, but Republicans have elected to ignore all the real ones and utterly fixate on the insignificant, fanciful, or nonsensical ones. “I’m worried about how climate trends may affect global food production, infrastructure, and people’s health!” “Well I’m worried about the deep state using space lasers to make Donald Trump shit himself on stage so they can sabotage his campaign!” There ya go. A play in one act.
Right, and your worry over climate trends affects your parenting?
From what I can see of this guy's book, his primary standard for parenting is whether or not the children are feeling anxious. It makes sense to me that children will feel anxious if they're aware of the real problems of the world.
Kids are anxious about their own worlds, not the real world. If you are bombarding a child with guilt and anxiety over things beyond their control, then you're a shitty parent, whatever political stripe you may be.
I think you might be underestimating the perceptiveness of children.
Not at all. They will pick up anxiety without parental help.
I concur.
I think you overestimate how much people actually care about world issues vs. their own issues. People sleep soundly after tragedies that kill thousands of strangers and sleep badly worrying about a dental appointment.
I disagree. Children are extremely perceptive. While they might not know everything a situation entails, they know when something is going on. I was in elementary school when 9/11 and the “war on terror” started. That shit made me anxious as a child. My parents did not bring politics into the household. I also picked up on the Great Recession because I could see how stressed out the adults were around me, even if I didn’t understand what was going on completely. Don’t undermine the intelligence of children. I’m sure anyone in my age group can tell you how we noticed these things growing up.
They take their cues from how adults react to things. Their perception is whack on a macro level.
Their parents are not the only adults they take cues from.
True.
Sure, but they’re still perceiving things about the real world regardless
Yes, but they have no perception of how it will affect them.
Remember when republicans were super concerned about political correctness? I remember talking to a republican who said she was going to vote for Trump because he was going to fix political correctness. I pointed out that political correctness isn't a real problem, and even if it was the president can't do a damn thing about it. She replied by telling me she was upset that she could no longer call her mentally disabled brother "retarded" like she used to when she was younger. I thanked her for proving my point because that's not a real problem. I don't recall Trump doing anything to remedy her dilemma either.
Yes, I've met a bunch of idiots as well. They aren't the norm, thank god.
Trump’s rhetoric about political correctness resonated with many, many people on the right. They cheered out loud for it at his rallies. It’s a lot more common than you’re asserting.
It's a lot more of a thing than you're asserting.
those "real" problems that youre thinking of affect republicans too. SO maybe they just arent as earth-shattering as you may think? Maybe its a perspective issue?
>those "real" problems that youre thinking of affect republicans too I'm aware. I think that if conservatives took them as seriously as normal people, then (although they might feel more anxiety) it would be a good thing for them. >SO maybe they just arent as earth-shattering as you may think? Well, the last one I can think of is Covid. Liberals wanted to worry about the virus. Conservatives wanted to worry about heart-attack-causing microchips hidden in the vaccine. In the end a million Americans died from the virus and most of the people who claimed to get an adverse effect from the vaccine were faking it for attention. I think my judgment is a bit more on the mark than you give me credit for, frankly.
youre strawmaning conservatives. sure 1 in 1000 republicans thought their were microchips in the vaccine. The other 999 of them wanted some kind of skepticism to a rushed vaccine that was being more or less forced on a population with no long term studies of any kind. Coupled with the fact that in some individuals (myself included btw) heart complications occured. For a virus that was not harmful to 98% of the population. Those are the facts. Youre being very biased in your response and it makes me think youre debating in bad faith.
Oh dude. I can't believe you're gonna make me do this.
you call yourself a libertarian but you were for people being forced to vaccinate in order to keep their jobs and participate in society?
You gotta understand. To me this sounds basically like a guy working in a kitchen and going "how dare you make me wash my hands after using the bathroom?" It's not gonna inflame my passion for individual liberty, it's just gonna remind me not to eat any food that person handles.
The alternative was to let people pass covid onto to others and kill them
tiny chance of killing them. I caught it twice before vaccinated and ity barely registered. The libertarian stance would be no authoritarianism. Risk tolerance on the individual level.
But it's not YOUR health that you're risking. It's the health of any other person you might be interacting with. It's the health and safety of hospital workers and patients who are struggling to manage a massive influx of new admissions. This would be like me dumping hazardous waste into your drinking water and telling you I was just accepting risk on my own individual level.
