Must Read: Parenting for a Peaceful World

[jenn_unplugged]

I'm reading Parenting For A Peaceful World right now, and it's a fascinating read. It starts by tracing the history of human childhood through the ages, and the picture is not only unpleasant; it's horrific. The author states that prior to the 20th century, there is NO evidence that any child, anywhere, escaped what we would today call severe abuse. I mean seriously -- think about that.

He goes on to make a very strong biological and psychological argument for the way that mass abuse of children has shaped human history. He traces the rise of the most brutal regimes in western history to violent and abusive parenting approaches that numbed generations of people into submission. He also shows that peaceful movements and changes in societies can be traced to positive changes in parenting approaches. In other words, the way we (as a society) parent our children has a huge impact on the world, much bigger than any of us realize.

I can't do it justice in a few paragraphs, so I highly recommend it. I think it should be required reading for parenting or working with children in any capacity, actually. Here is a video that summarizes some of the main points, but even that doesn't do it justice.

I think one of the things I've gotten from this book that I didn't expect is that we in the AP community often claim that we're parenting the way humans were "meant" to parent. But there is very little evidence that human children were ever parented this way. We're forging new paths, and rather than look back at a romanticized, inaccurate vision of the past, we should look forward.

I could go on and on. Fascinating!

The link above goes to Amazon, btw. Read the reviews for even more accolades.

Comments

[teleute.livejournal.com]

I don't have time to watch the video, and if I don't post I'll forget to, so if this is answered in the vid, please just point me there ;-) When you say "abuse" does the author mean the deliberate "I'm going to hurt this other person" kind of abuse or the "I can see my child is starving and there is nothing I can do about it" kind? I find it hard to believe that children were universally subject to parents deliberately trying to hurt them, if that's what he's arging.

[jenn-unplugged.livejournal.com]

Abuse means things you would go to jail for today. Like daily beatings, widespread sexual abuse, you name it. For example, it was widely-believed until the 19th century that children are born immoral and evil, and that if their parents didn't beat them regularly, they would never become "good" people. Child sexual abuse wasn't considered something harmful to the child until this century -- it was just a sexual perversion on the part of the adult (and even that only came about at the insistence of the church) Girls as young as 3 were burned at the stake in medieval times for "seducing" adult men. In medieval times, it was common to see dead babies in the gutters of cities. People just abandoned them.

It goes on and on, and on. It's hard to imagine, but the historical evidence is abundant. :-P

[aschmidt87.livejournal.com]

So if I'm correct I believe it was you that I first heard about Alfie Kohn's "Unconditional Parenting". And I loved it. So given that I think we would probably have similar interests on parenting books. Soo, one question...when you say "in the AP community we claim we're parenting the way humans were meant to be parented...little evidence human children were ever parented this way..." what do you mean by this? According to this book do we have it all wrong? I just think AP is the way things should be because of the closeness and love involved. Does this make sense?

[jenn-unplugged.livejournal.com]

The author is very pro-AP, because the research on infant and child development supports it so very clearly. His analysis of the impact of AP on children shows that on a large-scale level it would have a tremendous impact on society, and in fact, already has. Some of the most peaceful, least violence-ridden, most strongly democratic countries in the world (and sadly, the US is not amongst them) are countries that have made corporal punishment illegal, who have comprehensive programs to support breastfeeding and year-long maternity leaves, etc.

I'm still mulling over all of this, but what the research seems to indicate is that there isn't any historical evidence that AP practices are somehow part of human "instinct". In fact, the idea of a "loving mother" did not even exist until the Victorian times, and even then it was mostly fictional. According to the research, there's simply no evidence that children were loved and cherished in the past the way the do now. It sounds weird, but if you think about what we know about the impact of severe abuse on an individual, and then scale that up to a whole society so that it is the norm of how children are treated, you can see how that would be perpetuated and what a negative impact it would have on society.

It's not that he claims that no one ever, ever loved and cherished their kids, but that every available historical document in western history (including the Bible, Torah, and Koran) don't mention children being loved and cherished. In fact, most of them refer to children as annoying, ugly (even babies!), evil, and needing to be "disciplined" harshly in order to grow up to be moral people.

Evidence for AP practices is apparently fairly recent, and are more the product of recent generations of people being raised with love, compassion, and empathy than anything else. I haven't finished the book, so maybe he'll say more on this topic.

It's fascinating, though!

[sassywoman.livejournal.com]

I think I should start with Alfie Kohn before reading this. Thoughts?

[jenn-unplugged.livejournal.com]

I think you could go either way. PPW gives a great historical perspective, supported by a broad base of research, and you might prefer that. Kohn's book is definitely perspective-shifting, and if you start with that PPW would then fill in more of the gaps Kohn blasts in your thinking about parenting.

Bear in mind that both books are not really parenting books so much as books about the philosophy of parenting. You're academically-oriented, so you'll probably like that as I did, but some people seem frustrated that Kohn in particular is not very practically-oriented.

I can't wait to hear what you think!

[sassywoman.livejournal.com]

I think I"ll start with Kohn based on your comments. Which book should I start with (assuming there is more then one on parenting)?

[jenn-unplugged.livejournal.com]

Unconditional Parenting (http://www.amazon.com/Unconditional-Parenting-Moving-Rewards-Punishments/dp/0743487486/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260936571&sr=8-1) is the book I would recommend. He also has lots of articles on his web page (http://www.alfiekohn.org/articles.htm) that are in the same vein. He writes about both parenting and education (he is a former elementary school teacher), and I use some of his teaching articles in my courses.

Happy reading!

[sassywoman.livejournal.com]

Thank you!!!! I'm looking forward to it!

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Somehow that's one of the "peaceful parenting" books I have NOT read. I'll have to read it, though!

In a non-parenting book, Barbara Tuchman in her book "A Distant Mirror" about 14th century Europe makes a similar point. She talks about the practice of sending kids away from their parents for the first seven years, the prevalance of corporal punishment, and also the fact that since so many children died before the age of two, parents deliberately distanced themselves emotionally from their babies so as to lessen the pain if they died. She says all of that combined to create a deeply fucked up society of people who had all kinds of serious emotional issues.

And on a similar note, the Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse arose OUT OF the movement to protect animals from abuse. In other words, society recognized abuse of animals as a crime BEFORE they recognized abuse of children as such. (And it took soceity even longer to recognize abuse of spouses as a crime.)

Anyway, good point about AP not necessarily being somehow "natural." Not that I think that child abuse is "natural," but if you consider how children who abused grow up to be abusers, then you can see how those practices took root and became so much an accepted part of society. AP really does attempt to break that cycle, which is why it seems so unnatural and illogical to many people.

[jenn-unplugged.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I've read a book you haven't? ;-)

I'm really loving reading about the history and philosophy of parenting practices, and the idea that they have such huge implications for society is really intriguing to me. It is pushing me to question a lot of my basic beliefs in so many ways, and heh, I always enjoy that!

Next on my list is Nurture Shock (http://www.amazon.com/NurtureShock-New-Thinking-About-Children/dp/0446504122/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260895449&sr=8-1). Have you read that one? The Amazon reviews indicate it has an amazing chapter on teaching kids about race.

Any other books along these lines you would recommend?

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that one sounds cool, too!

Lordy, parenting books are like fanfic - there's too much stuff out there to read it all!

[faithandworks.livejournal.com]

Definitely going to check this out. Thanks for the rec :)