It starts way before birth.
Seriously, there is research that poor maternal nutrition (eg because of widespread famine during WWII) long before conception has epigenetic effects on the mother‘s children’s health - in the third and fourth generation, maybe!
And of course, stress and poor nutrition during pregnancy has detrimental effects on the child’s health, and just hearing the language of instruction spoken in utero positive effects. And so on.
I‘m totally on Val‘s side of the discussion. You can’t ask the upper middle class referenced here to stop working, or to stop supporting their children’s education, just as you can’t ask them to deliberately ruin their health. Mandatory alcohol consumption in the first trimester maybe, to level IQ for everyone? Yes, it’s a ludicrous proposition, but sometimes it takes a modestly ludicrous proposal to show what other arguments are ludicrous, too.
You can ONLY expect parents to support measures that help poorer children if they don’t hurt their own children. By which I would NOT count having to pay taxes or contributions for universal high quality preschool and health care for all children, since this benefits all children, regardless of parents income.
Likewise, I am all for aggressive economic desegregation of schools, and, by means of public housing programs, neighbourhoods, as long as (unsurprisingly for someone who hangs out on this board) there is also effective readiness grouping for actual teaching and just as effective policing of neighbourhoods.
You can (and, morally, I believe, should) make sure that public services are levelled.
You can’t level families.
Last edited by Tigerle; 06/04/18 03:17 AM.
