All Joy And No Fun - Reading Notes

Last updated Jul 30, 2022

• Education
• Parenting

1. Freedom of choice: People used to have kids because it was customary, economically necessary, or it was a moral obligation. Now people have a much greater say on whether they want to have kids and how they want to parent (ie. how far apart each kid should be). Children are seen as a ambitious life project. There’s a lot more #ego involved.
2. Changing work culture: Gender roles are no longer fixed. Women are working more and men are taking up an increasing amount of household work. Families are learning to navigate this changing structure.
3. Changing role of families & children in society:
   • Children are seen as future assets. “economically useless and emotinally priceless”. Parent pour more capital into children. Children demand more independence, but are increasingly dependent on their parents for resources, emotional support and connections.
   • Traditional functions of parents have changed. Parents used to provide educational, vocational, and religious instruction to their children, but this has now been outsourced to larger institutions. The sole job of parents become the financial, physical and emotional security of their children.

• Children have drastic effect on sleep. The effect of sleep deprivation is supposedly greatly determined by genetics. Some people respond to sleep deprivation catastrophically.
• Having children is a test of our willpower. Self-control is a bottomless resource. The more willpower we expand in one area (ie. parenting and sleep), the more likely we will yield to the next temptations that come along (ie. yelling at our kids). Succumbing to our own temptation is no fun.
• Children are madman: their chaos challenge the organization adults have established. Psychologically healthy kindergarteners from high-income homes listen to their mothers 55% of the time, low-income homes 68%
• Gain in freedom is a seen as a triumph of subtraction rather than addition (ie. getting rid of stuff, instead of taking up stuff of our choice). Independence came to mean immunity from social claims on one’s wealth or time. We fear commitment and we perceive liberty as freedom from obligation. Children are the most binding obligations.
• Reality vs Expectations of having children: Couples usually view children as matrimonial enhancers, but in fact, couples with young children are more prone to divorce.
  • Children are the most common topic of argument (this is old study, not sure how true this is)
    • The nature of parenting differs based on gender roles. Mothers tend to do more ‘routine’ parenting while dads tend to do more ‘interactive’ parenting. So even if as couple is doing an even amount of childcare, it may not be perceived as fair.
    • Perceived imbalance in childcare is more likely to affect marital happiness than perceived imbalance in household chores. There’s a few pausible reasons.
      • imbalances in childcare (ie. not spending enough time with kid) are perceived to affect children’s future (ie. the effect of an absent father on children).
      • childcare is more cognitive demanding
      • children are seen as a mutually agreed upon decisions between a couple
• Child rearing disrupts #flow : divided attention, lack of clear success condition
• Children takes up #mental-real-estate: #guilt, anxiety
• Consumer parenting: the culture that kids are entitled to parent’s attention at all time. Hence parents do not have protected time for their own needs.

• Children’s personalities and habits are more likely to reflect who they are as adults. Parents’ decisions and directions carry larger consequence.
• #concerted-cultivation
  • parent’s attempt to foster their child’s talent by incooporating organized activities in thier children’s lives. Middle-class parents often see it as their responsibility to cultivate their children.
  • place intense labour on parents, both mentally and logistically
  • children of concerted cultivation are afriad of boredom and have not developed the ability to occupy themselces, they often feel entitled to adult’s attention and intervention in their play

• Problems faced by Adolescents are less generic. It’s more difficult for parents to seek help and relate to each other.
• Adolescence challenges parents’ ego.
  • Less physcial control: Between fifth and twelfth grades, the proporotion of waking hours that children spent with their families dropped from 35 to 14%.
• Having a child of the same sex opens up uncomfortable opportunity for identification. Children’s struggles often reflects adult’s struggles when they were younger, which leads to feelings of shame and guilt.
• In early childhood, parents struggle to get me-time because of their child’s reliance. During adolescence, parents struggle to get enough time with children. When children are no longer in the spotlight, parents are redirected to examine their own life, exposing what was fulfilling about it and what was not. Ironically, early parts of childhood are awful for construction of personal identity for the parents.