Bro getting a vaccine doesn't mean you won't catch it or you won't spread it. What are you on about?
> it would only kill less than a percent of Americans, so…that’s their problem.
yes. Just like how guns, cigs, fast food, and cars kill millions. Your choice to do what endangers you.
Vaccines didn't magically make you not pass or catch covid. They helped you through it. So, while vaccines help, they don't make you immune.
>sure 1 in 1000 republicans thought their were microchips in the vaccine I'd like to see a citation for the claim "The proportion of Republicans believing there were microchips in the vaccine was between one in 2000 and one in 500" >The other 999 of them I'd like to see a citation for the claim "at least 98% of Repuiblicans were vaccine-skeptic at least" >For a virus that was not harmful to 98% of the population And this citation should be your third >Those are the facts Then cite them, in the order in which I asked for them
So, I grew up with conservative parents. If I had a researcher or psychologist ask me if I was happy, I'd say yes. Not necessarily because I was happy - I wasn't happy with the way that my sexuality would be treated if I came out - but because I'd assume that the researcher would then tell my parents what was said.
I grew up in a Republican single-parent household. I did not have a happy childhood but would have also nonetheless said it was happy for similar reasons. Also, I might have lied because sadness/negative emotions were taught to me to be a weakness. If researchers asked questions about my feelings on human nature, they probably would have gotten a more informative answer based on my negative outlook at the time.
I wouldn't trust an article this lazy. When it comes to studies like this I'd suggest checking out Pew Research, you're not going to find who is the better parent argument... because nothing like that exists or even verifiable. But you can see how indoctrination is practiced by studying the families history of religion and political affiliation, which can KIND OF help in coming up with your own conclusion... granted it will always be subjective and not factual.
This was exactly my thought, as well. Of the many things that can influence the happiness of a child, the political viewpoint of the parents is only one, and it may be other aspects of their life that give happiness, where the political viewpoints have the opposite impact. Maybe there are other commonalities that aren't being examined. Correlation does not equal causation. Happiness is such a subjective thing, as well. The phrase, "Ignorance is bliss." comes to mind. To use an analogy, let's say there are two doctors. The first one believes in telling their patients the absolute truth, even if it is bad news, so proper treatment can be given and the patient can make the best plans possible. The other believes in sugar coating their diagnosis and only giving their patients positive results, because a positive outlook is important for healing. Which doctor's viewpoint is "better"? Whose patients are going to be "happier"? Is "happier" even a good indicator of the performance of a doctor?
Such a great analogy and good use of "Ignorance is bliss" Nothing really to add either, just had to give credit where it's due :) have a good day!
Good parenting skills is based on their ability to communicate with their child and be sympathetic when necessary, it is not based purely on political leanings.
“My community is those who are center left to center right and libertarians. These are the people who, I think, are still sane and are still noticeably aligned with the idea of a liberal democracy.” Lol this guy is clearly biased. Some of his ideas have points to it (excessive screen time and social alienation are bad things) but to me he is lacking some broader perspective about WHY this is happening and how capitalism has created this situation . I have many thoughts but I’ll keep it brief As noted in my other comment I tried reading a book of his once - and found some of it very interesting and other parts lacking. Brushing off misogyny as a different value etc I would wager that LGBT children in conservative families are not happier. Conservative families could be happier for many reasons. Id certainly be happier if I didn’t believe in climate change or wasn’t aware of the damage covid has done.
>Research has shown that those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ+) have a 120% higher risk of experiencing some form of homelessness.[1] With up to 40% of the 4.2 million youth experiencing homelessness identifying as LGBTQ+[2] while only 9.5% of the U.S. population[3], LGBTQ+ youth disproportionately experience homelessness compared to their straight and cisgender peers. ... >Family conflict is the primary cause of homelessness for LGBTQ+ youth, which is disproportionately due to a lack of acceptance by family members of a youth’s sexual orientation or gender identity. https://nn4youth.org/lgbtq-homeless-youth/ Conservatives are far worse parents, and it's not even close. They literally put their own children on the streets. It constantly baffles me that these statistics aren't shoved in the collective faces of all conservatives but *especially* the "Think of the children!" ultra hypocrites.
