Book Review: "Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids"

I’m bemused. I’ve just been reading the anti-Amy-Chua, Bryan Caplan, whose “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids” declares that parenting should not be hard or anxiety-provoking, because what parents do doesn’t have much long-term impact anyway. I must say it’s not so easy to make Caplan’s claims and citations congruent with much that’s known about child development. I wouldn’t want to say he’d been cherry-picking, but he seems to have used a peculiar pie recipe, and some of the fruit is hard to identify.

Let me begin my discussion of “Selfish Reasons” by saying that Caplan starts and ends with a surprising and ill-supported premise: that it’s better to have more people, better for the whole world and for you, too, even if they aren’t your children. If we don’t have lots of people, he says, much of the world will be like living in Hays, Kansas (Caplan’s example, not mine, and what he means is that it would be boring to him). This statement suggests some interesting ideas, because what if there were suddenly many fewer people? This has happened at times, for instance in the time of the Black Death in Europe, and the social consequences were enormous. But you can’t necessarily reason from one event’s results to the possible consequences of its opposite. Having no money is bad, and we can reason from that to the idea that lots of money is good. On the other hand, what about Vitamin A? A deficiency is a bad thing and can result in blindness-- a lot is also bad, as we see from the effects on Arctic explorers of eating polar bear livers.

Have we forgotten that much population growth would mean one of two things: either an increased and destructive demand for food and energy, or a great many starving and distressed people? To assert that it’s better to have more people, without providing a rationale that addresses these possibilities, is certainly to slide by an essential question.

However, I can accept with enthusiasm the idea that having more children [than you thought you’d want] would have a number of selfish benefits for the individual or couple. Yes, kids are a lot of fun, and in the words of Holly Near’s old song, “they remind us how to play”. Having a little crowd of people you know very well is a great idea in this age of high mobility, where the old gang of old friends may not be easy to reach. It’s great to see the grandchildren and watch the whole process of parenting from an intimate but safe distance.

Okay, so far we have two assertions by Caplan—first, that it’s good for the world to have more people (which I challenge), and second, it would be nice for me and others like me, and probably for my children and grandchildren too, to have a big family (which I accept).

But how about the assertion that it doesn’t really matter in the long run what parents do? Ah, here’s the crux, because now we run into matters of definition and of choices of information. Everyone is going to die, no matter what their parents did, so looking at occurrence of death would support the idea that parenting makes no difference, but naturally that’s not what Caplan or Judith Rich Harris mean when they make their claims.

I’m going to make a suggestion about what Caplan really does mean. I think he means that the small differences in childhood experiences for the families he knows don’t over-ride the effects of biological differences. Speaking about a highly restricted range of experiences, Caplan is saying that within that range experiences don’t have much long-term effect. Whether the child goes to a Montessori school or a Waldorf school doesn’t make much difference. Whether he’s given a time-out or a single smack on the behind doesn’t matter much in the long run. But Caplan knows that there are some things that do make a difference, because he points out (on p. 89 and elsewhere) that you ought to be kind to your children. He thinks, probably correctly, that unkindness is not inside that restricted range of circumstances where variations have little effect.

In warning against unkindness, Caplan stumbles into the area of parental attitudes and beliefs that help determine both parent and child behavior. Unkindness is not necessarily defined in the same way by people inside and outside Caplan’s circle. In Michael Pearl’s book, “To Train Up a Child”, Pearl and his wife propose that four-month-old infants who cry or resist a parent should be whipped with a willow switch, or, if no switch is available, a length of plumbing supply line is excellent for the purpose. The Pearls believe this is a kind thing to do, because a child who does not learn early to obey his parents will also defy God and be condemned to Hell. Naturally, if you take this view, you’ll consider it far kinder to save your child from Hell, at the expense of a few minutes of pain, rather than to let him roast for Eternity, just as some of us might think the pain of an immunization is kinder to cause than allowing the risk of death by tetanus.

