TOW #16: Freakonomics: A Rogue Scientist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (IRB, written)

This week, I finished reading Freakonomics: A Rogue Scientist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything written by Steven Levitt and William Morrow. In the second half of the book, chapter 5 “What Makes a Perfect Parent?” especially caught my attention. Every parent wants to do the right thing for their children. As a result, the number of experts on parenting have increased dramatically in recent years. However, Levitt and Morrow discovered that what these experts argue are often contradicting with each other and even with their own actions. So Levitt and Morrow explores common misconceptions such as “how having books at home affects child” and “The child has highly educated parent” to discover the actual correlation. They tell the readers that these parenting skills have little effect on how their children will be with use of the pronoun “you” to connect better with the readers and to direct the question to the readers. For instance, Levitt and Morrow directs the seemingly foolish parent who tries to enhance their children with their parenting. However, they somewhat cold-heartedly declare, “Most

of the things that matter were decided long ago—who you are, whom you married, what

kind of life you lead. If you are smart, hardworking, well educated, well paid, and

married to someone equally fortunate, then your children are more likely to succeed” (111). This statement is especially directed to those parents who believe that their children is an exception and can be enhanced with their parenting by making them realize the reality. Levitt’s use of hypothetical examples also exposes the common misconceptions of parenting. He makes readers think about three girls named Amy, Imani, and Molly. Molly’s parents, knowing that Amy’s parent keeps a gun in their house, lets Molly go to only Imani’s house, which has a swimming pool. Levitt explains how “there is one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential pools in the United States...Molly is roughly 100 times more likely to die in a swimming accident at Imani’s house than in gunplay at Amy’s” (93). His use of examples appeals to pathos as well as logos, as the usage of number 100 times is very attention catching.