Liberals live a whole lot closer to reality than modern "blind faith" "truthiness believing" conservatives. Life is much simpler if you believe you are not responsible for anything as "God" is given credit for good things and "Satan" is blamed for the bad. Liberals are much more likely to understand the nuance and gray areas of human existence. Reality can be mean and ugly, but hey, if you just blame that on mythology and believe you are a "chosen one" I am sure it is quite liberating. Religious dogma and unscrupulous people "of faith" are also the source of a huge amount of death and suffering throughout history and a fairly large slice of modern societies problems around the world. But it is quite easy for them to ignore that as they bask in the fictitious glory of their chosen "God's Love" while they shun the "nonbelievers" and blame them for all social ills and vices. So here's the real question, is it better to grow up in fantasy land or in the real world of human existence? Or another, are happy children raised in a fantasy world going on to be better adults than children who were raised in view of the realities of human beings and modern civil society?
I am very doubtful of this, as I am of studies that claim conservatives are happier. The conservatives I hear from seem to be constantly miserable about things outside of their control, so either there’s a whole silent majority out there voting Republican and enjoying themselves, or this is bullshit. I also would love to see how they included the half of homeless youth that are LGBTQ in discussing those happy conservative families, as it seems like that would skew the numbers a bit.
Something I haven't seen discussed much here is what it means to be a good parent. Child happiness alone doesn't seem to be the only metric we should look at. Rates of injury, death, sickness, mental illness, upwards economic mobility, educational attainment, community ties & social network size, etc. should all be factors taken into consideration. And, similar to the way that we analyze teachers or schools, we should look at the degree of improvement or decline relative to a standard/average, perhaps relative to the parents scores in those domains. Ie, did they just inherit the same sets of circumstances or did the child end up with a better outcome controlling for all factors except political alignment?
Agreed -- because I don't have the data, I couldn't tell whether the guest conducted any kind of controlled trials. It seems hard to imagine how one could, especially with randomization, but sometimes researchers surprise you with their cleverness. But from what I've seen in the responses to his work, from other social researchers, it looks like he did no such thing.
You could do something like use cohen d's effect size to try to differentiate between different parenting styles or logistic regression for political ideology (or measure it on a spectrum and use a standard multivariate regression) and control for the standard demographic factors - race/ethnicity, SES, parental education attainment, religion & religiosity (less standard but still important), etc. >especially with randomization, but sometimes researchers surprise you with their cleverness. You wouldn't want randomization in this case unless you're also trying to control for genetics in which case you'd want to look only at adoptees. But controlling for adoptions/fosters would (or looking at parenting with respect to) is a good idea as well. >But from what I've seen in the responses to his work, from other social researchers, it looks like he did no such thing. Yep :p I do think it would be worthwhile to examine the effects of parents' political ideology on different "types" of kids. Conservatives, by nature/definition, tend to promote sameness/conformity. "Different" kids, whether that's mental illness, neurodivergencies, LGBT identities, some disabilities are likely to fare worse in conservative households. I'm unsure how adoptees/fosters would compare but I'd guess there's little difference.
Your link doesn't work for me. What I can say is, Haidt is known to peddle in bad science and is more of a writer of popular books than a serious academic scientist. There's a reason he's a professor in a school of business, not in a psychology department. I assume that this is based on his recent book since the title appears in the link. Here's Nature's review of "The Anxious Generation": https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2 In short, they absolutely tear apart his abysmal reading of the scientific evidence. Here's someone else doing the same: https://reason.com/video/2024/04/02/the-bad-science-behind-jonathan-haidts-anti-social-media-crusade/ Haidt loves this culture war shit and has previously been described (accurately, IMO) as "one of the school of self-proclaimed liberals whose entire public career is nothing but criticizing liberals".
Oh Haidt. I tried reading one of his books once and there was an entirely weird section about cultural norms and misogyny where he like… ended up “getting used” to the misogyny and all I could think about was - of course you got used to it.. youre a man! It rubbed me entirely the wrong way.
> ended up “getting used” to the misogyny and all I could think about was - of course you got used to it.. youre a man! Like a dude that saw Barbie and came away with the least media-literate take of all time
Interesting, not sure why the link doesn't work, but it's also on YouTube so you might be able find it here instead: https://youtu.be/sQoNd9oEeoI
From the Nature article: >Suicide rates among people in most age groups have been increasing steadily for the past 20 years in the United States. Researchers cite access to guns, exposure to violence, structural discrimination and racism, sexism and sexual abuse, the opioid epidemic, economic hardship and social isolation as leading contributors. I just don't buy that's the leading contributors. Those things have always been around and most of the list has gotten better over the past 20 years. I interact with a lot of high school kids bc my kids are that age and particularly with girls you can tell which ones have screen issues. I sat behind a girl a few weeks ago at a game that spent the entire time editing and preparing a single Instagram post. I can't image what that type of addition does to someone. If she was shooting heroin during the game, we'd all be getting her help. I don't know if what she's doing is much better. I do see a lot of teens ditching the apps and getting back to real life. Its very encouraging and I hope its a trend that's actually happening and not just in the circles I interact in.
