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Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 8, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Part of parenting teens is how you've parented the children prior to that.

You also run into some moral hazard where "slow down and deny that adult development" is in the parent's best interest, but not the child's.

Parents are by their nature far too close to the problem, and much like bankruptcy, the balance [of power] drops gradually, then suddenly. And all of that happens coincident with their new ability to be a physical threat to you, either directly if a man, or by proxy if a woman.

All the teenagers I've had the pleasure of interacting with actually become more mature, not less, when they're out of watchful eyes. Granted, there's a lot of selection bias going on there- I don't generally hang out with stupid people, I didn't grow up exposed to a lot of stupid people, and the parents I hang out with have kids that are inherently as stable and well-rounded as they are (to the point that certain traits and thought patterns translate word for word- so if you magically turned insane the minute you hit 13 you're probably fucked as a parent). I also 'pass', for lack of a better word; it's quite easy to hide the fact I'm technically old enough to be their father(s) unless I say it directly (being Extremely Online helps with this; the dead giveaway I'm quite a bit older is because of a specific expression I don't/won't use, but nobody seems to pay attention to that), so I feel I have good reason to believe that bump in maturity is genuine.

There's a certain kind of parenting failure mode where the memes of "terrible teenagers" tend to take root a bit too much, and parents who have sensible kids do nothing to break them out of it. "You're just a stupid nigger, too much melanin makes your brain go crazy, why the fuck would you expect to be treated like an actual human being?" was stupid then, and the exact equivalent we visit on the young is stupid now. The parents generally didn't grow up with that meme, which is why they have the kind of self-actualization they do, but they don't realize it won't ever develop in their kids unless they take steps to make sure it occurs. (The slow-burn equivalent of "buy your son a hooker on his 14th"; you need to impress the concept that wanting things is good, natural, and should be pursued as a matter of personal development.)

Once upon a time my parents told me the hazards of being too close to a problem in matters of love and relationships... naturally, they did that with zero self-awareness whatsoever in terms of parenting style. It's something that happens to everyone; and in turn, the village used to raise young adults and from much younger, but now the village absolutely hates them (probably something about their labor being economically non-viable in modern society, segregation breeds contempt after all).

But as many parents can attest, peer groups are more influential than mom and dad most of the time.

But that is then believed and internalized by parents who will remain more influential than peer groups throughout the teenage years due to the genetic makeup of their children, and that will kill their children more surely than any stupid stunt their peer groups get up to.

It seems like there’s a developmental window for learning to be basically functional as an adult in the society you live in, and that society tends to directly incentivize parents to put that off by eg high insurance costs for teen drivers. This is an intractable problem.

for learning to be basically functional as an adult in the society you live in

It's not so much 'learning to be basically functional' as it is 'wanting a life at all'. The first one is pretty easy- you either know it by 14 or you never will (though again, if you're prevented from doing it by KidTracker-type abuses of technology, that becomes a harder sell)- the second one... well, that's a lot more difficult especially if you position worshipping death not wanting a life as a virtuous act.

This is an intractable problem.

No, it isn't. Do what the UK does, pass a law preventing age discrimination in insurance. Easy. It is vital that teenagers don't have their want to learn to drive killed, and doing this subsidizes the risk of that over their entire life rather than forcing it as a single up-front cost.

And, y'know, the whole 'criminalizing children walking down the street unsupervised' thing, and society's corresponding worship of Safety, isn't exactly helping.

Of course, the easiest way to solve this problem is to simply conquer half of Europe (including her colonies in the South Pacific), but 1945 was kind of a fluke.

The first one is pretty easy- you either know it by 14 or you never will (though again, if you're prevented from doing it by KidTracker-type abuses of technology, that becomes a harder sell)

Took me until my 20s.

yeah also took me until 20s to become basically functional as an adult. I mean maybe not depending on how you describe it but I was doing a lot of drugs