Comment on Kids with conservative parents are happier
PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 5 months ago
Here’s the actual study
…we measured mental health using an index, which combines youth-reported measures of well-being and mental health with parent-reports, as well as parental concerns about self-harm. The index has strong reliability and also predicts objective measures of mental health problems, such a psychiatric visits and prescriptions. For the purposes of this analysis, I define good mental health as scoring above average on this index, which is true for 62% of respondents; similarly, 67% of adolescents report their own mental health as good or excellent, and the two measures are highly correlated.
Naturally, public media reporting greatly overextends the research. At best, conservatives have kids have a higher than above average mental health index, or are less likely to self-harm, have fewer psychiatric visits and prescriptions. They are not necessarily happier.
Also, this is extremely interesting:
Very conservative parents, on average, enjoy the strongest relationships with their adolescent children, and liberals experience the worst. The difference is large and statistically significant at 95% confidence levels. Conservative parents are 8 percentage points more likely to be in a good relationship with their adolescent child than liberal parents, and the gap is 14 percentage points between very conservative and liberal parents.** Interestingly, however, “very liberal” parents score much higher than liberal parents, only slightly behind conservatives, with no significant difference**.
If a kid’s mental health is related to their parent’s conviction of their political ideology, then liberals need to get their shit together and move to the left. They’re not doing anyone any favors by with whatever their preferred parenting style is…or their weak politics.
wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 5 months ago
To be clear this study is a meta-analysis. It means it is not one study but a combination of data from many studies. Study after study has shown conservative people and children tend to be happier and have fewer issues with mental health. It isn’t shocking since the core of conservatism is stability and that is what children need to be successful. We provide them with the tools in life to control their destiny versus being a victim all the time. Their success is their own making vs some outside even being their destiny.
PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 5 months ago
No it’s not…
From my link under the section “The Present Study”
This is an empirical question:
Usually, I’d look for the evidence, but not today. If you can assert by simply typing it out, then I’ll reject it out of hand just as easily.
wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Sorry error on my part, they cited a meta-analysis.
A recent meta-analysis finds that an insecure attachment in early childhood strongly predicts the onset of major depression in childhood and adolescence.
The results—summarized in meta-analyses—are clear: Authoritative parenting predicts fewer mental health problems and delinquent behavior, both at the time of measurement and in the future. Both harsh and overly permissive parenting predicts higher risk of mental health problems and problematic behaviors, as does neglectful parenting.
PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 5 months ago
Oh, yeah, I read that.
But the meta-analysis didn’t say that conservative people and children to tend to be happier and have fewer issues with mental health. It said that an authoritative parenting style predicts fewer mental health problems and delinquent behavior.
That suggests the questions: Are conservative parents statistically more likely to employ an authoritative parenting style? If yes, then we could conclude that kids of conservatives are less likely to have mental health problems. But that question was neither asked nor answered by anything I’ve read today.
The study is not about happiness. Happiness is defined in the positive, actively having and experiencing a particular feeling or set of them. Thus, a lack of mental health problems, which the study is about, is not happiness.