That is literal survivorship bias there. I know multiple stories of deeply unhappy/unstable foster children, no matter how much stability, love & care they were given ( I knew some of those foster parents ).
Yes...but he's not making the claim that "100% of foster kids who get (some small number of adults caring about them) will be successful", he's saying that "the minimum I've observed for foster kids to be successful is (some small number of adults caring about them)".
The latter claim is perfectly valid to make when 100% of survivors have trait X; you are correct in implying that it would be invalid to say having trait X will guarantee a survivor.
> it takes a surprisingly small number of emotionally stable adults to help kids get through chaotic circumstances
The "surprising" modifier here makes the object something that needs extra context, what's surprising here is that the number is small and not large. If bio mom and bio dad and foster mom and foster dad and all the extended family and most of their teachers are distant, but their track coach is emotionally invested (thanks, Buzz), that's, surprisingly, sometimes all that it takes.
Yes, if no one's invested, that's not enough, as you'd expect. It does leave the possibility that everyone is invested and it's still not enough.
Consider the idiom it takes two to tango. Now, one of the two could be a quadriplegic, or a dog, or maybe they both come from a severe religious cult which has forbidden dancing and just can't bring themselves to do it.
That's fine; the meaning is that two are necessary, not that two are sufficient.
Saying "It takes surprisingly little time to do!" isn't trying to give a lower bound on how much time it takes. Obviously not completely unambiguous, but the "sufficient" reading is completely natural English.
It's not setting a bound at all. It -is- saying that the amount of time is "surprisingly little".
But to the topic at hand, the logical implication is that "to do it" => "takes surprisingly little time" (that is, doing it implies you took surprisingly little time)
Not "taking surprisingly little time" => "to do it" (that is, taking surprisingly little time implies you do it; after all, you might have taken surprisingly little time to do -something else-).
Same as the above; the implication is that "success" implies "(at least) a surprisingly small number of adults were involved", not that "(at least) a surprisingly small number of adults were involved" implies "success".
I find it helpful to use formal logic to explain stuff like this. If I make a statement that p => q (that is, p implies q), and that statement is true, it does NOT necessarily follow that q => p (that is, q implies p) is true (it may or may not be; it is independent from a formal logic perspective). It is necessary to evaluate q => p separately, in which case we may find it to be true, OR we may find q =/> p to be true (that is, q does not imply p; or put another way, the fact q is true tells us nothing about whether p is).
As an example, "My shoes are wet because it is raining", p = it is raining, and q = my shoes are wet. p => q means if it is raining (p), my shoes are wet (q). But it does not also follow from that that q => p; that is, just because my shoes are wet (q) it does not mean it must be raining (p; I might have, after all, been out watering the lawn). Thus, q =/> p.
For the tango example, p = a tango is possible, q = there are two people. p => q, but q =/> q (that is, two people does not imply a tango is possible).
In this case, p = foster child is successful, and q = a number of adults (sometimes a surprisingly small number) were involved with them. p => q, but q =/> p.
You're way overthinking this. If I say "it's takes surprisingly little" it's because I'm emphasizing that it does not take a lot and instead a small amount is sufficient.
Saying "it takes a surprisingly small number of emotionally stable adults to help kids " is emphasizing that it does not require a large number of stable adults and therefore a small number is sufficient. How many does it take? Surprisingly few. A few suffice. How else can you read this? You're surprised that a necessary number is small? But it's always necessary to have at least 0 stable adults and that's as small as possible - you can't get surprised that it's small! Instead you must be surprised that the sufficient number is small.
I'm not making any comment on the number of adults; I'm just responding to the original argument that "well, I know foster kids who haven't been successful, who had supportive adults", and the ensuing argument, to further explain why that isn't a negation.
The meaning of this expression has been extended to include any situation in which the two partners are by definition understood to be essential (...).
since you keep saying that you are not a native speaker, consider believing the interpretations native speakers share. stuff simply means what it means. you can believe it or not.
more generally, when someone says something you find incredulous, consider processing that internally, and then decide if saying "huh, now i know" is not a better reaction to "no way, maybe you're wrong."
