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

[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