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

[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!