Caplan’s advice to “be nice”, although undoubtedly valid, is in its vagueness a clue to the lack of real information and thought that went into this book. I can’t expect anyone to read on forever, so let me just address one example of incompleteness here: the discussion of behavior genetics. Caplan provides a handsome equation on pp. 73-74, describing the fraction of developmental variance explained by heredity, the fraction explained by shared family environment, and the fraction explained by aspects of family environment that are not shared by the family’s offspring. Very nice, but what is missing, and quite important, is the variety of interactions between heredity and environment. An example of such an interaction would be the custom in some parts of the world of giving available food to males in a family, and restricting females to whatever food is left over. This is particularly relevant to protein sources. The genetic factor, maleness or femaleness, determines how much food is consumed when resources are limited; the genetic factor thus causes an environmental effect that has a direct influence on development of both body and mind. In this type of interaction, the genetic characteristic actually evokes a response from the environment because of social attitudes.

Very well, you say, but I don’t feed my son more than I feed my daughter. What does this have to do with my parenting? What it has to do with the parenting of people who are likely to read this review is that discipline techniques, to work well, need to be matched to children’s biologically-determined temperaments, such as tendencies to explore or to withdraw from new things, or to have a generally positive or generally negative mood. (By the way, I expected Caplan’s interest in biological factors to lead him to temperament, but apparently it didn’t.) An example of research in this area is Kochanska, G., Aksan, N. & Carlson, J.J. (2005). Temperament, relationships, and young children’s receptive cooperation with their parents. Developmental Psychology, 41, 648-660.

Another important point about interactions between heredity and environment has to do with age. It’s so easy to assume that whatever is true about “nature” and “nurture” in infancy will be true in childhood, adolescence, and so on. But this is not the case, and statements about heredity and environment need to consider events across the developmental trajectory. Take for example Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder that has obvious effects but is not very debilitating. Adult Williams syndrome individuals have wonderful language abilities and are extremely sociable, although because they have little social anxiety they may make things awkward for others. So what would you think they were like as babies? Friendly, early talkers? No, they are not at all the way you would expect them to be. They have horrible colic, which lasts longer than with most babies and makes them extremely irritable. When they begin to recover from the colic, rather than laughing and smiling, they stare at people as if longing for eye contact. They don’t even begin to talk until about age two, rather than the typical 12 months or so.

These are just a few examples of the failings of Caplan’s book, which may have started as a desirable antidote to Amy Chua’s drag-them-by-the-hair philosophy, but which has ended up omitting too many details to provide useful arguments. I notice that the Wall Street Journal review admires the book for its omission of abstruse psychological concepts; that’s okay with me, but I do want to see evidence and reasoning that are relevant to claims, not just evidence that “shows the flag” but does not actually speak to the premises of the book.

[Disclosure: This review was written at the instigation of my son. Now may I play with the grandchildren?]

When Restraint Should Be "Prescription Only"

Those of us who from time to time speak out against the use of inappropriate physical restraint of children can expect certain criticisms in response. We are told that we are naïve, inexperienced, professionally untrained, and that physical restraint is essential to protect adults from wild children, children from each other, and children from themselves. We even hear from a very small proportion of clinical psychologists and social workers that when children are upset and out of control, physical restraint has a beneficial therapeutic effect. Some therapists recommend to parents that they use “take-downs” and physical restraint in order to ensure the obedience of their children.

There is a tiny grain of truth in these criticisms. It is, of course, correct to say that there may be times with any child when physical restraint is the best and quickest way to prevent some sort of disaster, and no one has said otherwise. (The same is true for adults--- what if you see that your friend is about to walk into an unmarked glass door?) But the criticisms also contain many grains of falsehood, especially with respect to a speculated therapeutic effect of restraint, an outcome which is unsupported by any systematic evidence, in spite of the publication of several papers that make related claims.

So, why do people so easily accept the idea that physical restraint is a method of dealing with children that should be left unregulated? It’s possible that part of the thinking about this comes from the experiences most of us have had as parents or caregivers for infants and toddlers. Almost anyone who has cared for a toddler will have on one or more occasions picked up that resistant little person and carried her away for a diaper change (whoever said babies cry to have their diapers changed?!), a bath, a nap-- whatever needs to be done and is unwanted by little Ms. or Mr. Autonomy Stage. When we think about an older child who is resistant or aggressive, it’s easy for us to imagine the situation as parallel to what we’ve done ourselves, with physical restraint or coercion definitely being done for the child’s own good.

