Some recent studies have emphasized the point I made in the past that who your parents are is important to your future prospects. When we enter the adult world, we all make choices, but in many cases, the limits our parents place on us are more important than the choices we make in determining our future results. The mainstream neoclassical explanation of income differences focuses on the choice of education, training, and other career development pathways. From a policy perspective, I think it is wiser to focus on restrictions, because in many cases, wise government intervention can easily change them. However, in the real world, the constraints faced by individuals are not only restricted by their birth environment, but these environments also affect the choices they make. Recent studies have found that education programs for disadvantaged parents show them the factors that determine the development of children, not only can improve the lives of the adults concerned, but also bring better results for their children. They can make better decisions, thereby improving the environment in which they learn and develop skills. The policy implications are clear.
I wrote about these issues in this blog post- Parents are senior agents of class society (June 25, 2015).
Some recent studies (published on December 12, 2021)- Address the root causes of educational inequality by changing parents’ beliefs -Strengthened the analysis of this post.
I pointed out in that blog post that Dutch economists Jane Peng In his 1971 book he wrote– Income Distribution – That:
Parents are senior agents of class society.
This observation tells us that if we are to change the pattern of social and income mobility and address the root causes of income and wealth inequality, it is vital that public policies target disadvantaged children in low-income communities in the early stages.
Pen’s message is that the injury is caused when the child enters adolescence.
Although the later stages of capitalism have found new ways to strengthen support for the elites who continue to exploit and occupy surplus labor (for example, deregulation, suppression of labor unions, suppression of real wages, fiscal austerity), class differences still exist and have been restricting upward Mobility and ensuring income inequality and opportunities for political influence still exist, but still have clear definitions and functions.
And the class effect works through the parent pipeline.
In terms of choices and constraints, this means that not only do the constraints faced by children vary according to their socioeconomic background, but this background also shapes the type of decisions we make—that is, our choices.
The two are interdependent.
I can write more articles on how this denies many mainstream neoclassical ideas in this field, which assume that individuals are independent, maximize machines, and always make the best choices under constraints.
The choices may be different, but it is assumed that they are the choices that maximize satisfaction at any given time.
The new research cited above attempts to answer this question:
…To what extent does the difference in parental beliefs about child development explain the observed differences in parental involvement and child outcomes?
The author and his colleagues previously discovered:
1. “Parents’ input is crucial to the formation of children’s skills in the early stages of development”.
2. “These inputs are very different in different socio-economic contexts”-set a template for inequality in the early stages.
3. “From the age of three, to graduation from high school, there is a clear gradient in the test scores of children with the education level of their mothers.”
In the latest research, the authors (List, Pernaudet, Suskind) are all related to the University of Chicago:
… Analyze the differences in parental beliefs between different socioeconomic classes, and test the plasticity of these beliefs through experiments.
They found:
,,, Mothers with higher education are more likely than mothers with lower education to believe that their parents’ investment will affect their children’s development. (Belief is evaluated immediately after the child is born.)
Their research created “two field experiments” (interventions) to advance their research questions.
They involve training parents in child development strategies, such as covering “language interaction, encouragement, and integration of mathematical concepts into daily conversations.”
The result is obvious.
Parents’ beliefs are “plastic”—that is, with appropriate intervention, parents can start thinking about things in different ways.
This is also in line with what I have written in the past about how we change the deep-rooted ideas about how the monetary system works.
Ronald Langacker, a cognitive linguist, said:
Explanation is our ability to conceive and describe the same situation in different ways. Each vocabulary and grammatical element contains a way of conceptual content caused by a certain interpretation as an inherent aspect of its meaning.
In the cognitive framework, there are many possible ways to view a particular situation or thing. This is the realm of “interpretation”. The change in perception from one way of looking at things to another is described through the process of “interpretation”.
By using different concepts and knowledge structures, different interpretations can be realized.
I wrote about this in this blog post (and several others)— The “truth sandwich” and the influence of neoliberalism (June 19, 2018).
Researchers in Chicago found that “lower intensity” interventions and “higher intensity programs” in which parents are exposed to different perspectives have “improved parental knowledge” and persisted.
More intensive programs work best, changing the way parents interact with their children, and “increasing the number of children’s voices.”
They found:
The vocabulary and math skills of the children in the treatment group were significantly higher than those in the control group, and their social and emotional health status was also better immediately after the intervention and six months later.
This means that even if the background of the parents—wealth and income—is still a limiting factor, the children in the intervention group improved their skills, which promoted greater flexibility in outcomes.
The contribution of the parental belief system was also found to be significant.
After tracking parents and children for four years—”from the first year of age”—they found that by 22 months, “18.7% of children’s language skills variation” could be explained by intervention with parents.
What does this mean for policymakers?
A large number of studies in this field have clearly pointed out that early intervention is essential if long-term inequality is to be reduced.
The cited research emphasizes the belief system of parents, which means that policy interventions should include direct cooperation with parents for a sustained period of time to “change parents’ perception of the impact of parental investment” to prepare children for success in the learning environment ( That is, the school).
So the focus is on parents, which has become a very difficult issue-especially in this age of “freedom” marchers.
In Australia, when the conservative federal government introduced what became known as intervention in 2007 as a response to reports of indigenous children falling behind due to parental abuse, it caused major controversy.
The policy targets 73 indigenous communities in the Northern Territory and involves a series of actions-withholding 50% of welfare payments (allocated to food, etc.), prohibition of alcohol, mandatory health checks on children, more police, and sanctions against the government for confiscation of private individuals The power of property.
This is very controversial, it divides the community and thinkers.
The problem is that it does not really touch the core of the problem of child abuse and domestic violence.
This is a big stick intervention that tramples on individual rights and imposes centrist orders instead of embracing local community networks.
This kind of “big stick” intervention is common around the world.
But Chicago’s research shows that even when parents’ financial capacity is limited, targeted educational interventions aimed at elucidating the progressive concept of child development are effective in raising parents’ awareness and children’s outcomes.
It is no secret that the socioeconomic class can benefit or disadvantage children from the very beginning.
This is what Jian Peng meant by “parents are senior agents of class society”.
In the era of fiscal austerity, income and wealth inequality widens, which means that children at the low end of the distribution inherit the disadvantages of their parents and fall into a vicious circle of poverty and alienation.
Breaking into this cycle is not easy
Of course, the fiscal austerity cycle has exacerbated these disadvantages.
Fiscal austerity has increased inequality and suppressed the incentives for upward mobility in the labor market.
Please read my blog post—— Consequences of the recession (January 4, 2011)-More discussion on this point.
Therefore, the era of full employment (approximately 1945 to the late 1970s) somewhat weakened the worst effects of class differences that we discussed earlier.
However, once full employment was abandoned, the government adopted the long-standing austerity bias. The escalation benefits that accompanied growth in the past were hijacked by the rich, and most people now miss the opportunity.
in conclusion
If society is to reduce genetic disadvantages, early intervention is essential.
They suggested a series of intervention measures (nurses’ door-to-door visits, quality childcare, kindergarten participation), etc. These are seen as “reducing” the impact of poverty, rather than addressing (reducing) the impact of poverty.
However, recent studies have also shown that educational programs for parents bring significant benefits to adults and their children.
Enough for today!
(c) Copyright 2021 William Mitchell. all rights reserved.
