Enrichment activities: A deliberately controversial post

We at grumpy rumblings are pro-learning.  There it is.  We came out and admitted it.  We think learning things is great!

We also think that in many cases K-12 schooling does not actually promote learning.  Especially for kids who are different from the average (or perhaps, different from the lowest common denominator in class, depending on where the teacher and school are aiming their instruction).

We are pro-learning-outside-of-school using whatever means necessary.  If you’ve got money and time, we’re pro-traveling out of state.  If you’ve got money and no time, we’re pro- summer camp and classes.  If you’ve got time and no money, we’re pro-whatever you can scrape together.

The current trend in the media these days is a back-lash against “over-scheduling” whatever that means.  (In the interest of giving us “opportunities they never had,” my parents had us highly scheduled… yet, we still managed to watch a lot of tv and read mountains upon mountains of books.)

I’m pro-summer activities.  I’m pro-me-working during the summer (more pro- getting paid for not-working, but so far no takers), and I’d rather DC be doing something organized (even something enriching!) than, say, playing with the power tools in the shed, which would also be enriching but dangerous.

My parents valued enrichment activities over stuff, so I took a lot of fun kids classes over the summer at the local community college.  They probably kept my interest up in learning since most of my K-8 so-called education was mind-numbingly boring.  I was usually the only girl and often one of the youngest in the math and science-related classes.

I wonder what kind of activities the other girls were doing.  Or if they were just learning to do chores.  I learned how to do chores too, even with piano lessons and swimming lessons and summer classes and softball and ballet and gymnastics and the play etc.

Even with the scheduling I had crazy amounts of free time.  I started and (sometimes) completed so many crafts.  How many pot-holders does a person need?  Weaving and bead weaving and friendship bracelets and those things you make with yarn that look like carpets and embroidery and knitting and sculpy and shellacing and quilting and goodness knows what else.  Possibly good for my small-motor skills, but did not translate into anything I can do today.  Although being able to mend is still a useful skill, as is cooking.

DH, of course, was learning how to do things like computer programming in his copious unscheduled free time.

There was also the kind of stuff we could do back 20-30 years ago but can’t do without adult supervision today.  Hanging out with the neighborhood kids, bike riding, tadpole catching, exploring, going to the park alone etc.

The best part of free time, of course, is visiting the library and reading.  Mmmm books.  After I ran out of children’s fiction I discovered the humor section upstairs in adult.  Then folk-lore.  Then fantasy, and that changed everything.

So, bottom line:  we think scheduled activities mainly suck for the parent doing the driving.  Kids are mostly still left with plenty of free time to goof off.  There’s probably some line where there’s too many activities but one probably only hits that after adding in a sport on top of everything else (or one goes to a challenging school that isn’t afraid of offending parents with homework).  We also worry that there’s differential opportunities, both scheduled and unscheduled, by gender.

Do you think kids today are too overscheduled?  Too underscheduled?  Where do you fall on the debate?  And do you think the gender divide is important?  If so, in what way?

Disclaimer:  DC is not currently scheduled to do anything because hir parents are lazy and the small town doesn’t have year round swimming lessons.  One of these days we’ll get a piano or a keyboard or something.

Homeschooling: A deliberately controversial post

We are not against homeschooling.

A lot of people who don’t do it are.  Their arguments include:

Lack of social interaction.  Not being with same-aged peers.  Home schoolers can’t possibly get all the academics they need.  Lack of extra-curriculars.  OMG, what about the sports.

These are pretty well straw arguments.

Our major point is that you should compare homeschooling to the alternative… and well, the alternative often sucks big-time.

Little social interaction beats mandatory interaction with Mean Girls, and if one wants voluntary social interaction there are about a million organized after school activities one can do, even if there isn’t an organized home schooling situation in your area.  And who needs same-aged peers when you’re out-of-synch?

Home schoolers tend to do better on average on the SATs and motivated ones can learn faster with an individualized curriculum when they don’t have to wait for their peers or spend all that time transitioning. All that wasted time being bored stiff counting ceiling tiles and the teacher won’t let you read under your desk.