I'm completely on the-dude's side on the reading of the original quote (not the tango quote) and I'm a native speaker. Moreover I find your (and the GP post) tone extremely condescending. There's no way to read the-dude's writing as "arguing". He states his readings of quotes simply without argument and clearly marking them as his personal reading (saying "to me" and "sounds"). By posting it here he's obviously inviting someone to explain why he's wrong - but the responses here are instead choosing to declare their authority on the matter and to belittle him.
And to the original point - he's not wrong. Of course from life experience we all know that there are exceptions to every rule, but the rule as written was that just a few stable adults suffices. Saying "it takes surprisingly few to tango" is completely different meaning from "it takes two to tango", so the comparison to that is not relevant (and the-dude does mistake that phrase, which is specifically used to call out that one is not enough). How many does it take? It takes surprisingly few. You have enough even if you only have a few.
I knew two kids adopted as infants who were born addicted to drugs.
The family that adopted them was wealthy. They poured enormous amounts of time and resources into raising those kids. One turned it all around and works for Google, the other ram away and hasn’t been heard from in 20 years.
Same birth mother, born two years apart, she was an addict.
I adopted three kids from the same biological mother. Two of them are making more then me at Amazon and for the Department of Defense. Sadly my younger son passed from Bone Cancer.
They were drug impacted, but its weird how research goes in cycles. Crack babies were going to ruin America's capacity for caring for all these children. Then it was said that Alcohol is the only drug that effects babies in the womb. It was called the "Crack Baby Myth" but now things are changing again.
I think it is a fairly safe assumption that raising children has aspects of a chaotic system. Small changes to upbringing can cause large impact on the result. Of course not all "inputs" have this chaotic nature, and there are lots of inputs that aren't under direct control of the parents. There are just so many variables that it is hard to tease out patterns.
Fair, but as far as controlled experiments are possible in this kind of thing, it doesn't get much better than two kids with a shared birth parent and the same adoptive parents/environment.
No, it doesn't get much better than that scenario. But something as simple as which other kids are sat next to them in school can completely change their childhood. Observations like these are the best we have, and should not be ignored, but there are just so many variables that can never bet (ethically) controlled.
100% agree. I think because it’s hard enough to discern between what I would call first order (dna caused personality traits) and second order (immediate family and early childhood experiences) contributions to personality and what experiences a child had, that most people ignore third order, friends, bad luck, basically everything else. Then, you throw in luck ...I mean who knows why anyone does anything bad or good.
I’m not religious, but the saying often attributed to Christ saying, “forgive them, they know not what they do,” is probably totally, 100% accurate. I would add we don’t really know why they do what they do either. Christians want that to mean specifically about the crucifixion, but I believe whoever wrote that down was trying to say something more general about human experience.
I know from personal experience, just how much which kids you sit next to from 1st-5th grade, as they are often the same in the US, can influence your life in extreme ways.
All this says to me, we should probably go easier on everyone, even the “worst” of us...
Even within organisms starting with identical “first order” characteristics the opportunity for variation is fascinating. Here is a podcast on the topic I found illuminating, it is with the author of a recent book The Hidden Half
> Fair, but as far as controlled experiments are possible in this kind of thing, it doesn't get much better than two kids
Actually, controlled experiments
on this could be a lot better than N = 2, and the small-N problem dwarfs the positive features of the experiment here.
The amount of variation in the human condition would completely negate any conclusions from a sample size of two, however close the conditions.
It's also really easy to explain how one kid does well and the other doesn't, look at any life situation. One kid falls in with bad friends, one does not, one has a hobby that takes them somewhere, one does not, one gets a DUI the other does not, one has an amazing Hockey coach, the other does not, one takes a risk and wants to be a rock start, the other does not etc. etc..
A family friend is single and infertile. She's spent a lot of money on some sort of adopt-a-chinese scheme. Someone in her family did the same, and the kid had various medical issues. I honestly think she'd have been better off with a surrogate and a sperm donor.
I definitely respect people who adopt, but they risk of just adopting someone else's problem is too high for me.
If you adopt a health foreign baby it is because the baby was kidnapped from his loving parents and then a corrupt judge signed off on it.
The above isn't always true, but if you didn't investigate the agency deeply you should assume it is. This is why international adoptions are so hard, many counties have caught on and given up on giving the few kids who do need real homes help.
