I strongly favor well-planned and -informed parenthood with all human procreation. Too many women and men will intentionally conceive regardless of not being sufficiently educated about child-development science to ensure parenting in a psychologically functional/healthy manner.
It’s not that they necessarily are ‘bad parents’; rather, many seem to perceive thus treat human procreative ‘rights’ as though they (potential parents) will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture their children’s naturally developing minds and needs.
In the book Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology and How You Can Heal, the author writes that even “well-meaning and loving parents can unintentionally do harm to a child if they are not well informed about human development” (pg.24) .
As liberal democracies, we cannot prevent anyone from bearing children, not even the plainly incompetent and reckless procreators. We can, however, educate all young people for the most important job ever, even those high-school teens who plan to remain childles s.
If nothing else, such child-development curriculum could offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally suited for the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood. … Given what’s at stake, they at least should be equipped with such valuable science-based knowled ge.
Being caring, competent, loving parents — and knowledgeable about factual child-development science — should matter most when deciding to procreate. Why? Because a physically and mentally sound future should be every child’s fundamental right, especially when considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter — particularly one in which the parents too often stop loving each other, frequently fight and eventually divo rce.
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“The way a society functions is a reflection of the childrearing practices of that society. Today we reap what we have sown. Despite the well-documented critical nature of early life experiences, we dedicate few resources to this time of life. We do not educate our children about child development, parenting, or the impact of neglect and trauma on childr en.”
-–Dr. Bruce D. Perry, Ph.D. & Dr. John Marc ellu s
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Contemporary research reveals that, since it cannot fight or flight, a baby stuck in a crib on its back hearing parental discord in the next room can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state … This freeze state is a trauma state” (pg.123).
Also known is that the unpredictability of a stressor, and not the intensity, does the most harm. When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes” (pg. 42).
Left prolongedly unhindered, such traumatic experiences typically cause the brain to improperly develop, most notably with its stress response system becoming sensitized thus overly active an d reactive.
It’s usually the starting point of a life in which the brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammatory stress hormones and chemicals, even in otherwise non-stressful dai ly routines.
Among other dysfunctions, it has been described as an emotionally tumultuous daily existence, indeed a continuous discomforting anticipation of ‘the other sh oe dropping’.
The lasting emotional/psychological pain throughout one’s life from such trauma is very formidable yet invisibly confined to inside one’s head. It is solitarily suffered, unlike an openly visible physical disability or condition, which tends to elicit sympathy/empathy from others. It can make every day a mental ordeal, unless the turmoil is prescription and/or illici tly medicated.
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“I remember leaving the hospital thinking, ‘Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don’t know beans about babies! I don’t have a license to do this. We’re ju st amateurs’.”
-–Anne Tyler, author of Br eathin g Lessons
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The African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” has l ong appealed to me.
Similarly, in the movie K-PAX the visiting extraterrestrial ‘Prot’ says to the clinical psychiatrist interviewing him: "On K-PAX, everyone’s children’s wellbeing matters to everyone, as everyone takes part in rearing everyon e else’s offspring."
At the risk of being deemed Godless or socialist thus evil, I strongly feel that the wellbeing and health of all children needs to be of genuine importance to us all — and not just concern over what other parents’ children might or will cost us as future criminals or costly cases of government care, etcetera — regardless of how well our own children are doing.
Mindlessly ‘minding our own business’ often proves humanly devastating. Yet, largely owing to the Only If It’s In My Own Back Yard mindset, the prevailing collective attitude (implicit or subconscious) basically follows: ‘Why should I care — my kids are alright?’ or (the even more lamely self-serving) ‘What’s in it for me as a taxpayer?’