• Children are often prioritized over partners. Most people feel far worse about betraying thier children than about betraying their partner. Likely due to the sense of #guilt associated with children.
• Children’s activities often require full involvement from parents (ie. Cub Scout, homework). Couple time is no longer prioritized.

• Children give adults structure and purpose

  • More rule doesn’t mean less freedom. Freedom exists in multiple dimensions. Rules can deliberate us even as they bind.

  One is freed of the constant pressure of trying to maximize emotional returns

• Children free us from etiquettes and rule-observing tendencies

• Children are more body focused and adults are more head focused. Children help us reconnect with our body and doing things with our hands.

• Gift-love vs Need-love.

  • Gift-love elicit longing to give, protect and serve.
  • Need-love elicit feeling of “I can’t live without you”
  • Adults tend to Gift-love, children tend to need-love. Children’s love feels more special becuase we are not used to it.

• Children bring joy

  Joy is connection. Joy is very different from the kind of pleasure one gets from pursuing excitment or satisfying a drive. Those pleasures tend to be intense and ephemeral. They turn individuals inward, while joy turns the individual outward, toward others. Excitement, secual ecstasty, and happiness all speed up the heart; joy and cuddling slow the heart.

  • if joy is connection, then joy and vulnerability must co-exist. You can’t have joy without the prospect of mourning, and to some people this makes joy a difficult feeling to bear.

• Adults have spotlight consciousness and small children have lantern liked consciousness.
• Children are very focused on the present. Everyone is moving at the same speed towards the future, but young children are moving at the same speed with their eyes closed.
  • This could explain why children are bad at stopping activities (ie. “Let’s go home now and we will come back some other day”). They have a hard time understanding the future.
• Philosphy as adults’ attempt to deal with the genuinely baffling questions of childhood
• Adolescents as race car drivers and parents as pit crew. Parents change all of her tires, polish up the car and get out of the way.

Personal privacy and liberty to pursue one’s interest is a modern concept. The #architecture of the typical Puritian home consists of one main room, which conspired against solitude.

Along the same vein, pervasive busyness is also a modern concept. This led to the decline of #mutual-aid and #pop-ins.

#Guilt is an emotion that becomes prominent during parenthood. Parents feel a need to give their very best to their children. This applies both materialistically (ie. school, toys) and non-materialisitically (time). But there is no limit to what constitues best, there’s always something more a parent can do. This constant feel of not doing enough leads to guilt.

According to Anthropologist, Margaret Mead, Americans are not hidebound by traditions and rigid social structures. This is unlike the UK or China, where there is a “sureness of folkways”. Freedom is embraced and new generations are encouraged to reinvent themselves. Parents prepare their kids to surpass them in unimaginable ways. This uncertainty leads to discontent, and thus willingness to experiment with new education products.

The lack of clarity on what’s possible means we tend to fall back on vague metric like individual happiness, which cannot be sought directly. “Happiness is the by-product of other worthwhile activities”. Amy Chua of Tiger Mother believes that the society should aim for excellence instead. Happiness from a job well done is the best kind of happiness. It leads to lasting esteem.

Telling young children “Do what makes you feel happy” seems rather irresponsible. Children have a screwed definition of what happiness mean due to their lack of life experiences. Encouraging kids to do things against their wishes have its merits. The key lies in how we do it (ie. external rewards, authoritative parenting) and how we justify it to our kids.

Children enjoy #video-games because they provide opportunities for #flow. It provides a sense of mastery that is quicker and more direct than modern day life.

Adolescents make poor judgement not because of their ability to estimate risk. They actually overestimate risk when it comes to situation involving their own morality. They make poor judgement because they assign a greater value to the reward they will get from taking that risks that adults do. (B. J. Casey)

Older childreen tend to act out, becasue our culture gives them too few chances to take constructive, and tangibly relevant risks (ie. rigid examination system, school rules). Creating outlets for older children to express themselves and experiment is extremely important.