3min chapter

Maiden Mother Matriarch with Louise Perry cover image

How to Play the Status Game - Geoffrey Miller | Maiden Mother Matriarch 66

Maiden Mother Matriarch with Louise Perry

CHAPTER

Exploring Modern Parenting Culture and the Influence of Genes on Child Development

Exploring the modern parenting culture's view of children as status symbols, the chapter highlights the overspending on activities and education. It advocates for a more laid-back approach, emphasizing the role of genes in child development and the impact of competitive parenting on family dynamics.

00:00
Speaker 2
I guess it's just that kids take such a lot of resources. Well, that's sort of that slightly question begging, isn't it? Because one of the reasons why children take a lot of resources in kind of modern parenting culture is because we pay status gains with our kids. Like if we weren't spending so much money on ballet classes and private schools and all of this, children would be cheaper. Do you think that that's also another cap on fertility because people think you have to spend so much money to raise healthy, happy children?
Speaker 1
Yeah, and this is why to an annoying degree, I run around recommending Brian Kaplan's book. Selfish reasons have more kids, which is kind of a behavior genetics critique of runaway parental consumerism, right? And I'm very much on board with this behavior genetics insight that you know, your kids are born and they've got a mix of the genes from you and your partner and they're going to turn out to have whatever cognitive traits and intelligence and personality traits that they have based largely on genes and there's not a whole lot you can do to change that. So the implication for parents is relax, let your kids be who they are, let them grow up, don't try to shape them, don't try to haught house them, don't try to manipulate them at the micro level to become some little status object that you that you show off, but rather like feed them and they grow and they'll be fine. And so the limbic capitalism isn't just seizing on our status seeking instinct, it's also seizing on our parenting instincts, right? Competitive parenting, my kids are better than your kids, so that makes me a better person somehow. And I think getting caught up in that also can inhibit, you know, the number of kids that you have. And this is all very much in the context of my own family where my my mom was one of 12 kids. And I grew up just a few blocks away from many, many uncles and aunts who I played with regularly and we were on the same swim team and I saw the viability of having a very, very large family. And I saw that, oh wow, they don't need to be hot, hot house. Once you've got that many kids, they kind of largely take care of each other. And you know, my maternal grandmother was not sort of running these kids around endless ballet lessons. And they did activities, but they did not have the kind of intensive parenting that your typical modern bourgeois parents would strive for.

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