Is it time to return to caveman parenting?

MSNBC ^ | 10/15/10 | Joan Raymond

[Immerito]

Thank you for your thoughtful, detailed reply.

It’s unfortunate how many people still follow the left’s advice on childrearing, although the more their unsound advice is followed, the worse each generation becomes in terms of discipline, respect, etc.

[caseinpoint]

My comment wasn’t a personal opinion of you, it was on the article.

I have no quibble that anciently a lot of things were done right, among them the tribal system that kept generations of the family in close touch with each other. Our atomized families are at a distinct disadvantage compared to daily interaction with parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings. And, no, neighbors and friends can’t quite duplicate that system, no matter what the article says.

My criticism is that the author of the article seems to me to have sugarcoated Stone Age life and likely had little or no evidence to prove the assertions. Had the article compared, say, the childrearing practices of isolated indigenous societies of today, and drawn the conjecture that their similarities most probably reflect ancient similarities, I could accept that, albeit even that with a grain of salt.

On the other hand, we do have some evidence that ancient— maybe not Stone Age, but certainly ancient—civilizations practiced infanticide, sacrificed children to idols, enslaved children, farmed them out to be servants and hired hands, abandoned children, and expected children to act like adults at a very young age. The good was surely balanced with a lot of bad along the way.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Never give the left credit for their perfidy. On one hand, “progressives” have been trying to pollute young minds since before the turn of the 20th Century. On the other hand, their results have been mixed to poor.

Perhaps the left’s greatest success, measured on the ruined educational prospects of their victims, was promulgated by Noam Chomsky and his peers, with their invention of “whole language” English instruction.

In the late 1950s, black American school children were almost on a par with white children academically. But within a few years after the introduction of whole language to their poorer schools, their test scores plummeted across the board, starting with English.

The difference was that white parents and schools quickly spotted this deficiency, and corrected for it, while black parents and schools did not. Yet with 50 years of rock solid evidence of the failure of whole language, it is still an article of faith with the left that it is a better system, because it *must* be a better system.

Otherwise, the left has long been frustrated that both parents, and the culture in which children are raised, has always been far more influential than anything introduced in public schools. And while bad advice before then, such as Dr. Spock’s “Baby and Child Care”, has found wide use among naive parents, its long term effects have been marginal at best.