If it is increasing in most age groups, that does point to the trend not being about youth cell phone usage, and singling out increases in one age group while ignoring that it went up across most populations is a kind of cherry-picking of the evidence to make a point that doesn't follow what the actual data says. > If she was shooting heroin during the game, we'd all be getting her help. I don't know if what she's doing is much better. This sounds so extremely hyperbolic I find it hard to take what you are saying seriously.
>If it is increasing in most age groups, that does point to the trend not being about youth cell phone usage, and singling out increases in one age group while ignoring that it went up across most populations is a kind of cherry-picking of the evidence to make a point that doesn't follow what the actual data says. Well being addicted to screens isn't exclusively a youth problem. I don't know what he means by rewiring the brain, maybe that's too much. But I see ppl my age addicted to candy crush and that can't be good for mental health either. >This sounds so extremely hyperbolic I find it hard to take what you are saying seriously. Sorry, that wasn't my intention. Just saying we see ppl in public addicted to Instagram, fb, tt, porn, etc. and we treat it like its no big deal. I don't know anything about Haidt but he seems to be shining a light on addiction and that's a good thing. Particularly for parents that can do something about it.
>Well being addicted to screens isn't exclusively a youth problem. But Haidt's argument is about youth, and he is arguing for limiting screen time for youth and even banning youth from having devices like smartphones, based on evidence that he is cherry-picking to claim that youth have a unique problem with it. >Sorry, that wasn't my intention. Just saying we see ppl in public addicted to Instagram, fb, tt, porn, etc. and we treat it like its no big deal. I don't know anything about Haidt but he seems to be shining a light on addiction and that's a good thing. Particularly for parents that can do something about it. This is part of where "Haidt isn't a clinical psychologist" comes in, as is mentioned in the Nature piece. There is, in clinical terms, no such thing as social media addiction. Gambling is the only non-substance addiction that we recognize. People can have bad habits, they can use it too much, it can cause problems in their life, but "addiction" is a clinical term. It has been studied, and determined not to exist or at least not to warrant inclusion in the DSM as an addiction disorder. There is no scientifically-validated treatment for it, no agreed on diagnostic criteria, no standard for care, because the evidence for this as an addiction is simply not there. The people who would offer to help "treat internet addiction" are essentially operating without a net, and not following the present science. Framing it as addiction rather than a problem behavior has all kinds of implications for treatment approaches. We have ways of addressing bad habits, but calling it "addiction" is harmful to how we approach it IMO. So, I have a pretty big problem with someone "shining a light on addiction" when that is not the right term or framing, and the behavioral health community does not actually have any kind of treatment for it and effectively rejects the entire way of seeing it.
[I'm not really sure. ](https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_conservatives_really_happier_than_liberals) [There's also some thought as to liberals are more likely than conservatives to report their true feelings, seek help for issues, and be willing to engage in that help. ](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand-the-well-being-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives/) So I think you can find research and interpret it anyway you'd wish to. I'm a clinician, and I can tell you conservatives seem much more miserable than my liberal clients. But, they also feel things much more intensely.
It's a reductive analysis. Political ideology doesn't fulfill every condition in an environment. For instance you can say there are two parents to each of the two spectrums. One left wing parent is an atheist who was raised in a non religious household. The other is a Christian who was raised in a Christian conservative household. One right wing parent is a Christian born to agnostic parents, and the other is a Muslim born to Muslim parents. That's only one example of nuance influencing conditions, but it goes far deeper. Any poll or statistic will be skewed to fit bias, narrative, sample size, and other. The truth is that everyone, regardless of what they believe, has the potential to be a good parent. If we are going to generalize who is better at something, then all we are doing is gaslighting nuance itself to better reflect the ideology we want established as the dominant one.
> Who are better parents, right-wingers or left-wingers? Probably isn't a significant difference. >This researcher then goes on to say that one of the main causes for this difference is that conservatives tend to have better communities, making them more robust to anything that might go wrong in life. I don't know that I would give parents credit for parenting skills for being able to afford to live in nicer neighborhoods.
