When did you stop beating your wife? Challenging loaded questions in FQ

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Tired_and_Cranky

“Experts” get quoted about the strategy and imply they believe it leads to better outcomes but psychology and sociology research is a real mixed bag with lots of unreliable studies treated as definitive. Worse yet, in the absence of data, it seems some people pretend their ideas or personal experience are data.

This part of the OP is really problematic, for a couple of reasons.

First, and most importantly, the idea that people “pretend their…personal experience are data” suggests that making decisions, or offering perspective or advice, based on personal experience is invalid and even dishonest. Of course it isn’t.

Further, the OP presumes that parenting based on scientific research is more effective than parenting not based on scientific research. Where is the evidence that this is true?

Later, the OP states:

I was wondering if this was just a fad or it there is some research to suggest it does something.

This is an absurd excluded middle: either an approach to raising children has rigorous scientific research behind it, or it’s a fad.

The OP continues:

I want to know if this strategy works or if it’s just something people are doing because something must be done about rape culture and sexual abuse and this is something so this must be done.

More absurd excluded middle: either there’s rigorous scientific research behind a strategy, or there’s no valid reason to engage in the approach.

I find the basic question mildly interesting, and I think the answer is, “No, there’s no long-term research on this subject, since the specifics of the approach are relatively recent in our culture.”

The deeper question is whether we should prioritize rigorous scientific studies in child-rearing decisions. That’s a GD question, not a FQ question, and I’ve got some opinions about the harm it does to our children to put them in Skinner boxes.