ACX
Chip Off The Old Block
Scott reflects on having young children and how they've inherited specific traits, preferences, and quirks from both him and his wife in surprisingly precise ways.
27 min read 4,128 words
A thread through the archive
parenting
Essays tagged “parenting”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Essays on parenting
13 essaysACX
The Permanent Emergency
Scott shares humorous anecdotes about the daily chaos of raising toddler twins, from emergency police visits triggered by screaming over the wrong version of a song, to elaborate bedtime battles and the children's obsession with identifying vehicles and animals.
19 min read 2,851 words
ACX
Book Review: Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids
Scott reviews Bryan Caplan's book arguing that modern parents can relax their intensive parenting, while wrestling with whether this advice still applies in the age of smartphones and social media.
43 min read 6,596 words
ACX
Indulge Your Internet Addiction By Reading About Internet Addiction
Scott analyzes ACX survey data on Internet addiction, exploring correlations between usage patterns, life satisfaction, and parental restrictions, while acknowledging the difficulty of establishing causation in the findings.
12 min read 1,712 words
SSC
Book Review Review: Little Soldiers
Scott Alexander reviews a book about Chinese education, comparing it to criticisms of US schools and examining evidence for discipline-focused vs. creativity-focused approaches to education.
24 min read 3,627 words
SSC
Age Gaps And Birth Order Effects
Scott Alexander analyzes birth order effects in SSC readers, finding strong effects for sibling age gaps of 1-7 years, with a significant drop-off after 7 years.
11 min read 1,636 words
SSC
Basic Income, Not Basic Jobs: Against Hijacking Utopia
Scott Alexander argues strongly for basic income over basic jobs guarantees, citing numerous advantages of basic income and potential pitfalls of basic jobs programs.
89 min read 13,740 words
SSC
Bundles Of Joy
Scott Alexander analyzes survey results showing high parental satisfaction among his blog readers, comparing the findings to existing research and discussing their implications.
6 min read 904 words
SSC
I Wrote A Blog Post, But Did Not Adjust For The Fact That The Title Would Be Too L
Scott Alexander critiques a study on fathers' influence on sons' obesity, highlighting statistical flaws and misleading publicity, while exploring the broader challenge of identifying genuine parental effects.
11 min read 1,569 words
SSC
Reporter Degrees Of Freedom
Scott Alexander critiques media reporting of scientific studies, showing how the same study can lead to vastly different headlines and interpretations, often misrepresenting the actual findings.
16 min read 2,352 words
SSC
The Dark Side Of Divorce
The author revisits their belief in genetic determinism, presenting evidence that environmental factors, especially in divorce, have significant non-genetic effects on children's outcomes.
12 min read 1,846 words
SSC
Streetlight Psychology
Scott Alexander criticizes psychological studies that confuse short-term reactions with long-term effects, using examples from video game violence research, media stereotype studies, and parenting research.
13 min read 1,995 words
SSC
Genetic Russian Roulette
Scott Alexander describes his increasing hesitation to have children due to his experiences with rare genetic disorders and difficult patients in psychiatry and medicine.
15 min read 2,240 words