I find it constantly amazing how people keep “rediscovering”
things that we already knew, or perhaps more importantly, were already
communicated to us through the Bible.
I just finished reading a book called Freakonomics, a
well-written and intriguing book that addresses a wide range of topics that are
loosely related to each other. The underlying theme of the book is that
economics’ study of numbers and trends offer insight into the behaviors and
motivations of people, as well as reveal or at least theorize about certain
societal issues.
For instance, one of the most shocking revelations that the
authors proffer is that the decline in crime in the 1990s was a result of Roe
v. Wade and legalizing abortion, which allowed lower income, single, teenage
mothers to avoid bring children into an environs that is conducive to a life of
crime. Whereas previously abortions were prohibited and prohibitively
expensive, so that only the wealthy could afford them, the new availability and
legality reduced prices and stigma (somewhat) to the point where unwed mothers
in high school with poor prospects could avoid bringing their sons (mostly)
into such a situation. This transpired in the early 70s, which meant that when
those aborted babies would have reached the late teenage years/early twenties
when most burgeoning criminals began their careers, aka the 90s, those
criminals simply weren’t there. Less criminals means less crime. Crime prevention
through abortion, a solution that eerily harkens back to the Eugenics movement
that led up to WW2 and the Holocaust.
The authors, however, are not agitating or advocating
abortion as crime prevention, merely following the data. This discussion led to the age-old question of nature vs. nurture in the formation of a person’s
identity and behavior. And herein lies the issue that I wanted to share my
thoughts on. Through demographic studies in California over the last 50 years,
a wealth of information was gathered about babies and their mothers,
specifically their socioeconomic, educational, etc. background. To make a long
story short (TOO LATE!), the authors were able to compare different factors
about the children’s development academically (admittedly a limited
measurement) and show that parents matter not in what they do, but in who they
are.
For example, if a family is in a higher socioeconomic it
will lead to better test scores for the child than if the parents are still
together. A higher income bracket suggests better educated parents who value
and exhibit hard work, and therefore model it overtly or implicitly to their
kids. It matters more if the parents are well-educated and have books in the
home than if they take the child to museums or spank them. Spanking does not
negatively affect test scores; reading to children does not positively affect
test scores. A low birth weight does affect test scores years later because
what it indicates is that the mother had the birth prematurely or did not have ample
and appropriate prenatal care, which suggests that she was either uneducated,
poor, or indifferent, if not all three. It is not a great leap in logic to
assume that the child’s home life after birth will not significantly improve,
which will then negatively affect the test scores.
Make sense? That’s kind of the idea of the book in a
nutshell: taking hard data and seeing where the connections are. Not
necessarily that low birth weights cause bad test scores, but the correlation
between the two can provide clues as to the common factor, the actual cause. The point to this section of the book claims
that children derive their behavior, work habits, etc from their parents’
lives, not teachings. “Do as I say, not as I do” is a proverb in the converse; it’s
basically wrong and most people know it.
And herein lies the brilliance of the Bible. “The sins of
the father are passed down to the third and fourth generations,” the Old
Testament states several times. And what that has usually been taken to mean,
what I take it to mean, is that the consequences of the sins of the parents
reverberate down to their children, shaping their children’s lives and
affecting their behavior and decisions. My own thoughts and feelings toward
alcohol were inherited from my father, who was deeply affected by his mother,
whose personality and behavior was impacted by her drunken and abusive father.
Four generations affected by a parent, almost a century of rammifications. And who knows if his father was the same
way? Too often sons grow to be their fathers, or else the polar opposite of
them; either way, the sons are inextricably affected by who their fathers are.
As insightful and interesting as their observations have
been, the authors of Freakonomics are covering old territory when it comes to
understanding human behavior. For all that, their empirical approach lends
credence to the proverbs and beliefs that have been passed down through
generations. Consider this a recommendation to pick up that book, though
everything you’ll ever need to know is to be found in the Bible.
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