Dalton Conley, a sociologist at New York University, wrote a book about his parenting philosophy which he describes as “jazz parenting.”
Conley describes himself as a “freak” whose parenting decisions are based on “flexibility and fluidity, attention to (often counterintuitive, myth-busting) research. . . . Trial and error. Hypothesis revision and more experimentation about what works. In other words, the scientific method.” He lets his children curse at him; he tells them they’re in special education classes because of the better student-teacher ratio; they camp out around a hot plate while their apartment is renovated. He is a wild and crazy guy.
Except that he has also spent his career “studying traditional measures of socioeconomic success” and is therefore not interested in any “hippy-dippy perspective where all I want for them is to be quote-unquote ‘happy.’ ” Conley has “long been obsessed with societal ‘merit badges’ . . . little markers that I was on the right path to please my elders. And my hopes for my kids were no different.”
Research suggests that “having a weird name makes you more likely to have impulse control,” and that impulse control is “even more important than I.Q. in predicting socioeconomic success, marital stability, and even staying out of prison.” So Conley names his firstborn daughter E and his younger son Yo Xing Heyno Augustus Eisner Alexander Weiser Knuckles.
Apt. 11d 
I’m so glad my family only ever uses six different names.
LikeLike
It’s like Rikki Tikki Tembo No Sa Rembo Cherry Berry Ruchi Pip Perry Pembo! Except he was the older son.
LikeLike
Hubris! Still time for Yo to campaign for Rand Paul or worse, become John Sexton’s assistant/lackey. Academic parents just need to shut the heck up!
LikeLike
Thankfully, children are resilient. They survive even expert parents.
LikeLike
Last I read, Dweezil, Moon Unit, Ahmet, and Diva Zappa were doing okay. Just saying.
LikeLike
That second name, in particular, exhibits poor impulse control. But, if there really is something to the idea, it might make me re-think having talked my younger brother out of having named his son Robespierre.
LikeLike
Robespierre was an asshole. Danton was better.
LikeLike
I agree! But my brother is convinced he was just misunderstood. His second choice was “Maximilian”, which I guess is just a bit less obvious than going right for “Robespierre”. He did name his son “Max”, and I’ve tried to get my mother to inspect the birth certificate to make sure he’s not just telling us the short part.
LikeLike
Please do not condemn all academics who parent on the basis of this precious snowflake. Yuck! But I think we should all feel free to condemn the NYTimes as a continuing source of the worst in “parenting trends”.
LikeLike
I don’t think anyone has an issue with academics who parent. It is the academics who parent and then write books about how great their kids have turned out who are the problem. Take Tiger Mom, for instance. The one exception is the great book by Michael Berube about his son who has Down’s Syndrome.
LikeLike