Did you know that UNICEF defines "orphan" as a child with at least one dead parent? Globally there are estimated to be about 15 million "double orphans", and 90% of them live with extended family. Of those that don't, frequently there is extended family or at least known families of their own culture/ethnicity/country who could take them in if given financial support - which is not only cheaper than adopting them from the US, but doesn't cut their ties to home.
Aside from that, more than 90% are over the age of 5. Almost none are actually babies, and of course children orphaned at birth may have inherited AIDS or have other health issues due to whatever killed their parents. Adopting a healthy foreign baby from the US is more likely than not to involve some form of human rights violation just to make them available to you.
https://www.soschildrensvillages.ca/orphan-crisis-sub-sahara...
That is a bizarre and incorrect assumption, but if you weren't trying to start a fight then you might have made the reasonable assumption that I think there are problems with the way adoptions work in the US as well, and if you want to adopt within the US you should still be prepared to put a lot of work in to identifying the ethical way to do so. Start with the assumption that you should absolutely not be planning to move the child to a different country or even state as soon as you've adopted.
The difference between us is that you are making an effort to jump to the stupidest possible claim you can think of, like here where you have managed to read "should not plan to" and twisted it into "should be prohibited from".
When you say that people need to be ethical, and then give your only example and say that they “absolutely should not...” I think it’s fair to say your claim is that it should not be done.
A relative adopted a child and the social worker advised against international adoptions for this problem.
Eventually they adopted a 100% healthy local child after 5-6 years of legal nightmare as it's pretty complex navigate through all requirements plus wait your turn.
While success and IQ are almost certainly correlated, it is not possible to make a statement like that.
You can just as well say that success comes down to height, or country of birth, or combined wealth of uncles.
There are so many other factors at play.
I think it arguably more likely that acceptance into the education system comes down to IQ due to antiquated practices in attempting to derive intelligence. Being within the education system is the sunny uplands to networking and generally better opportunities.
Its possible that almost every child has the potential of a "good enough" IQ and that nurture reigns supreme over the supporting cast of genetics. To separate the two within nurture there remains environmental factors such as an interpreted narrative of favouritism which can lead to downward spirals.
I was far from stable and far from happy. It wasn't until later that I realized the benefits that the people around me provided. With that said-- with some exceptions of course-- none of the kids want to be foster children. Especially those that understand that they are disposable. Kids are smart and know when they will just be shuffled around or placed in a group home. When I was fortunate enough to placed with my brother, we would act out -- looking back it was almost as a way to confirm that nobody really cared. It's easier to shit on everyone around you when you think everything is a temporary situation.
That’s what my adopted daughter and her older sibling would do. They were taken young. But older sibling started crap every place they got sent. Not the sort of stuff that can be ignored.
Finally they were separated in the system.
At first we were like “that’s horrible”
Now. We just wish it had been done a lot sooner.
Some people are hell bent on self destruction, and will take everyone down with them.
It took 7 years for our adopted daughter to finally realize and know we actually do love her.
Every successful foster child has a stable adult in their life != every foster child with a stable adult in their life is successful.
The first sentence is saying that a stable adult is one necessary component. The second sentence is saying that the stable adult is the only necessary component. They are totally different claims with very similar wording.
I'm not sure that's survivorship bias, since you can measure when dependents (or emancipated dependents) drop off from their support systems. The measure isn't just those that report back "I'm doing fine" but those that are tracked. There are a number of organizations that track these statistics, although I feel like the nordic countries seem to follow the strictest rigour. It's a null hypothesis to show that foster children (who are more likely to have mental disorders - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3922948/, et al) do better with caring parental figures. They can only degenerate without stability.
Just because you have an anecdote that illustrates something doesn't negate the broader conclusion.
Frankly, the original statement that 'it only takes one or two' should be rather obvious, it's called 'parenting' and it usually implies a couple of people who have a bond with a child.
That said, we all know every kind of person from every walk of life who ended up being in every kind of scenario.
There's a lot of randomness in humans.
That doesn't take away from the fact that a couple of 'good parents' and a decent community + school is almost assuredly the best path.
