Parenting, Politics, and Stages of Development

The actual meaning of the word parent evolves all the time. The parents of an infant, a kindergartener, and a teenager have vastly different responsibilities. There are a number of ways to succeed or mess up as a parent but one sure way to mess up as a parent is to master what it means to parent, say, a 9-month old and then never change your behavior towards the child even as they grow older. It would be a disaster to parent a toddler as if they were 15 or a teenager as if they were a toddler.

I think something very similar is true of politics and policy with evolving economies. What makes for great policy during a time when 90% of your population is farming is very different from what makes for great policy when you're in an industrial or information economy. Originalists who seem to dominate the Supreme Court and have really robust representation in Congress are the folks who insist that what made you a great parent of a toddler is just what will make a teenager love you.