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It's not that he claims that no one ever, ever loved and cherished their kids, but that every available historical document in western history (including the Bible, Torah, and Koran) don't mention children being loved and cherished.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.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-12-12 03:26 pm (UTC)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!