Why Did Parents Stop Giving Advice?

In this episode, we explore the surprising decline of parents giving life advice to their children, sparked by a conversation with Megan, Scott Alexander's wife. We examine which cultures stopped giving life advice first and why, and discuss the consequences of children growing up without receiving such guidance. We dive into personal anecdotes, cultural practices, and the societal trends that have led to this shift. We also share practical advice for parents on how to effectively pass on valuable life lessons and create a lasting positive impact on their children's lives.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about something that was inspired to me by a conversation I was having with a friend.

Actually Megan, who is Scott Alexander's wife and I were talking about raising kids 'cause they have young kids and stuff like that. And passing on. Ideas in sort of life systems intergenerationally. And one of the things that they noted, and I started to note this as I recalled, you know, asking other people, is that people do not give their kids.

As much life advice as they used to, and in some cases gives their kids virtually no life advice. And they, they never set their kids down and are like, this is what you should structure. This is the way you should structure your life. This is what you should expect from these stages of your life. Yeah.

This is what you should want to do with your life and. I think the, the areas I want to dig into this are what [00:01:00] cultures stopped giving life advice first. Hmm. Like what cultural trends made it, because most cultures historically did give children life advice. This was a very normal thing to do historically speaking.

Two, why did this stop? When did it stop? And for people who grew up without being given life advice. What is good life advice that I would give generally to them and to my kids as well. So, opening thoughts. Simone, before we go deeper into this,

Simone Collins: I'm super excited to talk about this because I feel like it's part of that larger trend that we talk about that really.

Precipitates the, the beginning of the end for society and human mental health, which is the atomization of everything. And I think a big tailwind here is a trend whereby we stopped getting everything from within the family in the household and started getting it piecemeal from outside. And that a lot of people.

Are now getting their advice from external sources who [00:02:00] may or may not be aligned with their best interests. Instead, who are basically, you are getting this information not because it, it's going to help you because it's, it's the information that was best marketed that was more likely to go viral. That was for whatever reason.

I

Malcolm Collins: actually go so far as to see that many people structure their lives. Around aesthetics of what they saw as a good life within television shows while they were growing up. And I, there's

Simone Collins: that, but there's also the fact that. Just to give you like a, a picture of, of how things have changed, even when you look at how parents are parenting, a peer research center study found that only 27% of parents say they often ask a family member for parenting advice, which indicates a clear decline in, in the reliance on families.

They're, they're now looking to parenting books, and every time I talk with someone who's pregnant and expecting to become a parent. They talk to me about the books they're reading and the podcasts they're watching, and the videos they're watching. They do not talk about talking with their mothers [00:03:00] or their parents in general about parenting.

Yes. So they're, it's not just about like going for an aesthetic norm. It's about. Shifting to the experts. Like we, we give our kids to childcare. We don't give them to our family. We give our our kids to school. We don't homeschool them. Things

Malcolm Collins: are being outsourced, like the two groups that are going to try to take advantage of this.

If you allow other people to implant a life vision in your kids' head, they're mm-hmm. Either going to. Marketers who want to use this to make money. Yeah. Or they are going to be self-replicating mimetic sets that e exist like the urban monoculture because they're good at turning people into basically self replication zombies.

And I wanted to start with actually, I, I'm just gonna read the, the. Interaction I had with, and I asked Megan for permission to share this as you, as you saw Simone. Interesting to be like, do I need to anonymize it, et cetera. So I'll read it because I thought it was very insightful in sort of how it framed this.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So she said came up when I asked Scott if he wanted to [00:04:00] discuss, quote, which pieces of advice to pass on to the kids. And he went, what are you talking about? Scott's parents were supportive, always eager to help with administration. Administrative navigation, but he thought, dad sits you down and gives you life advice, was an unrealistic thing from the movies.

Pretty confident. Malcolm and I were from Advice Giving Cultures one, and, and she's from a culture that's fairly similar to ours. Mm-hmm. Whereas, I don't know. I, I, my understanding is Scott's from a, a Jewish cultural background, which was surprising to me because that's a culture that I always thought was very high on advice giving at least in terms of the movies and stereotypes, which, which means probably in reality our Jewish fans can say one way or the other if, if advice giving stopped.

And I know before I continue reading this. Within my own family. I saw this with one parent and not with the other parent. Like my dad basically never gave me life advice. Oh yeah. Never, never. But my mom constantly gave me life advice. Yeah. And I got life [00:05:00] advice from my grandparents on my dad's side.

Actually the grand mom as well. My granddad didn't gimme life advice either. Which is interesting because the advice I got from my grandmom. Was framed through, this is something your granddad used to do or say. So well, and it was

Simone Collins: actually, it was a very consistent family doctrine that was passed and shared among many people.

So there was like, there was almost a family guidebook or rule book, and these were norms that were shared across family members. Right. And that I think was very good. It was solid advice too.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. To, we'll, we'll get to this advice later in this, but to continue with what I'm reading here one of your books illustrates his mom's unmistakable advice giving compulsion.

She's talking about me here and has a side-by-side comparison with his mom doing a good versus bad job of targeting it. Ha ha ha. Not sure about Simone, but I'm predicting low advice, but not zero. What about your parents? Did your parents get life advice? Simone. [00:06:00] Sparingly, but yes. Oh yes. I remember like the advice, and this is actually kind of surprising to me, that your mom gave about sleeping around a lot.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: that's what I was just thinking. Like the, the one piece of advice that I really remember my mom saying so indirectly about sex was that you, that sex is like a precious gem and you should be really thoughtful about who you give your gems to. And it really went over

Malcolm Collins: my head. So I was like, I, I actually think that's not bad advice to give a young girl and what's fascinating,

Simone Collins: solid, it just you saying that to an asexual person or someone who's only