Brilliant analysis and having grown up in one religion and become Catholic 26 years ago, I can tell you even my ex-husband’s family steered so far away from the previous generational village in Puerto Rico for example. Having studied anthropology and reading books like Sebastian Jungers tribe. All of this is so relevant. Great work!
Perhaps the quality of family life should be emphasized over child quantity. ... In the book Childhood Disrupted the author writes that even “well-meaning and loving parents can unintentionally do harm to a child if they are not well informed about human development” (pg.24).
For example, since it cannot fight or flight, a baby hearing loud noises nearby, such as that of quarrelling parents, can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state. … This freeze state is a trauma state” (pg.123).
And it’s the unpredictability of a stressor, rather than the intensity, that does the most harm. When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes” (pg. 42).
As liberal democracies we cannot or will not prevent anyone from bearing children, even those who recklessly procreate. We can, however, educate young people for this most important job ever, even those who plan to remain childless, through mandatory high-school child-development science curriculum.
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"I remember leaving the hospital thinking, ‘Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don’t know beans about babies! I don’t have a license to do this. We’re just amateurs’.”
—Anne Tyler, Breathing Lessons
“The way a society functions is a reflection of the childrearing practices of that society. Today we reap what we have sown. Despite the well-documented critical nature of early life experiences, we dedicate few resources to this time of life. We do not educate our children about child development, parenting, or the impact of neglect and trauma on children.”
The African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” has long appealed to me. Similarly, in the movie K-PAX the visiting extraterrestrial ‘Prot’ says to the clinical psychiatrist interviewing him: “On K-PAX, everyone’s children’s wellbeing matters to everyone, as everyone takes part in rearing everyone else’s offspring.”
(At the risk of being deemed Godless or socialist thus evil, of course) I often say that the wellbeing and health of all children needs to be of genuine importance to us all — and not just concern over what other parents’ children might or will cost us as future criminals or costly cases of government care, etcetera — regardless of how well our own children are doing.
Mindlessly ‘minding our own business’ often proves humanly devastating. Yet, largely owing to the Only If It’s In My Own Back Yard mindset, the prevailing collective attitude (implicit or subconscious) basically follows: ‘Why should I care — my kids are alright?’ or (the even more lamely self-serving) ‘What’s in it for me as a taxpayer?’
Brilliant analysis and having grown up in one religion and become Catholic 26 years ago, I can tell you even my ex-husband’s family steered so far away from the previous generational village in Puerto Rico for example. Having studied anthropology and reading books like Sebastian Jungers tribe. All of this is so relevant. Great work!
Hollie, absolutely fascinating!
Perhaps the quality of family life should be emphasized over child quantity. ... In the book Childhood Disrupted the author writes that even “well-meaning and loving parents can unintentionally do harm to a child if they are not well informed about human development” (pg.24).
For example, since it cannot fight or flight, a baby hearing loud noises nearby, such as that of quarrelling parents, can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state. … This freeze state is a trauma state” (pg.123).
And it’s the unpredictability of a stressor, rather than the intensity, that does the most harm. When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes” (pg. 42).
As liberal democracies we cannot or will not prevent anyone from bearing children, even those who recklessly procreate. We can, however, educate young people for this most important job ever, even those who plan to remain childless, through mandatory high-school child-development science curriculum.
.
"I remember leaving the hospital thinking, ‘Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don’t know beans about babies! I don’t have a license to do this. We’re just amateurs’.”
—Anne Tyler, Breathing Lessons
“The way a society functions is a reflection of the childrearing practices of that society. Today we reap what we have sown. Despite the well-documented critical nature of early life experiences, we dedicate few resources to this time of life. We do not educate our children about child development, parenting, or the impact of neglect and trauma on children.”
—Dr. Bruce D. Perry, Ph.D. & Dr. John Marcellus
Henrich argues that the Catholic Church's prohibition on cousin marriage is probably the main reason for the "Great Divergence" between Western Europe and the rest of the planet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence#The_Catholic_Church's_Prohibition_of_Cousin_Marriage
The African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” has long appealed to me. Similarly, in the movie K-PAX the visiting extraterrestrial ‘Prot’ says to the clinical psychiatrist interviewing him: “On K-PAX, everyone’s children’s wellbeing matters to everyone, as everyone takes part in rearing everyone else’s offspring.”
(At the risk of being deemed Godless or socialist thus evil, of course) I often say that the wellbeing and health of all children needs to be of genuine importance to us all — and not just concern over what other parents’ children might or will cost us as future criminals or costly cases of government care, etcetera — regardless of how well our own children are doing.
Mindlessly ‘minding our own business’ often proves humanly devastating. Yet, largely owing to the Only If It’s In My Own Back Yard mindset, the prevailing collective attitude (implicit or subconscious) basically follows: ‘Why should I care — my kids are alright?’ or (the even more lamely self-serving) ‘What’s in it for me as a taxpayer?’