Review of THE PARENT TRAP
A case for why parents matter
Variation in developmental outcomes is a notoriously debated topic within academic circles. Do genetics matter? Parents? Education? And once everyone is in disagreement about why children exhibit variation in outcomes, the question of how policy should address such variation is met with more disagreement as the answer is dependent on the why. This is what makes child development so fun to study!
And this latest book, The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parent and Fix Our Inequality Crisis, by Nate Hilger, there’s much to stimulate your thinking and a little bit of something for everyone to disagree with.
Hilger argues that the inequality we see in developmental outcomes is the result of the inequality of parents’ ability to build the necessary skills children need to be successful in today’s world. He does not fault parents for this. He proposes that parents have only one true job – to care and love their children. It’s society’s fault for putting so responsibility on parents to be experts in areas that some adults spend decades in educational settings to become experts.
Because not all, maybe many, parents themselves don’t have the skills to build the necessary skills in their children for them to have the best shot at succeeding in society, then government should step in. His proposal is that we spend at least as much on children as we do on the elderly through something like “Familycare” that will allow trained professionals to support the skill development of children to, as the book title says, stop overloading our parents.
On the one hand his perspective that parents’ only job should be to love and care for children is aligned with Alison Gopnik’s perspective. On the other hand, his perspective is probably even more well aligned with Kathryn Paige Harden’s and Freddie deBoer’s view that society success relies heavily on education attainment and cognitive ability, and because genetic variation accounts for much of the variation in education and cognitive outcomes, that policy must address inequality.
Hilger’s perspective also aligns well with other behavior genetics perspectives that education has little impact on reducing cognitive inequality, on the premise that cognitive ability is largely predicted by genetic variation. This might be surprising to many that education has little impact on skill building. Hilger’s perspective isn’t necessarily that education doesn’t matter, but that education only comprises about 10% children’s lives and therefore it is not enough time to build skills.
As a developmental psychologist, I agree most strongly with Hilger’s view that children need far more skilled support especially in the first five years of development prior to formal education. Many behavior genetic proponents, in my view, seem to forget about the immense brain development that occurs in the first few years of life, years in which too many children develop in underestimating environments that inhibit the reaching of their full potential. A view which is still compatible with what we know about behavioral genetics of cognitive ability.
The Parent Trap is a fascinating book, and a nice addition to this genre of books on what can be done to help reduce inequality in developmental outcomes. Interestingly, though, Hilger doesn’t even mention behavior genetics or use it as evidence for his perspective, but what he proposes is quite compatible with Harden and deBoer perspectives (books referenced below). In effect, the book makes a case why parents do matter, but many need much more support.
Format: Hardcover
Published: April 2022
Publisher: MIT Press
If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:
The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality by Kathryn Paige Harden (2021)
The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice by Freddie DeBoer (2020)
The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children by Alison Gopnik (2016)
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