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Social practices and cultural beliefs of modern life are preventing healthy brain and emotional development in children, according to an interdisciplinary body of research presented recently at a symposium at the University of Notre Dame.
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"Breast-feeding infants, responsiveness to crying, almost constant touch and having multiple adult caregivers are some of the nurturing ancestral parenting practices that are shown to positively impact the developing brain, which not only shapes personality, but also helps physical health and moral development," says Narvaez.Studies show that responding to a baby's needs (not letting a baby "cry it out") has been shown to influence the development of conscience; positive touch affects stress reactivity, impulse control and empathy; free play in nature influences social capacities and aggression; and a set of supportive caregivers (beyond the mother alone) predicts IQ and ego resilience as well as empathy.
The United States has been on a downward trajectory on all of these care characteristics, according to Narvaez. Instead of being held, infants spend much more time in carriers, car seats and strollers than they did in the past. Only about 15 percent of mothers are breast-feeding at all by 12 months, extended families are broken up and free play allowed by parents has decreased dramatically since 1970.
On the other side, there's hand-wringing about helicopter parenting.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by nyder on Friday August 21 2015, @02:42PM
Why don't they teach parenting at school? We go to school to learn and get ready for adult life, but generally a few things are missing. One is financials and the other is parenting. Schools don't teach those and honestly, those are probably the most important skills a kid growing up/teenager could learn to help them get ready for adult life.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @03:21PM
We go to school to learn
Could've fooled me. From experience, I thought schools existed to indoctrinate people and have them memorize information without understanding any of it.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday August 21 2015, @04:21PM
That's only true in US public schools (possibly private ones as well), but if you ever go to college you'll find out differently.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @05:29PM
but if you ever go to college you'll find out differently.
It has been quite a while, but I attended a few colleges. I have also spoken to many people who went to different colleges than I attended about the sort of work they did. It wasn't much different, despite the fact that people like to pretend that college and university standards are so much better (Or maybe they just don't know what education is. I'm not sure.). Sure, maybe the very best colleges and universities have better standards, but the vast majority of them are quite bad, being only 'good enough' for people to not take as much issue with it as they do our obviously terrible schools. The best ones try to quickly weed out the trash by actually requiring that students truly understand the material, rather than just have some facts memorized. When you can pass a grand majority of your classes with rote memorization alone, you should know something is wrong. When colleges and universities are treated as nothing but trade schools, they will often adapt to fit that image, and actual education will suffer.
And I assure you that rote memorization one-size-fits-all 'education' is far from a US-only problem. It is an easy and cheap way to give the appearance that you are educating people, so it is in widespread use.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @06:11PM
That's what happens when your entire education system is based on maximizing profit - everything is only ever "just good enough" to keep the money flowing, actually doing things right and putting education first costs money, and it means less cush, do-nothing "administration" jobs for your buddies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @03:34PM
They do teach it. Maybe not enough of it, but that stuff gets covered in things like health class - where they give the students a baby surrogate like an egg or, at the nicer schools, a fancy programmable doll, to take care of for a week.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tathra on Friday August 21 2015, @06:17PM
because that would require teaching them about how babies are made. teaching "abstinence-only" means problems that not being abstinent can lead to, like STDs and children, are off-limits to teachers as well.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday August 21 2015, @09:23PM
Why don't they teach parenting at school?
Because you'll piss people off by having the government teach morals, effectively. The religious people will be pissed that the parenting course doesn't include teaching kids how important $RELIGION is, and other people will be pissed that the parenting course doesn't teach how vaccinating your kids will give them autism, while other people will be pissed that they're taught that helicopter parenting hurts kids, while other people will be pissed that they're taught that leaving your kids in day care all day and never spending much time with them hurts them, I could go on and on.
Just look at how hard a time state governments are having with making vaccines mandatory; if they try to teach proper parenting there'll be a revolution (and like the revolutions in the Middle East, the new government will be composed of a bunch of religious loonies; it'll be much worse than what we have now).
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday August 23 2015, @01:33PM
> you'll piss people off by having the government teach morals, effectively. The religious people will be pissed that the parenting course doesn't include teaching kids how important $RELIGION is, and other people will be pissed that the parenting course doesn't teach how vaccinating your kids will give them autism, while other people will be pissed that they're taught that helicopter parenting hurts kids
Hmmm. Maybe education shouldn't be a politically* driven activity.
* Interpretation for the hard-of-thinking: government funded.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday August 23 2015, @02:56PM
Hmmm. Maybe education shouldn't be a politically* driven activity.
* Interpretation for the hard-of-thinking: government funded.
Ok great, so you're going to deny education to poor people? That's a wonderful idea. We'll have a giant underclass of people with no education whatsoever and no way to get any kind of job or get out of poverty, and pretty soon there'll be food riots. Do you really want to live in a 3rd world country?
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday August 23 2015, @03:10PM
I did not propose denying anybody anything. Just that, if it has some value, you ought to exchange something else of value to get it.
Are you saying some people have no value whatsoever?
And why do we have so many poor people anyway? Didn't their government education teach them how to avoid poverty?
Or perhaps the government taught you that you must depend on the government for everything.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday August 23 2015, @04:00PM
You're a fucking lunatic.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday August 23 2015, @04:28PM
I see you obtained your superior debating skills in a government school.