[Vyv (31.05.2016 935 BST)]
[From Rick Marken (2016.05.30.1900)]
···
RM: I like the idea a lot – we would say that he is modeling the parents as controlling for allocating an equal time to the kids. But I don’t understand why this doesn’t predict equal but overall less time
for all kids when there are different numbers of kids. I think I’m missing what his assumption is about what the parents are actually controlling for – that is, what is the controlled variable? What is being made to match the heuristic?
VH: He says that the first born and last born are alone with the parents for a certain amount of time (41.30). So there is an assumption the children are born in sequence and then fly the nest in sequence.
This means N increases for each born and then decreases as children leave. For families with more than two children the middle born are never alone so the average N is always higher for them than for the first or last born. Presumably this pattern wouldn’t
apply to triplets, or greater, where it would predict equal and overall less. It also doesn’t apply to two children where the first born and last born have an equal period alone.
VH: There is a difference between cumulative time over the whole childhood and proportion of attention devoted at any point. I think parents
are controlling for the latter, equal attention (meaning time with each of their kids at
any point), and not cumulative time over their whole childhood.
VH: Rick - what did you think of the “gaze heuristic”?
Best
Rick
–
Richard S. Marken
Author, with Timothy A. Carey, of Controlling
People: The Paradoxical Nature of Being Human.