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from the better-than-growing-up-to-be-a-sink dept.
Scientists at Kings College London performed a longitudinal study to test the 'Pareto principle' and found that adults who were greater users of public services were most likely to have had a low score on the intelligence and impulsivity test administered at age three.
"About 20 per cent of population is using the lion's share of a wide array of public services," said Prof Terrie Moffitt, of King's College and Duke University in North Carolina. "The same people use most of the NHS, the criminal courts, insurance claims, for disabling injury, pharmaceutical prescriptions and special welfare benefits.
"If we stopped there it might be fair to think these are lazy bums who are freeloading off the taxpayer and exploiting the public purse.
"But we also went further back into their childhood and found that 20 per cent begin their lives with mild problems with brain function and brain health when they were very small children.
"Looking at health examinations really changed the whole picture. It gives you a feeling of compassion for these people as opposed to a feeling of blame.
"Being able to predict which children will struggle is an opportunity to intervene in their lives very early to attempt to change their trajectories, for everyone's benefit and could bring big returns on investment for government."
Full Paper: Childhood forecasting of a small segment of the population with large economic burden DOI: 10.1038/s41562-016-0005
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 15 2016, @03:38PM
I wouldn't be so quick to jump to that conclusion.
I would.
How many people do you know in your own circle of educated working friends who came from less than wealthy backgrounds?
The operative words from the previous post were "screwed-up backgrounds". "Less than wealthy" doesn't necessarily mean "screwed-up". There's even wealthy people with screwed-up family lives, though usually this means the wealth evaporates over time, though it might take a generation or two.
Remember, it wasn't all that long ago that most people were lower-class; that doesn't mean they all had totally dysfunctional families, only some of them did. Thanks to modern technology and policies and education and such, much of the lower classes have been able to move up, as you pointed out, but most of those were likely coming from backgrounds where they had to live very modestly, but they weren't plagued by lots of abuse and dysfunction. Those patterns are very, very hard to change because they're programmed into kids from birth, by being raised by parents who repeat those patterns. There really isn't any way of stopping it, short of taking kids away from their parents, which admittedly our society does do now in extreme cases, but usually it's too late.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday December 15 2016, @04:26PM
The operative words from the previous post were "screwed-up backgrounds". "Less than wealthy" doesn't necessarily mean "screwed-up".
I'll grant that, but they are strongly correlated. Poverty leads to desperation, illness, frustration and depression, all of which result in more desperation, illness, frustration and depression, all of which tend towards poor life choices.
Poor or not though, a decent welfare system can step in to screwed up families and make things better: Counselling and healing kids, educating and supporting parents, prosecuting abusers and (in extreme cases) taking kids out of those settings and placing then in healthier environments. 99% of the time "bad parents" aren't doing it because they are evil monsters, but because either they don't know any better or because their own circumstances force them to make desperate decisions. If you can get that alcoholic father access to an addiction counselling service then you can change a kid's life. If a single mum has to work 60 hour weeks to pay rent and put food on the table and so leaves her 3-year old home alone, then free childcare or a some kind of cash benefit could be the turning point.[1]
Again, I know people from "screwed up backgrounds" (abuse, crime, abandonment - and not always poverty) who have turned out OK. Better than OK, in some cases. Left to their own devices those families would almost certainly have ended up repeating the same cycles, but with the right support they managed to make things better for the next generation.
Those patterns are very, very hard to change because they're programmed into kids from birth, by being raised by parents who repeat those patterns.
Agree.
There really isn't any way of stopping it
No. Heal the kids. Expose them to other, more positive influences. Teach the parents new patterns. Persuade them that there is a better way for their children, and this is it. Be kind and persistent. When you fail, try again. When a parent tells you to fuck off and stop meddling, try again. It can be done. It's slow, hard and expensive, but it's worth it. Even if you only make it 1% better with each generation, it's worth it.
Also, it's a cumulative thing. A family is the biggest influence on a child, but not the only one: If a child's peers at school are all behaving differently to him, then his behaviour will follow. Neighbours and family members who aren't themselves caught in desperate circumstances have resources to help, support and heal. Eventually it will reach a tipping point where society is able to heal itself without external influence.
Finally, I find the idea that we can't "reprogram" people in the golden age of mental hacking (aka "advertising ") totally ludicrous. People are mentally manipulated by the billion every second of every day, it's just that these tools are rarely (or insufficiently) harnessed for the power of good.
[1] Decent wages would be better, but that's another argument.
(Score: 1) by charon on Thursday December 15 2016, @09:26PM
It's unfortunate that the story is couched in terms of "return on investment" and "drain" but that is the language of policy. From what you have written here, I would expect you would support the findings of this study. They did not just give a three year old an intelligence test and then decide he was worthless for life. From the study:
The point is to find and help the kids who are at risk, preferably before they become problems that the less compassionate would suggest we "get rid of". This study was just published, of course we cannot have acted on its results in the past. Our best chance (unless any soylentils are themselves policy makers) is to make people aware of the results of the study, and encourage the proper placement of limited resources to people who need it most. Poor kids are more likely to be at risk, but not all of them are. Unintelligent kids, but not all. Kids who are abused need strong intervention, and not just "force parent to take a class and then ignore again".
