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Ever meet a kindergartener who seemed naturally compassionate and cared about others' feelings? Who was cooperative and didn't demand his own way? Chances are, his parents held, carried and cuddled him a lot; he most likely was breastfed; he probably routinely slept with his parents; and he likely was encouraged to play outdoors with other children, according to new research findings from the University of Notre Dame.
Three new studies led by Notre Dame Psychology Professor Darcia Narvaez how
a relationship between child rearing practices common in foraging hunter-gatherer societies (how we humans have spent about 99 percent of our history) and better mental health, greater empathy and conscience development, and higher intelligence in children."Our research shows that the roots of moral functioning form early in life, in infancy, and depend on the affective quality of family and community support," says Narvaez, who specializes in the moral and character development of children.
The three studies include an observational study of the practices of parents of three-year-olds, a longitudinal study of how certain child rearing practices relate to child outcomes in a national child abuse prevention project, and a comparison study of parenting practices between mothers in the U.S. and China. The longitudinal study examined data from the research of another Notre Dame psychologist, John Borkowski, who specializes in the impact of child abuse and neglect on development.
The results of Narvaez' three studies as well as those from researchers around the world will be presented at a conference at Notre Dame in October titled "Human Nature and Early Experience: Addressing the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness."
"The way we raise our children today in this country is increasingly depriving them of the practices that lead to well being and a moral sense," she says.Narvaez identifies six characteristics of child rearing that were common to our distant ancestors:
- Lots of positive touch - as in no spanking - but nearly constant carrying, cuddling and holding;
- Prompt response to baby's fusses and cries. You can't "spoil" a baby. This means meeting a child's needs before they get upset and the brain is flooded with toxic chemicals. "Warm, responsive caregiving like this keeps the infant's brain calm in the years it is forming its personality and response to the world," Narvaez says.
- Breastfeeding, ideally 2 to 5 years. A child's immune system isn't fully formed until age 6 and breast milk provides its building blocks.
- Multiple adult caregivers - people beyond mom and dad who also love the child.
- Free play with multi-age playmates. Studies show that kids who don't play enough are more likely to have ADHD and other mental health issues.
- Natural childbirth, which provides mothers with the hormone boosts that give the energy to care for a newborn.
The U.S. 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 breastfeeding at all by 12 months, extended families are broken up, and free play allowed by parents has decreased dramatically since 1970.
"Ill advised practices and beliefs have become commonplace, such as the use of infant formula, the isolation of infants in their own rooms, or the belief that responding too quickly to a fussing baby will 'spoil' it," Narvaez says.
Whether the corollary to these modern practices or the result of other forces, research shows the health and well being of American children is worse than it was 50 years ago:
there's an epidemic of anxiety and depression among the young; aggressive behavior and delinquency rates in young children are rising; and empathy, the backbone of compassionate, moral behavior, has been shown to be decreasing among college students."All of these issues are of concern to me as a researcher of moral development," Narvaez says. "Kids who don't get the emotional nurturing they need in early life tend to be more self-centered. They don't have available the compassion-related emotions to the same degree as kids who were raised by warm, responsive families."
Comment: Although this research brings up several valid points, it is important to mention that concepts like breastfeeding and "no spanking" require some clarification:
Extended breastfeeding, for example, perhaps was very beneficial to children back in the days where level of toxicity was low. But today, SOTT editors have a growing feeling of concern, that extended breastfeeding is being promoted among populations that are not aware of mercury and detox diet for the express purpose of toxifying children - of hitting hard another segment of society that Powers That Be see as desirable to destroy: the middle class.
There's a big movement to urge women to engage in prolonged breastfeeding, while Powers That Be know that the milk could include toxic concentrations, and while the well-to-do may only breast feed for 6 to 9 months and have nannies and better food. Meanwhile, the very poor find it cheaper and easier to get formula with WIC.
Ideally, a future mother should detoxify before she gets pregnant. Ideally. At the very least, she should decrease toxicity exposure as much as possible. She can take some nutritional supplementation and modify her diet so that it will be a healthy one. There are detox protocols for children, but for children less than 2 years old, it should be done under a supervision of a health care provider.
Read
Diet and Health section of the Cassiopaea forum to educate yourself on the topic.
As for "no spanking", consider the following excerpt from Superluminal Communications dated 22 July 2010:
Q: (L) Alright, what else? There's one question I'd like to ask. There was a discussion on the forum the other day about spanking. And it is my contention that there are some situations where that is the only thing to do, but that it should be very rare. I mean, special situations. Maybe I myself did not follow that model, but there were some instances where that was the only solution. Am I just self-justifying? (Ark) For me it was good. Otherwise probably I would become a criminal. {laughter}
(Andromeda) What if a child is gonna go play in the traffic? Is he gonna take you seriously? I mean, for their protection they need that.
(Ark) I was playing on the railways, and my mother came and saw me and she grabbed my ear and pulled me back home. For a week I couldn't touch my ear!
