The Difference Between Sustainable Bringing Up of Children And Simple Breeding of Children (Scientific Perspective)
I wonder how long it is going to take before people realize that the social system/culture we have been living in is anti-human, so they would stop mindlessly breed their offspring. So far, I have not met or heard about a single adult caregiver who is emotionally stable and educated enough to be capable of providing sustainable and intelligent child nurture. This mindless ignorance keeps multiplying human suffering, generation after generation. Dominating lack of fundamental education in childcare spreads oblivious attitude, which is nothing more but plain child abuse.
Within last decades, we have gathered enough scientific knowledge to understand that children should not be brought up, until we establish sustainable environment. Current scientific knowledge in child care and psychology is immense. It is not the same knowledge as 100 years ago, but sadly this old, outdated approach in child care still persists.
Sustainable environment means:
- Social system/culture with intelligent value system, which is propagating empathy, reciprocal altruism and cooperation instead of competition.
- Social system/culture which can provide sustainable education and health care.
- Social system/culture which provides access to clean air, water, and nutritious, healthy organic food.
- Social system/culture which provides sustainable housing.
Basically, it means social system/culture which can provide all necessities of life supporting sustainable development of a human being.
Besides the factors mentioned above, sustainable environment also means having adult caregivers being capable of sustainably nurturing children, they are responsible for (child care already starts in pre-natal stage):
- Adult caregivers who are emotionally stable.
- Adult caregivers being physically and emotionally present around a child, 24/7, for at least first 10 years of child development.
- Adult caregivers educated enough to understand complex human behavior: understanding attachment theory, having basic knowledge in human behavioral biology (having basic understanding of bonding and attachment behavior in humans), human physiology and psychology.
- Adult caregivers educated enough to provide sustainable education, with environment, which is stimulating intellectually healthy development of a child.
- Adult caregivers educated enough to provide sustainable food with necessary nutrition.
- Adult caregivers allowing children to develop sustainable (emotionally stable) attachment and bonding behavior.
- Adult caregivers treating their children as equals (no patronizing, superior attitude - this relates to understanding of human behavioral biology and psychology).
This is not a full list.
- Children are not our emotional investment to provide us with some sort of emotional comfort and service, social status, self esteem etc.
- Children are not experiment (“Oh I don’t know much about children, but once I have one, I will figure out what to do”).
- Children are not like some sort of personal possession like some sort of material good, job, new car etc (“This is MY child! Don’t tell me what to do with MY children.”). If you are the one who brought this life into the world, you have to accept that this little human being belongs to all humanity.
- Children are not there to provide us with a service of "happiness" or give us the meaning to our life.
We should not decide to have children if we do not find happiness and meaning to our existence within ourselves first, without the need to rely on external things/people. Certainly, we shouldn't have children just because society says so (expects us to have children).
Anyone who plans to be child caregiver should be required to spend few years studying relevant, necessary child care education. This should be fundamental education to make sure that they have adequate knowledge, and that they are able to provide sustainable environment for child care. During this education, they should, also, go through psycho-therapy and counseling to make sure that they sort out all their psychological problems, so they won’t project them on children.
[Picture: Sustainable childcare]
-logic
Recommended sources:
“Attachment Theory”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory
“The Strange Situation - Mary Ainsworth”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTsewNrHUHU
“Strange Situation Experiment”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnFKaaOSPmk
“Introduction to Attachment Theory”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcnIo0NZrcw
"Hold on To Your Kids"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_akH6Cin6E
"Brain Development And Addiction"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpHiFqXCYKc
"Attachment And Brain Development"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKES1nyitAg
"It's Genetic"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQTMO3bQgpU
"Consequences of Stressed Parenting"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGmADfU5HGU
"The Deadly Effects of Tougher Standards"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmUMRX5yOt4,
"Introduction To Human Behavioral Biology"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA.
“Ghost In Your Genes”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4ZqzdrLruk
“Baby Brains”
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/01/baby-brains/bhattacharjee-text
I think you have a point in some of what you say. The problem is it will never happen. People consider it a right to have children no matter how ill prepared or unsuited they are. How would you enforce the educational requirements?
I don't think education would help. Knowing is never enough. People need to have a desire to be unselfish, to nurture, not damage and destroy. Take nature as an example, and what we know about the effects of pollution, oil and gas extraction, our brain and bodies' need for exercise while we idle and indulge in television. Parents used to read to their children. Now, we hand a phone to them and direct them to YouTube Kids app or PBS Sprout. There's a time and place for everything, but it's constant now. The whole population, you could say, is unsuited to caring for the Earth and for themselves.
Current culture is profoundly distorted, so it is hard to implement effective solution. You could introduce law which requires someone who wants to be a child caregiver to go through this process of education. If they refuse, then the law would force unsustainable adult caregiver to give away the child to proper care. If such caregivers keep making children anyway, then they should be forced to go through sterilization. We have the choice: allow such people to breed without any consideration for well being of these little human beings, and let them perpetuate suffering and misery, or take children away from them, and if they don't stop, then sterilize them.
Of course, this is just patchwork solution, which does not address the root cause of the problem.
To address the root cause of the problem, we would need to transform our whole society towards sustainable with reshaped value system. Towards system where this childcare approach is obvious and understood as fundamental. I would refer you to my previous blog describing such society:
https://steemit.com/anarchism/@logic/the-meaning-of-true-anarchism-part-2-into-the-future-sustainable-and-cybernated-social-systems