I really enjoyed this post. In fact, this philosophy is behind not only the way I treat myself, but the way I parent my children. Treating them as human beings instead of little people "growing into adults" has proven to help me in more situations than I can count.
Interesting observation. I think it is important to highlight things that are taken for granted. There are seems to be an assumption that there is "the right way" to raise kids and that it should be constant from generation to generation. I'm not so sure that's the case...
Note that in reality, all parents are experimenting. Nobody _knows_ the right way to raise a child. I'm the father of a 3yr daughter but I dare not claim that my way is the right way...
This mindset is crucial. It doesn't make much to meet the bare minimum legal requirements of parenting. It takes a ton to produce thriving minds capable of excelling in the encroaching post-labor reality.
So many people treat parenthood as a checkmark on the mandatory itinerary of life and once they check it off they just "eat the cost" and pay to have the kids taken care of.
Both those parents, and the poor parents who cannot afford the state / capitalist solutions to child rearing, are being negligent. Kids need familial bonds and constant social contact with their kin group to thrive. You don't drop them at random daycares every day for eight hours starting at six months and produce healthy progeny.
Raising kids is at least a part time job for both parents. Not in monetary expenses, in time. Putting in less than that at any point before pubescence can be catastrophic to the growth of the child. But as a society, because that cost is for most people untenable, they still want to "fulfill their obligation" to past generations, and have kids they cannot adequately allocate time for and end up producing descendants who suffer throughout life for it.
It is an absolute real conversation that needs to be had, that the true cost of parenthood is astronomical in todays society, and that almost nobody is in a financial position to fulfill that obligation such that they aren't risking harm to the child. We haven't had an adequate availability of time on the part of both parents to raise their children since 80% of the population were agrarian farmers* and we have seen rampant expanse of mental illness and maladjustment to society for it ever since.
* of course said farmers were very rarely good parents. Using your kids as hard labor from a young age, using violence as a coercion tactic against them, treating them like property and an investment rather than people, not feeding their curiosity or inquisitiveness out of your own ignorance and simple mindedness taught by your parents. It was a real mess that compulsory public education in part did a lot to stop, but that doesn't preclude the availability of parents and family being so critical to the well-being of young minds while also being absent from contemporary society for the vast majority of children.
I'm glad NYT writer and so many HN posters finally figured out the correct way to raise kids, and are sharing it here. I thought we'd have to wait another 5000 years for it.
It has been done for millions of years, within small tribal groups who all collectively observe child rearing from within overlapping multi generational families living in close proximity in a group of dwellings connected by walking paths. I think the article is spot-on. I'm speaking as the parent of a 3year old.
>This variance is also a big reason why there is no "one true way" of raising kids, and why you shouldn't take parenting authorities too seriously.
I have a 7mo old and, naturally, for the first couple months my wife and I drove ourselves bonkers worrying about whether or not we were any given task "the right way". I mean, don't get me wrong, we still check with his pediatrician and do basic online research about certain things, but for the most part you just develop an intuition about your kid and what their needs are.
Parenting has gotten extremely neurotic in the last 20 years. I can’t help but roll my eyes at most of the advice that’s considered essential these days.
Even the daycare wanted to go through their educational curriculum for 2 years olds and I just said just keep them alive and having fun please.
Not at all. With the powers of reflection and self-consideration, I can think back to how I was raised and make judgement calls on the merits of various parenting techniques that I experienced.
Presumably, in the case of first children, this is what parents have been doing since the dawn of time.
Interesting list but I'd considering being less prescriptive in the future. Hard for me to really buy in when the opinions shared are so explicitly hardline: "ideally, every day"; "never" (3x!); "always", "every single" (both 2x) "everything possible."
Part of the problem with today's parenting and why it's so demanding are these completely unreasonable expectations we are setting.
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