Extra-curriculars can be paid for, as can sports.  If one cares about sports.  Which one doesn’t necessarily.  But public school often cares about nothing else, that and cheerleading.

(Aside:  We are a little creeped out by people who homeschool because they belong to a religious cult and don’t want to introduce evil influences like Harry Potter, but if they weren’t homeschooling they’d be sending their kids to cult schools.  Our little area of the Bible belt even has part-time schooling options for such folks.  Sure, they cost money, but in theory if the money is going towards the church anyway maybe it can count as part of their tithe.  Or some kind of financial aid thing can be worked out for tithing members.  Such folk are not the only people who homeschool, and we’d be creeped out by them even if they didn’t homeschool.  At least if they’re home schooling they’re not trying to ban books from the school library.)

We sure wish we had been home-schooled.  At least through middle school.  Especially middle school.  But elementary school too with only a few exceptions for stellar teachers (and those exceptions for only one of us).  But we weren’t.  And the therapy still hasn’t fixed all the trauma.

So we’re not homeschooling, and we hope we never have to (both because we work full-time and because one of us doesn’t have kids).  But more power to the folks who do.  Especially in this no-child-left-behind everyone-gets-a-trophy environment.  Especially if your kid is different and different is not what your school system is looking for.  Help your kids learn how to think and not have a sense of entitlement, and we’ll be happier when we get them in our classes.

What do you folks think?  Home schooling yea or nay?  Be respectful!  Your answers will be graded for critical thinking and grammar.  (Kidding!  We won’t grade your answers– we will just provide our usual thought-provoking probing questions to increase rather than cut-off conversation.  But still, be respectful.)

p.s.  This list is interesting.

p.p.s.  Confidential to PZ Meyer.  By not trying to fix your local school system you are also just as bad as those anti-vaxers.  In fact, you’re worse than the home schoolers you decry who pull their kids out of dangerous or failing districts because you should have all that extra time to join the school board etc. because you don’t have any K-12 kids to take care of.  Also, you should be donating money to the district to atone for not having (more) kids, at least the amount that they’re not getting in federal funding.  How dare you be so selfish.  We will be ranting this in full at a later date (title:  Stupid “You should be doing more” arguments from people who aren’t doing anything) .  [Update:  In case it isn't clear, this confidential is sarcasm-- we think property taxes are enough mandatory supporting of public schools for *everybody*, with or without children.  If you want to do more, great, but there's a reason we have taxes.  Maybe those taxes should be higher or the federal contribution should be higher to poorer districts, but that's an issue to take up politically, not on the backs of individual children.]

On labels: A deliberately controversial post

Since y’all seem interested in talking about labels, we thought we’d give you the opportunity.

Gifted, fat, frugal, cheap, rich, poor, pretty, female, black, midwestern, Jersey…

The brain needs to categorize things.  That’s why mental accounts work so well for public finance.  Labels help humans organize the world around them.  We’re more than the sum of our labels, but people have a hard time perceiving others without them, at least until they get well-acquainted.

We contend that it’s not the label… it’s what people do with it.

Labels can be used for good.  The can help people get the help they need.   When you have a disease or syndrome, it’s nice to have a diagnosis even if there’s no cure. They can tell us about differences between groups.  And they can help human brains make sense of large amounts of information.

Labels can be used for evil.  They can be used to pigeon-hole people into categories and stereotypes.  They can cause people cognitive dissonance, or to try to become something they wouldn’t be without the label.  People can treat those with labels in ways they shouldn’t be treating anybody.  Mislabeling can cause problems too.

So, what do you think:  Are all labels bad?  Are labels necessary?  When?  What would a world without labels look like?  Have you ever been in a situation in which having a label helped or hurt you?

Starting to understand the feminist backlash…

If women do anything other than spend time reaching the top pinnacles of their careers, they’re destroying the feminist sisterhood.  Financial independence is something only men are allowed to strive for.

If women don’t clean their toilets and instead hire other women to clean their toilets they’re destroying the feminist sisterhood.  (Corollary:  You  can only pay men to do household services.)

If women don’t have househusbands, they’re destroying the feminist sisterhood.