But, regrettably, this is often not the case. In too many situations, physical restraint left to the judgment of institutional caregivers results in tragedy. Although I am not given to sensational or “journalistic” language, I cannot find more descriptive words for some of these events than “torture” and “murder”.

I am going to describe a case of this kind, the death of Angellika Arndt in Wisconsin in 2006. Her death and its subsequent investigation have been described by Disability Rights Wisconsin at http://caica.org/Angie%20-%20Seclusion%20Paper.pdf. (Disability Rights Wisconsin has not copyrighted this paper and invites interested people to distribute parts or all of it.)

Angellika Arndt was 7 years old when she died following chest compression asphyxia at a facility of the Northwest Counseling and Guidance Clinic. She had been removed from the home of her biological parents at age 3 because of abuse and had been in foster care and later in the residential treatment center. She was diagnosed with a number of cognitive and emotional disabilities, including an attention deficit disorder and an oppositional disorder. It was reported that she could not remember the day of the week five minutes after it was told to her.

Angellika’s caregivers at the residential treatment center employed two notable approaches to her. The first was for the child to be placed in a “cool down” room where she was expected to sit straight in her chair with her feet on the floor and her hands in her lap for 15 minutes. Timing did not begin until she was in the required position, and if she fidgeted, the time started over. If she continued to fidget, she was placed in prone restraint for a period of time. According to the Disability Rights Wisconsin report, Angellika in the few weeks before her death spent 20 hours in “cool down” and 14 hours in prone restraint-- a face-down restraint on the floor that lasted as long as an hour and a half.

Here is a description of Angellika’s first day at the residential treatment center, from the DRWI report: “…less than two hours into the program, Angie was placed in the time-out room for hitting her own chin with her hand. No self-injury was noted in the record and she stopped this behavior within five minutes. When she continued to fidget in her chair she was threatened with a physical control hold if she didn’t stop. This was the standard admonition given by … staff in response to the occurrence of any behavior to be discouraged, along with the admonition ‘you know what the expectations are’. When Angie didn’t stop, eventually kicking off her right shoe, she was immediately placed in a prone restraint for 85 minutes. By the end of her first day…, Angie had spent 5 hours either isolated in time-out or being restrained, and less than 2 hours engaged in actual activities.” Over the next several weeks, she was to experience similar treatment for “disruptive” activities like having her hood on, talking baby talk, and gargling milk.

During some of her many prone restraints, Angellika vomited or appeared to fall asleep. On the final occasion, she was thought to have fallen asleep while restrained, but eventually a staff member noticed that her lips were blue and she was not breathing. She had died while pressed against the floor by several staff members, kept there despite her complaints of pain and nausea.

Deaths like Angellika’s are a rare but very possible result of the use of physical restraint by professional caregivers whose actions are poorly supervised and regulated, and whose training has been superficial. Given a powerful weapon to control children who are annoying them, they deploy it at once rather keeping it as a safety measure. Indeed, their constant resorting to restraint serves to exacerbate children’s mood problems, to increase resistance, and to limit the cognitive ability the child can bring to bear on a problem. Torturing the child by repeated threats and demands for impossible levels of compliance, they pave the way for a response that ends in death.

The people who killed Angellika Arndt were professionally trained caregivers, but still appear to have been incapable of making appropriate judgments about restraint of this child, whose attention deficits and emotional history made her less capable of compliance than many children. When medications have the potential for causing painful and tragic outcomes, they are legally available only on prescription. We need to awaken to the fact that serious physical harm can result from methods that adults are taught or advised to use, and that rather than letting caregivers decide how to use dangerous techniques, those techniques also need to be “prescribed” in schools or treatment centers as they are in hospital settings.

We need to give similar consideration to situations where parents are given brief training or reading material, and advised by certain therapists to use physical restraint in their daily interactions with their children. Those parents and their children are put in a potentially dangerous position and should question the advice they receive, as any resulting tragedy will harm the family and leave the advising therapist without legal responsibility. As for the therapists who give this kind of advice, I challenge them to show the public systematic evidence that these practices are effective and safe-- or to change their ways.