The "parenting matters" essay: Parenting matters as long as they are living with you, but declines rapidly after they leave. Thirty, fifty years out genetics has taken over almost entirely. Parents of teenagers, who have watched the long-term effects of other children's parenting when it is at its maximum, are the hardest to convince it doesn't matter, which is fair. But ten years later it is much less true and less obvious. We have anecdotes about what our parents taught us, but many of these are describing genetic effects and retrospective bias. We also forget that with biological children we contributed both the genes and the environment, so claiming to have taught them some value or skill might not be so.
Still, the first quarter of your life is as important as any other quarter because you are living in it the same number of years, right? If you were happier and more disciplined then, that matters. We can't just have measures that only tell us "Yeah, but when you are 75 it has all washed out, so it's useless." Those 75 years are years you were alive and interacted with others. Not to be sneered at.
On the deeper-voiced making more money: presumably on average companies prefer to hire people with deeper voices, and richer companies can outcompete others on pay. I'd guess there'd be a similar effect for height.
The "parenting matters" essay: Parenting matters as long as they are living with you, but declines rapidly after they leave. Thirty, fifty years out genetics has taken over almost entirely. Parents of teenagers, who have watched the long-term effects of other children's parenting when it is at its maximum, are the hardest to convince it doesn't matter, which is fair. But ten years later it is much less true and less obvious. We have anecdotes about what our parents taught us, but many of these are describing genetic effects and retrospective bias. We also forget that with biological children we contributed both the genes and the environment, so claiming to have taught them some value or skill might not be so.
Still, the first quarter of your life is as important as any other quarter because you are living in it the same number of years, right? If you were happier and more disciplined then, that matters. We can't just have measures that only tell us "Yeah, but when you are 75 it has all washed out, so it's useless." Those 75 years are years you were alive and interacted with others. Not to be sneered at.
On the deeper-voiced making more money: presumably on average companies prefer to hire people with deeper voices, and richer companies can outcompete others on pay. I'd guess there'd be a similar effect for height.