If people say, “breast is best,” they’re destroying the feminist sisterhood.

If women talk about their own experiences on a blog, they’re destroying the feminist sisterhood.

If women don’t speak up at work, they’re destroying the feminist sisterhood.  If they do speak up, they’re silencing other women, thus destroying the feminist sisterhood.

If a woman actually admits that she’s a mother and occasionally talks about her children in professional contexts, she’s destroying the feminist sisterhood.

You know what?  I don’t believe any of the above.  I think that folks who say the above are working for the patriarchy.  The patriarchy wants us to have more guilt instead of less.  To not be allowed happiness because we’re too busy striking blows against dog knows what.  The patriarchy wants us to believe there’s one experience allowed.  The patriarchy wants us to ignore empirical evidence and go with our gut.

I could go off on any of the above examples, but I’ll just stick with one.

It’s an empirical question whether or not breast is best.  At the moment, the best scientific evidence is that breast is best (barring medical problems), but formula (which is getting better all the time) won’t kill a kid and is a good alternative unless you’re in a country which has unsafe water supplies.  Effect sizes are generally small in developed countries in the best controlled studies and more research is needed.  Sure, the message is coming on too strong in say, urban mostly-white parts of California where women who were unable to breastfeed because of medical reasons or lack of support are made to feel guilty.  Breastfeeding can be hard.

But the message that breast is best is novel in parts of the country (and world) that are still suffering from formula companies’ stronghold that there’s something wrong with breastmilk and a scientific formula is much better for a baby (my parents have spent a lifetime of boycotting Nestle for spreading these messages in areas with unclean water).  In these areas in the US breastfeeding is looked down upon and there’s no support, even condemnation.  Obviously you’re going to formula feed whether you work outside the home or as a SAHM because only the rich college professors nurse, and not even all of them.  The lady at the local WIC office tells me that they often have mothers coming in feeding their infants Gatorade because they think it’s healthy and nutritious because it is a sports drink.  For these folks, the message that breast is best is a big deal.

(Also note:  in parts of Africa and other places where HIV/AIDS is rampant, the same NGOs that once tried to convince everyone that breast is best are now trying to convince mothers to use formula instead of breastmilk, to reduce the infants’ chances of getting HIV [or more exposure if they are trying to seroconvert] from their infected mothers.  There’s also a lot of research going on trying to get folks in areas without plumbing to make it a habit of always having clean water [there are several mechanisms for sterilizing water, but they all take time, so even when you have the mechanism for cleaning, you may not have clean water on hand when you need it]… HIV vs. diphtheria is a difficult trade-off.)

Yes, there are still parts of the country where mothers who want to do the best thing really do believe that formula feeding is the best thing to do.  They don’t trust their bodies, they do trust large corporations and the doctor who gives them a big can of free formula at birth.  (The nurses thought I was crazy when I gave mine back.  Apparently nobody here does that.  I did keep the formula logo diaper bag.)

The message that breast is best can help pave the way for services and legislation that make it easier for women who do not have the cultural support they need to make a go of nursing to be more likely to be able to.  There has to be some demand before employers make changes or government forces them to do so.  The guilt should never be on the woman, but don’t confuse that with the idea that the message is the enemy.

Breast is best and we should make it easier for women to combine nursing with employment.  Breast is best and we should provide support for women to be able to nurse because it has a steep learning curve.  Breast is best, but we will not condemn women who were unable to do it.  Breast is best, but formula is a fine alternative.

Anyhow… I also don’t believe that the majority of feminists believe the above statements about destroying the feminist sisterhood.  Or at least not all of the above statements.  I think there’s a small vocal minority who do, for reasons that I do not understand, but could speculate on.  I wish they wouldn’t.  Let’s let empirical evidence and logic guide our recommendations and try to make the world a happier place.  Because I sure wouldn’t want to live a life like the ideal person not destroying the feminist sisterhood (80 hrs at work, then come home to clean), even if it were possible and not self-contradictory.

Your turn.

Why do I have everything?

I’m so sick of posts talking about how women can have everything, just not at the same time (a Claudia Goldin quote, I believe… she was talking about the generation of women who are now retiring).

