If you don’t read anything else this week, don’t miss what Byran Caplan and Gary Taubes wrote.

First, Caplan provides a compelling case against helicoptor parenting based on, of all things, research into twins:

But twin research has another far more amazing lesson: With a few exceptions, the effect of parenting on adult outcomes ranges from small to zero.Parents change kids in many ways; the catch is that the changes fade out as kids grow up.  By adulthood, identical twins aren’t slightly more similar than fraternal twins; they’re much more similar.  And when identical twins are raised apart, they’re often just as similar as they are when they’re raised together.

Once I became a dad, I noticed that parents around me had a different take on the power of nurture. I saw them turning parenthood into a chore–shuttling their kids to activities even the kids didn’t enjoy, forbidding television, desperately trying to make their babies eat another spoonful of vegetables. Parents’ main rationale is that their effort is an investment in their children’s future; they’re sacrificing now to turn their kids into healthy, smart, successful, well-adjusted adults. 

But according to decades of twin research, their rationale is just, well, wrong.  High-strung parenting isn’t dangerous, but it does make being a parent a lot more work and less fun than it has to be.

The obvious lesson to draw is that parents should lighten up. .  .  .

Meanwhile, Taubes examines a penetrating question that is suggested by this recent post: i.e., is sugar toxic?:

This brings us to the salient question: Can sugar possibly be as bad as [being the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years and the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers"]?

It’s one thing to suggest, as most nutritionists will, that a healthful diet includes more fruits and vegetables, and maybe less fat, red meat and salt, or less of everything.

It’s entirely different to claim that one particularly cherished aspect of our diet might not just be an unhealthful indulgence but actually be toxic, that when you bake your children a birthday cake or give them lemonade on a hot summer day, you may be doing them more harm than good, despite all the love that goes with it.

Suggesting that sugar might kill us is what zealots do. But [pediatric hormone specialist Robert] Lustig, who has genuine expertise, has accumulated and synthesized a mass of evidence, which he finds compelling enough to convict sugar. His critics consider that evidence insufficient, but there’s no way to know who might be right, or what must be done to find out, without discussing it.