Briefly

How do children turn into bullies? New evidence suggests that it might start at home, with parents who mock or show contempt for their children. You’ve probably seen parents who demean or belittle their children in ways that humiliate and frustrate them. I certainly see it, sometimes from parents who are just mean and other times from parents who humiliate their children with insults disguised as humor. The study by researchers in the United States, Canada and Sweden found that this sort of parent often responds to child engagement with criticism, sarcasm, put-downs and hostility. There was also a strong correlation between this problem and the tendency to rely on emotional and physical coercion to force compliance from children. This sort of parental behavior often leads to “dysregulated” anger in children, and it’s indicative of difficulties with regulating negative emotions, verbal attacks, physical aggression and hostility. Children who are victims of this sort of parenting are at a greater risk for becoming bullies and for becoming “bully-victims,” which are bullies who are victimized by other bullies. I was controlled with lot of demeaning and humiliating behavior from my father as a child, so I can definitely understand what this does to adolescents.

I couldn’t care less who plays the part of Ariel in Disney’s remake of “The Little Mermaid.” I probably won’t see it no matter who’s in it or how good it is. But if you’re one of those who is smugly screaming about racism because some people disagree with the casting of a black actress to play Ariel, you’ve succumbed to a bizarre tendency today to brand anything you don’t understand as racist if it even slightly involves race. A tiny minority of those who are unhappy with the casting decision might be racists, but the vast majority are those who simply know the character in a particular way, which happens to be a red-headed white girl. If Star Trek were remade and Uhura was cast as white or Asian, I would be upset, not because I’m racist, but simply because she’s an established character who’s black. This seems like the same thing. Stop screaming about racism when people simply disagree with you for reasons that have nothing to do with racism.

Humans go to a lot of trouble to find partners who are compatible with us in every possible way, but a new study of relationship happiness says that having a “conscientious and nice partner” matters more than the things we’re so eager to screen for. Dr. Bill Chopik of Michigan State University said the most striking finding of his study is that two people having similar personalities had almost no effect on how satisfied they felt, either with the relationship or with their lives. The bottom line seems to be that two people who are kind and decent — regardless of their personalities — should be happier together than two perfectly matched people who simply aren’t very kind to one another. Most of the criteria we use in real life for choosing partners produces unhappy relationships and miserable marriages. Maybe we ought to prioritize someone who’s going to treat us kindly and conscientiously instead.