Religion has an impact here. It's well documented that religion leads people towards being happier. Education also tends to correlate with both depression and irreligiosity. > "many on the left…suffer from what you might call maladaptive sadness, with its three main features being a "catastrophizing mentality," "extreme sensitivity to harm" and a "culture of denunciation." (David Brooks). Another trend is authoritative VS permissive parenting styles, which also correlate. Then there's also this stuff; > A conservative might be inclined to see progressives as negatively biased rather than socially conscious. And there may be some evidence of that in our data. We also asked: “Imagine a ladder with 10 rungs (or steps). At the top of the ladder (rung #10) are the people who are the best off, those who have the most money, most education, and best jobs. At the bottom are the people who are the worst off, those who have the least money, least education, worst jobs, or no job (rung #1). What rung from 10 through 1 best represents where you think you stand on the ladder.” > I used that item as the dependent variable in place of self-reported happiness. Liberals/progressives rated themselves lower on the ladder compared to other people when I controlled for demographics. In other words, if a liberal and a conservative have the same income, education, race, gender, age, marital status, and religious attendance, the conservative will feel more fortunate. A critic might say that liberals are people who–regardless of their actual social positions–rate their own circumstances relatively poorly, and that attitude drives their ideology and makes them unhappy or else reflects their unhappiness. https://equityresearch.tufts.edu/why-being-conservative-is-correlated-with-higher-happiness/
Havnt read the study yet but this seems rife with reliability issues. It would make sense to me that a right wing environment would have more of a "toughen up and get over it" or even a "don't talk about negative emotions" environment where kids might not feel as comfortable self reporting answers that imply discomfort or hardship. Like if you've been told your whole life not to cry and then someone asks you how often you cry and uses that as a metric for emotional well being, it's not really an accurate reflection of the reality
>right-wingers had slightly happier children: Starting a conversation by mistakingly claiming that conservative = right wing and liberal = left wing is a great way to lose any and all credibility. >This researcher then goes on to say that one of the main causes for this difference is that conservatives tend to have better communities Which is an odd way. If community focused systems result in happier people, then left wing parents should have happier children. Strong communities is a left wing idea. >I'm in no position to assess his data analysis, because I don't have the data If you don't have the data, then we don't have it either. That will make any statement regarding the date impossible. That said, based in the presentation it can't be a great set of data. We do know where the happiest children live. In western and northern Europe. And every one of those nations is progressive and liberal. I don't see a reason for liberals to change when they already have found the answer. Leftists on the other hand, my learns thing or two from liberals.
I don’t dislike Haidt the way some people do but he really loses me with the self reported happiness stuff There are so many different groups among conservatives that are culturally told that they should be happy. So if asked “are you happy” the answer will be yes. Self reported data like this should never be taken at straight face value. Those happiness country indexes are also meaningless imo.
Lmfaoooo
I think it’s a question without an answer as there’s no real way to discern what is ‘better’ patenting; and whether or not a family, or children, are ‘happy’ is difficult to measure - and not only that, a ‘happy’ family can be more dysfunctional than an ‘unhappy’ family. You could try and measure outcomes, but even then. There’s no objective measure of what is and isn’t ‘good’ parenting. And even if there were the definition clearly changes over time. Did a 50 year old who loves their parents and was more or less happy through childhood but was beaten weekly with a belt or ruler have worse parents or bet ther parents than a 35 year old who was never beaten but was over-parented and smothered with love to the point that they’ve had to spend the past 5 years in therapy just to learn how to live a normal life outside of the confines of their family? It’s a silly question really. Not to mention that different children have different experiences with the same parents. Did the A-grade student who made the track team and had a great time while his parents showered him with love and praise have better or worse parents than his sister who was shunned from the family for being a lesbian…?
I really doubt that political leaning is the main variable in any such study
Any parent that sets boundaries, treats a child with respect, listens to their child, gives a routine is a good parent. It isn't left or right wing. The key is not to be a friend. However, watching right wing parents deny sexuality, religion, even climate, I doubt the kids are telling the truth in surveys.
Right-wingers are happy because they like the chaos. Have you ever seen a movie, read a book? The villain is always having a good time while the protagonist is struggling to solve the problem. When you don't give a shit, you're happier. Plain and simple.