I especially hate the way that disagreeing and saying, “Hey, I have everything” makes me look like a jerk.  Folks should be able to say, “I have everything and you can too.  You may not have it now, but if you keep trying it can happen.”  People shouldn’t have to apologize for being awesome.  People shouldn’t have to say, “The only reason I’m awesome is because I have had advantages that you don’t (so don’t even bother trying).”  The truth is that we can all be awesome, or at least awesomer than we are now, but some of us have to work harder than others at becoming awesome because of differences in advantages.

Here’s why I have everything.

I’m smart.  I have good genetic material.  A family that values intelligence.  My mom ate crazy healthy when I was in the womb.  My parents were active with me as a baby.  My house was full of books.  But smart isn’t just an inborn trait, it’s something you have to use and nurture by growing dendrites and taking on challenges.  You can become even smarter, starting now.  (Read Mindset by Carol Dweck.)

I’m focused.  I know what I want and I make plans on how to get there.

I’m well-prepared.  I’ve sought out and taken many educational opportunities.  I understand the culture I’m working in (I didn’t at first, but I learned and changed).  I had solid training.  My parents also gave me tools to navigate the adult world… I can budget, invest etc.  If I can’t do something I know how to find out what to do.  The best thing my mother ever taught me was how to use the library.

I’m determined.  I’m not a shrinking violet.  I know I’m valuable.  If I’m not getting what I want, I figure out how to get it.  I don’t have everything I want, but I’m going to keep trying until either I do or I decide I want to try a different game.  I realize that often opportunities don’t fall into my lap, but I can ask for them (firmly and politely).  And if some people think I’m not staying in my place, that’s their problem, not mine.  Sometimes I strike out, but I still go up to bat.

I’m hardworking.  I no longer work 80 hour weeks, but I sure don’t work less than 40 hrs/week either.

I have a growth mindset.  Set-backs are simply set-backs.  We learn from them and work harder to get ahead.

I have the perfect partner.  We don’t fight.  We don’t guilt.  We shoulder the load.  We comfort.  We support.  We look for solutions together.

I’m not a martyr.  I don’t see any reason that I should have to sacrifice myself for anybody or anything.  Yes, I did all the “right” things when DC was a baby, but never at huge sacrifice to myself, and I got to decide what was “right,” after a lot of research.  I did what I did because that was what I wanted to do because I thought it was the right thing, not because I wanted people to think I was a saint or because I was trying to convince myself not to feel guilty for whatever reason.

I’m lucky.  Also privileged by geographic and demographic virtue.  I have to work harder than a white male from a tony family but I don’t have to work as hard as an equally perfect female from an underrepresented minority family would to get to the same place.  I don’t have to work as hard as someone from another country, and being an American gives me untold advantages and safety.

Perhaps most importantly:  I get to define “everything.”  My goals are achievable.  I don’t want to work 80hrs/week and be at home for my child 168hrs/week.  I want a happy independent kid who works to hir own chosen potential.  I want to be respected in my career and to do good work.  I want to be continually growing.  I want to make enough money (and spend reasonably enough) not to have to think about it unless I want to.    (#2 thinks that the ability to have it all depends on how you define “it” and “have”.  Do I sound Presidential?)

Anyhow.  If you’re feeling unhappy about your lot in life, instead of complaining about how women just can’t have everything in yet another blog post… well, ask yourself what you can do to get what you want.  Changing the game is difficult, but there are still strategies you can use to get ahead as a player.  And it’s not fair that it takes more effort for some groups than others, but if that’s what it takes, then that’s something you can do.

What can you do to make your life better?  Are you trapped?

Is there anything wrong with choice feminism?

This post was inspired by a recent discussion at Historiann’s.  It’s a bit scattered and should probably be two posts…

There are a lot of different definitions of choice feminism floating around on the internet, but no wikipedia article to arbitrate.  So for the purposes of this post, I will define choice feminism as being consistent with the idea that women should be allowed to choose between having careers and being housewives or stay-at-home parents without guilt or judgment.  I am not defining it as a feminism that allows women to choose to defer to their husbands at all times for religious reasons (though some folks on the internet do include that definition).  I’m sticking to this labor market definition.