(Andromeda) That might have saved your life.
(L) Did it keep you off the railroad tracks?
(Ark) Oh yeah.
(L) Would anything else have worked?
(Ark) Um...
(L) If she had told you it was bad to play on the railroad tracks, would you have listened?
(Ark) I knew it!
(L) So it was the fear of consequences that prevented you.
(Ark) You just don't think about it.
(L) So, you think that spanking makes you think about things?
(PoB) It makes you remember.
(Ark) Spanking made me pass a history exam. Otherwise it was another year in the same class.
(L) Alright, so let me ask my question again: Is...
A: Let us ask you: Are there situations in life where asserting yourself physically is appropriate?
Q: (L) Well I would have to say yes. (Andromeda) Definitely. (L) In a world populated by psychopaths, crazy people, bullies, and behaviors that are hurtful and harmful to you and people that you love...
A: Okay, then how will children learn about those situations if they do not have a model of behavior?
Q: (L) Well, I mean a model of behavior seeing an adult stand up to another adult, not an adult to a child.
A: Children can be bullies and manipulators, too!
Q: (Atriedes) In fact that's usually what children who don't get spanked by their parents become: manipulators.
(L) I've never seen a child who didn't have firm limits drawn that were stuck to that did not become completely obnoxious. I've heard people say that they've never spanked their child and little Johnny is oh so wonderful. And they don't know what little Johnny is really like.
(Atriedes) Also think about how society is, how it outlaws any physical reaction between adults in the sense that you don't have a physical recourse anymore. It's against the law to get into a fight. If someone's hurting you, or doing something and taking your stuff, and you resist them, you're in trouble. They're not. So you have no way of enforcing any kind of social order because your hands are tied that way. And that's kind of happened after the whole "don't spank your child" thing. They make all these laws about "no violence" and the world has just gotten more violent. Because, of course, the rules only apply to normal people, not psychopaths, and especially not the psychopaths at the top.
(L) Yeah, it's kind of a thorny issue. So I guess kind of the way we discussed on the forum is how it is.
(Ark) Rare and just.
A: Yes
Q: (Ailén) That's the problem. Most parents don't do it in the right situations or in the right way.
(Atriedes) And there's a difference between abuse and spanking. One's a way to dominate someone else, and the other is a way to enforce structure and rules. If your purpose is to enforce structure and rules, and you are thoughtful about it, then it's not abuse.
(L) It's also about consequences. If you don't learn it at a certain age, you never learn it. It's like the time is gone, and you have to have it put into your physiology at a young age. And I don't say at a really young age. Children younger than three shouldn't be spanked, but only after they're three or four years old, and even then it should be just a smack on the butt or something minor...
(Ark) You can teach a child something, and it will take ten years. And there will be recursion. You spank once, and... (L) And they learn it forever. (Atriedes) The sad thing is that pain is a lot more effective to form memories.
(L) That's true because most of us when we're growing up only understand what someone else is going through if we understand it ourselves. You see someone else cut their finger and you know what it feels like because you cut your finger. It's like a physical thing that you get in your body. Then you do something that hurts somebody else and maybe you're too young to understand intellectually the seriousness of it, but then you get a smack on the butt and you understand in a kind of genetic or physiological way that you did something that hurt somebody else and you got a smack. Later on when you're older it's explained, but you have a foundation on which that explanation can make sense. If you've never had anything physical happen to you as a consequence or repercussion of anything you've ever done, and then all of a sudden when you're ten years old and your cognitive facilities start to kick in and somebody starts explaining things to you, you will not understand. You will not understand what pain or suffering really is because you've never had anything, no consequence.
A: Very close. Remember the woman described in Ponerology as a characteropath?
Q: (L) The one with the brothers where they defended everything she said and everything she did. She never had to have any consequences for anything she ever did. But then wasn't that supposed to be some kind of brain damage?
A: The same can result from indulgence.
Q: (Galaxia) Does being an only child cause some of them to be missing something in their brain because they didn't have any siblings? Do they have brain damage or something?
A: Sometimes, yes. The important thing about discipline for children is activation of brain chemistry mixes at certain windows of imprinting. The human organism is largely a product of evolutionary pressures. To act as if there are no dangers in the environment, to raise a child without exposure to the natural consequences of growing in a hostile environment, is to deprive the child of many systemic cascades of brain activity necessary for proper growth and development.
Q: (Ailén) In other words, no discipline, no activation of a sense of reality.
(L) Yeah, they live in a bubble forever.
I was spanked once (I don't even know the circumstances); subsequently all that was needed was a threat to spank and I ceased the behavior. Given all the mental and verbal abuse I got from my parents growing up, the one memory I have of a spanking means nothing to me. I look upon the memory and don't feel traumatized as when I think of all the head games and lack of compassion. Of course, everyone is different, so for some children it may be horrifically traumatic and might scar them for life; but that is not my experience.