Do Your Political Beliefs Affect Your Parenting?

A mom brought her six-year-old daughter into the office with a fever and a sore throat. I asked the little girl to open her mouth and say “Ah.” She shook her head and clenched her mouth shut. “Mom, it looks like I’m going to need your help here," I said. "Could you please ask your daughter to open her mouth and say ‘Ah’?” Mom arched her eyebrows and replied, “Her body, her choice.”

Wow. This mom was invoking the “My body, my choice” slogan of abortion-rights activists to defend her 6-year-old daughter's refusal to let me, the doctor, look at her daughter’s throat.

I have been a family doctor for nearly 34 years. Until recently, I saw no connection between politics and parenting. Left-of-center parents were no better and no worse parents, on average, than right-of-center parents. Some left-of-center parents were Too Harsh, some were Too Soft, and some were Just Right; and the same was true of right-of-center parents.

As a family doctor, I simply did not encounter this kind of parenting 10 years ago. Now I see it every day. And the parents who are practicing gentle parenting are (in my experience) almost always politically left-of-center.

“thank you for posting. these parents are nuts”

Just think. When you send your child to public school, they are having to deal with the children of these parents daily. How horrible for a child that is raised up to be responsible, caring of other’s feelings, and a hard worker, to have to put up with other children such as this each day.

I take the position that parents should do whatever it takes to take their children out of government schools and teach them at home. Any perceived sacrifice will be worth it.

It is only people like me who were raised to the age of personal accountability before the advent of Benjamin Spock (click here) realize that one of the worst things that ever happened to our country was our parents and teachers yielding to his child-raising theories that made the undisciplined children ungovernable as adults.

Spock was very leftist, no religionist, and no friend of bible-based discipline of wilful children:

"Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell" (Proverbs 23:13-14).

His appoach fits well with the educational philosophy of John Dewey (click here), to amplify it. Dewey was a Marxist opponent to training of maturing children in the climate of developing the child in personal behavioral accountability and to gain a foundation in the classics of human history, literature, the arts, religion, and critical thinking, the loss of which has left our public schools with teachers who themselves are deficient, and cannot prepare their students to enter the culture of a free society and self-disciplined provision for one's own needs, let alone wants.

And that is where we are now left at as a nation, originally meant for higher goals by the governmental system crafted by our Founders. Our social framework is in shambles, totally vulnerable to tyrants, whether "conservative" or "liberal," rejecting Heavenly guidance of our cultural mores, with physical and spiritual freedom almost lost. Spendthrifts, thinking someone else will pay the cost of self-serving behaviors.

We are in a thickly progressive miasma that is definitely Spockian and Dewey-eyed blindness, with no hope for the future implanted in our children, and adolescent suicide rapidly climbing. Enfeebled aimless drug-disabled homeless beggars litter our cities, making them useless for commerce. Soon we will become an anarchy, ungovernable by any kind of "Constitution," menacing robbers galore, if something isn't done soon.

Yes... And to date the 2 youngest, 22, 25 stopped talking to me because I yelled at them for not living up to their own words. The oldest, #1, is finally understanding reality in the world and has come back around. From what I’ve seen and have experienced, I went scorched Earth with immediate family. You either respect me as a dad, or you won’t have one anymore. One can only take so much manipulation. Blame the ex!!! They had a great teacher!!

‘Lets not worry about what we did, let’s focus on Dad’s reaction to what we did and use that for the reason we resent him!’

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