Note it is a middle-class debate, mostly upper-middle-class.  Folks making less money or who have less education make choices much more defined by salary, job options, and daycare costs– their constraints are more binding.  Of course, the guilt and the cultural ethos still spills over.  It’s easier to justify being in the labor force in order to pay a mortgage or rent in a safer neighborhood etc. if the cultural ethos is telling you you’re also striking a blow for feminism and being a strong role model for your children.  It’s more difficult if the cultural ethos is telling you you’re abandoning your kids (whom you’re supposed to be waiting on hand and foot 24/7) to strangers.  [Note:  You're not.]

The idea is that 1970s feminism was more of the former.  We, the privileged, the smart, educated, determined, middle class owed it to all women to show our female power, to break glass ceilings, to open up opportunities for the next generation.  By not opting out, we were making it better for those who did not have a choice because we were changing culture, and we had the imprimatur to do it.  (Of course, I’m willing to bet that there’s some selective memory going on, and it was still much more acceptable to stay at home rather than break those barriers.  Also, I think we could have a whole ‘nother blog post about how it is no longer popular to claim that the privileged have any responsibility to society…)  Today, the argument goes, the pendulum has ticked the other way and this current generation gives equal merit to the choice to stay at home, and in doing so, they’re hurting current and future generations of women.

A logical conclusion from the above is that men and women should be working for pay in the labor market in high impact jobs even if their family income is enough that they do not need to in order to meet their monetary needs.  But… what if you’re the recipient of an inheritance?  What if you worked a few years at a high-paying job and saved diligently and are doing early retirement extreme?   What if your IPO from the company you slaved over for a few years made you a millionaire and now you want to relax?

Don’t most people wish they could keep their American salaries with French working hours?  Rom coms sell balance for both genders, not just women.  It’s dad whose work causes him to miss the championship baseball game, signaling to the audience the need for whatever transformation is going to occur in the next 80 min.

This cult idea of the perfect career is also damaging.   Am I doing the right thing for women because I work on the fringes of the powerful and have a child, or should I instead be working harder to be at a top 10 or top 20 school?  If I worked more hours, my chances of being able to do so would be higher.  But I sure as heck wouldn’t have time to blog.  What about women who leave post-docs to work for industry?  Or decide they don’t want another year of adjuncting?  Or maybe a masters degree is enough higher education… there’s more money to be made on wall street anyway.

What are these high powered careers that highly educated women are dropping out of or phasing down?:  lawyering, doctoring, academia… who says these are a measure of success?  They’re pedestrian … they’re stereotypes.  What less-privileged parents see as entree into the upper middle class, and maybe they are, but the upper middle class don’t see them as the only option for their children.  Note that they’re becoming female dominated.

I don’t know any happy lawyers, at least not ones with kids.  Well, that’s not quite true.  My aunt and uncle have had fulfilling careers (while raising two children), but you know what?  They work for the government.  They exchanged smaller salaries for 40-50 hr/week jobs.  (#2 says, my aunt is a happy lawyer.  My cousin is a very busy lawyer.  Both have kids and pets.)  I know women who should not be SAHM who left stressful jobs as lawyers to “stay at home with their kids”… but that’s not really why they left, no matter what they try to convince themselves.  They discovered on maternity leave that they hated their jobs.  Like the Historiann post said, their job was not compelling enough to return to.  Are they failing the sisterhood?  If not, are they causing problems for all women when they insist that the reason they left the labor force was because their children needed them and they just could not farm their little spoiled hellions out to strangers (sorry… that’s one specific example!), and not because their job sucked?

Add to that, strong women will sometimes be only nominally SAHM.  They will engage in entrepreneurship, philanthropy, activism.  Businesses that are hidden until they start bringing in large sums of money (like Kate Middleton’s mom!) or that are high powered work without pay.  Is that less important than becoming a senior partner at a law firm or a senior full professor at a top 10 school?  What is the brass ring?