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2016, @04:31PM
The operative words from the previous post were "screwed-up backgrounds". "Less than wealthy" doesn't necessarily mean "screwed-up". There's even wealthy people with screwed-up family lives, though usually this means the wealth evaporates over time, though it might take a generation or two.
No, those are not the operative words. You've done that reductive thing where you focus on the most narrow definition in order to avoid the writer's actual point.
Wealthy people with screwed up backgrounds have a different set of problems and they have resources to address those problems. Being poor is highly correlated with a specific set of problems and by definition no resources to cope with them. Poverty does not explain all of their problems, but it sure as shit creates a lot of problems that simply do not exist for the wealthy or even the middle class.
There really isn't any way of stopping it, short of taking kids away from their parents
That's utter bullshit. Few parents want to be shitty. But being poor leaves them with much less choices - less time to spend caring for their children, less energy to think long-term and less money to provide for their children's basic needs. We recently had the story here about a school district that installed washing machines and increased attendance. [soylentnews.org] That's an improvement that does not require your fatalistic "taking kids away from their parents" excuse for doing nothing.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday December 15 2016, @08:39PM
As the poster who wrote the original words, I agree with his interpretation.
"Few parents want to be shitty."
No, it's worse than that: too many parents fail to give a shit at all.
Middle-class family with an abusive parent? The abusive parent may pretend to care about the kids, but they generally don't care enough to get help, so they can stop being abusive. Insufficient shits given.
Are you in the US? Consider an inner-city black mother raising kids from five or six different baby-daddies. The fathers, as often as not, haven't even met their kids - they sure as hell don't invest any time or effort in raising them. No shits given.
I'm not in social services, but I have worked with kids, including a few problem kids. It's sad as hell when you can tell that they are basically decent human beings, but have been warped out of shape by screwed-up parents. As an outsider there is almost nothing that you can do: your influence is minimal.
Anecdote: A blue-collar white family; both parents with jobs, so they weren't poor. One child. The parents taught the boy that he must remain quiet and unnoticed in his room; anything else was unacceptable. He bothered his parents. They liked it best when he was at school, or at some activity, because he was gone. I worked with him in a martial arts class; that's a pretty good environment for troubled kids, and we helped our share. For this boy, we had to give up after a year or so, because he was uncontrollable and a danger to the other kids. He's all grown up now; what kind of parent is he likely to make?
Parents may not want to be shitty, but sometimes they can't be bothered to be anything else. Taking the kids away isn't realistic, or particularly helpful. The kid in my anecdote was taken away, but it was too late. So what the hell do you do???
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2016, @11:10PM
There are instances where there is nothing you can do. There are rich kids who have neglectful parents, and they also end up with problems.
The only thing we can do is try and eliminate as many factors as possible to give families the best chance of success. All of the possible problems humans go through are exacerbated by poverty and lack of services.
What we have here is a fundamental disagreement on how to fix these problems. One group wants people to fix themselves, bootstrapping is the common term. Another group wants to offer assistance to make sure people are given the resources to succeed in life.
So far the best results for human happiness occur when a large percentage of individual income is redirected into social programs. The cost isn't even as high as it appears, with socialized healthcare businesses and individuals would save a lot of money so it isn't just a net loss. All we have to do is look at the successful programs. History seems to favor the socialist viewpoint, although it also shows that a pure socialist society (government run everything) also fails pretty badly. Social programs funded by independent free workers (capitalist business structure) seems to be the winning move. Support the people, allow them freedom to pursue their desires.
So why is that so scary? Why do you look down on social programs? Is it just the feeling of being "robbed"?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday December 16 2016, @05:59PM
The problem isn't a lack of social programs. We've been trying social programs for ages, and they only have a certain amount of impact. Just look at Europe: they have social programs and services galore, and yet they have all kinds of problems with problem kids from immigrants, radicalized youth, etc. Throwing money at the problem doesn't fix it; the problem is their upbringing, and the only way to fix that is to seize kids very early on, and then sterilize the parents so they can't have any more. Obviously, society isn't willing to do the latter and almost never does the former. We have plenty of foster care here in the US and it really doesn't work; my ex worked in foster care for a while and had all kinds of stories; it was really sad, but it was pretty clear these poor kids were already too broken and were unlikely to get very far in life. By the time the state intervenes, it's just too late, and worse than that, they end up getting placed with people who don't help or even make it worse. It's not like there's a huge number of wonderful, loving families begging to take in kids with serious mental and emotional problems, so what happens is you get low-income jerks who just use it as an income source and do the minimum required, and don't really care about the kids (or worse, abuse them, just like they went through with their real parents), or they get put into a group home which isn't much better and basically they're just a way for a corporation to get revenue from the government.
Social programs would be great if we could find plenty of great, caring, selfless people to actually *do* the work needed. There just aren't many of those out there, and this stuff costs a lot of money (social workers need to eat too), and there's only so many resources to go around, and no shortage of screwed-up kids, plus a legal system that makes it very very difficult to take kids away from their abusive parents in the first place. It's even worse now in many ways; now the courts have given too many rights to natural parents, so a lot of people don't even want to bother getting involved with foster kids with the intent to adopt, because the natural parent can pop up at any time and demand custody, and the court will give it to them.