One of my big problems with this debate is how gendered it is.  Coming from a personal finance perspective, one of the great goals in life is financial independence.  When women opt-out, it’s called being a housewife.  When men opt-out, they’re “financially independent”, or “exploring their muse”.  Even when said housewives are running businesses or charitable organizations and said men aren’t breaking even.  If men call it SAHDing rather than something more euphemistic, their labor market outcomes take a bigger hit than an equivalent woman’s.

Is it right that men and women have different cultural expectations?  That it’s more ok for a woman to leave the labor force, that it’s easier for a man to succeed at a career job?  No.  Those little choices Historiann’s post talks about are also dangerous.

So that’s a lot of blathering.  I’ll end with a few summing paragraphs.

Big tenet of choice feminism:  individual women should not be made to bear society’s guilt.  I should not be feeling guilty for not being a professor at Stanford on top of having to live in a small town in a red state.  I made these trade-offs.  Most of us could do more.  But most of us also don’t want the health problems associated with stress.  Most of us want time for hobbies, even if the hobby is watching TV.

Bad part:  any idea that if you don’t choose to stay at home there’s something wrong with you.  Many women stay at home because their jobs sucked, but they don’t want to admit that.  They’d rather pretend to be martyrs, sacrificing for the good of the family.  I like the financial independence perspective.   Your job is a way to get money.  Your vocation is whatever you want to do with your time.  There’s no shame in not working (unless you’re serious about the Protestant work ethic like my mom… she believes people have a moral obligation to contribute to society), so long as you pay your bills and feed and clothe your kids.

Bottom line:  Let choice feminism win the day.  No need to feel guilty for choosing not to work if you don’t have to and you understand the risks you may be taking.  You’re not failing anyone.  BUT only on the condition that parents who choose to stay at home admit that they’re doing it for themselves, and not for their kids.  Let’s take the martyrdom out of feminism and allow true choice.

Note the deliberately controversial post tag… and … Go!  Hit us with your thoughts.

Stereotype threat

Men who are secure in their masculinity are both great lovers and don’t waste their time trying to make themselves feel like real men by putting down women on the internet.  It is well known, and has been scientifically shown*, that men who spend large amounts of times posting about women’s genetic and nature-born inferiority have tiny penises and are trying to compensate for being lousy in bed.

Now, whether that’s true or not, such a statement may cause these loser-”men” to subconsciously doubt their virility and indeed perform poorly in bed (even worse than they already are!).

Stereotype threat occurs when people are aware or are made aware of a stereotype regarding their group.  When presented with this stereotype, their measured performance moves closer to the perceived mean for their group.  This effect has been shown over and over, for minorities, for women, for lower-caste Indians in India, in testing situations and in real situations.  It is a real phenomenon.  You tell someone that their group is bad at something or worse at something than another group, and their performance will suffer.  These negative stereotypes become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Stereotype threat is malicious and malignant.  When men post bogus studies about women and minorities’ supposed natural-born inferiority and complain about poor Larry Summers (who, incidentally, was pushed out of Harvard for problems with micromanagement, his abrasive administrative style, and his general disdain for any humanity/social science field that is not economics, and not for anything to do with his ignorant remarks at NBER), they are feeding stereotype threat.  On Chronicle forums, they are making academic women feel like they should and can achieve less.  On gifted forums, they’re implicitly encouraging housewives to stay home with their children, and to not expect as much from their daughters as from their sons.  Their unchecked general acceptance that people who aren’t white (or occasionally Asian) men are inferior can spread to other people who read their comments and “proofs” who then spread the contagion to people IRL.  And such comments push out those who would argue against them by creating and promoting an unwelcoming and hostile environment for women who aren’t willing to be bullied.

Why so Slow by Virginia Valian is a must read.  It’s a fantastic literature review and well-reasoned argument of exactly how many of these differences that some ascribe to genetics are actually the product of our culture.  If you are a nature-only person, this book provides convincing evidence of nurture.

Why So Slow?: The Advancement of Women

by Virginia Valian

Even if there are strong genetic differences in ability or whatever by gender  (which there probably aren’t), that does not say much about individual people.  Imagine two normal curves overlapping normal curves, in which one is slightly shifted:

Now compare the area under the curve that is shared to the area that is not.  Individual differences will always outweigh differences between groups.   Or if you believe Pinker (and many experts do not agree with his conclusions or his methods), the two groups may have the same means, but one curve is fatter and the other taller.  Almost nobody is in the parts of the tail that aren’t shared.  Again, individual differences are always greater than differences between groups.

So, to summarize, if you have a tiny penis stop being an ass on the internet.  If you have to harm people by telling them that their entire group is inferior, you’re doing real harm and you’re a loser.  Real men don’t need to put women down in order to feel masculine, because they already are.

*using small-penis-man definitions of “scientifically,” not standard definitions from people who understand statistics, though no doubt there is actually a correlation.  Someone should study that.

Disclaimer:  Penis length is not a direct indicator of female satisfaction, nor does it actually have any bearing on a person’s value as a person. However, we choose this example because we believe it to be most insulting to men who constantly post negative “proof” of women’s innate inferiority (which is stupid of them).  Additionally, it is well known that ability in bed increases with one’s valuation of one’s partner ;).

This thread depresses me

Gifted-as-children stay-at-home-mothers discuss their brains atrophying and their careers dying while they nurture their gifted daughters through homeschooling.

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/95595/Random_question.htm

Another reason I am not and could never be a SAHP.  (Though I’m fairly sure I could handle independently wealthy… I’m willing to experiment on that if anyone wants to fund me!)

SAH to optimize your child… for what?  So she can stay at home, miserable, with her child 10 or 20 years from now, just like you are?

Yes, I know that it is VERY difficult to find a good schooling match for a bright and gifted child.  Homeschooling might be the best solution for the kid.  But… school is not even 8 hours per day.  Sometimes you just gotta compromise a little bit.  Sometimes the kid is going to have to make sacrifices so that the mom (and it is nearly ALWAYS the mom) doesn’t lose her career ambitions and sanity as well.  That’s ok.  Life doesn’t have to be always perfect for just one member of the family.  The family is a unit that moves forward together.

And maybe, just maybe, seeing mom fulfilled and career-driven and independent (while still being a loving mom) will work as a great role-model for the grown daughter, who realizes that life does get better after you graduate K-12, and she can balance a fulfilling career and family, and it is important for all family members to pull their own weight in order for this to happen.

Thanks, mom, for never quitting your job and brilliantly raising two strong, independent, hardworking, and intelligent daughters.  I know we always came first, but it was good for us to know that we were never the only thing.  Just like our children are/will be most important but never the the sole driving force behind our existence.

Disclaimer:  We are not against SAHP.  We just think it isn’t suited for some people, and don’t think these folks should be forcing themselves into SAHParenthood because of some notion that parents (mothers) must sacrifice everything for their children.  If you enjoy it and it’s working for you and you can afford it, then go for it!

#2 continues to wonder why #1 reads depressing fora.  Come to the fora on LibraryThing!  We talk about books!

Why bank the unbanked? Libertarian Paternalism and a deliberately controversial post

We want people to be banked because it means they’re less likely to need public services and they’re more likely to feed their kids.  We want them to feed their kids because healthy kids grow up to produce for society rather than drain it.

Do we care about the well-being of the adults themselves? Maybe a little, but only to the extent that they get a minimum level of services (food, shelter, safety… there’s some disagreement about medical care). If they can get that minimum level of services on their own and making it easier for them to have bank accounts facilitates that, then it’s a good use of the government to do so. Last year they did a pilot study looking at helping folks become banked when they get their tax returns.  Presumably, they’ll know whether or not it pays for itself before doing any expansion.

Some small-scale pilots on getting people banked have been done, but they often use expensive techniques like matching grants or education that just don’t work as well as one would hope. Making it easier for people to bank their tax refunds rather than having the refunds get spent right away is a little nudge that might have long-term implications. It’s like a shorter term version of the savings bond refunds they implemented last year.

I am pretty darn sure that it’s public and behavioral finance economists (I believe Sendhil Mullainathan in particular has done some government work recently) who are the impetus for all these nudges. Not some evil big brother or corporation or what have you. Just regular very smart academics that care a lot about policy.

The entire movement is called libertarian paternalism– making it easy for people to make good choices, but giving them free reign to make bad ones instead.  In the book Nudge, the first example given is that of putting apples at eye level in the school cafeteria and chips on a lower shelf.

The chips are still there and still easy to get, it’s just a nudge to get the apple instead. These are the exact opposite of big brother activities.  But they could have huge payouts for everyone if it means lower medical costs and a more productive society.

Should the government nudge people into good behaviors?  Should they force people into good behaviors?  Should they rely on people to make the right decision?

Is paying your mortgage a waste of money?

Money Reasons has been inspiring a lot of posts recently.  He’s starting to get a bit testy about it too.  No more Mr. Nice Reasons.  #2 suggested that we use some of this direct opposition (and his fundamental hatred of experts, as indicated in our comments section in this post) to do a few deliberately controversial posts.  (You know, like how we used Evan’s whininess inability to get a joke sensitivity to attract the entire Yakiezie back when we only had 30 regular readers.)

Go ahead and check out his post.  We’ll wait.

Anyhow, in this post, he talks about how awesome it is to have finished paying his mortgage (and yes, that is an accomplishment).  His mortgage (not including escrow) was 1200/month.  Therefore, he says, paying off his mortgage is like having a part-time job that pays 1200/month.

Is it?

I argue no.

The part of the monthly mortgage payment going to INTEREST is like having a part-time job (so that point stands, and it’s a nice part-time job where you don’t even have to show up).  New fresh money that is no longer being thrown away on essentially renting your house from the bank.*  For us, that’s about $600/month these days.  Not too shabby, but also a bit less than half of what we’re paying on the mortgage (not including escrow which has to be paid anyway).

HOWEVER,

The part going towards PRINCIPAL is not.  The part going to principal is savings.  It isn’t new money.  It’s money you had targeted for savings and is hopefully now being saved in some other form.  (Or heck, if you are hitting your savings happily, then re-purposed in other ways.)

When Money Reasons says that not having mortgage payments is like getting a part-time job that pays 1200/month, that’s like me saying that not funding an IRA is like getting a part-time job that pays $5K/year.  In both cases, the money wasn’t evaporating– it was being put towards savings.  Not putting it into an IRA doesn’t make me richer!  Not putting money into real estate doesn’t create new money like a part-time job would, it just means the old money is finding new purposes.

Debt is negative savings.  Paying down debt is savings.  To understand that concept, imagine you have 0% interest debt and access to a 0% savings account.  You can direct your income into that debt or into the savings account.  Whichever you choose, you end up with the same amount of money in the end.  (In a real life example you might put the money in low interest savings and pay off the entire debt once the interest rate jumps past the 0%… but you’d rather have the emergency fund while you wait.  This would be like subsidized student loan debt in graduate school.)  It’s when you add different interest rates (and risk, if you want to get complicated) to the debt and the savings that one or the other may become more attractive.

Cash flow is not the same as income or wealth.  You can have a high cash flow and still have no wealth.  You can have a low cash flow and be very wealthy.  You can increase your cash flow by stopping your retirement saving, not pre-paying your mortgage, and any number of other things.  None of these actually increase your income.  (Well, technically pre-paying debt increases your income from an economics sense in that you no longer have to pay interest on that, but the *interest* is the new income, not the principal.  If you’re pre-paying 0% student debt, for example, that doesn’t change your income at all, just increases your savings.)

But what do I know?  I’m just an expert and as we know, experts can’t be trusted.  They still think the world is flat.  (NB:  I don’t.)

Also, cats rule.

Have we explained this concept?  Did you enjoy this deliberately controversial post?

*disclaimer:  You do get value from renting from the bank– that money is freed up for other things, and there’s discount rates and time preferences and a bunch of complicated stuff.  Not saying that renting is throwing money away!  It does buy things of value.  But in terms of savings, the bank is getting that money, not you.

p.s.  Our last MR-inspired post is an editor’s pick in this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance.  Sponsored by Fabulously broke in the city.