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The article implies parents do not naturally know, or can figure out, how to raise their kids. We should assume they instinctively know and can do it, like has

The article implies parents do not naturally know, or can figure out, how to raise their kids. We should assume they instinctively know and can do it, like has been done for millions of years. We shouldn't make parents think they cannot do it. The way to put it much better is why we don't 'support' parenting better, or help them. I think this phrasing is important. Parenting is not something that needs to be 'taught'.

lapcat 3y ago
> We should assume they instinctively know and can do it, like has been done for millions of years. Why should we assume that? My own parents seemed to be generally clueless about parenting. I assume that our ancient ancestors were generally clueless too. Instinct is for animals, learning and science for humans.
- empath-nirvana 3y ago
  There's sort of a base level of parental instinct, but that gets you about as far as not letting them die.
  - lazide 3y ago
    Anecdotally? Only most of the time for most people.
    - empath-nirvana 3y ago
      I think that's true of pretty much every instinct, including fairly basic ones like self-preservation.
thimp 3y ago
This is a very naive perspective. As a parent for the last 20 years, I had no idea what I was doing and did a shitty job of the first decade. And to this day I see people making the same mistakes I did.
- EgregiousCube 3y ago
  I don't think it's naive at all. Not everybody will agree on what a mistake is, and not everybody will agree that it's important to avoid mistakes. Parenting, like all human relationships, is a messy one-size-doesn't-fit-all proposition.
Zondartul 3y ago
I, for one, do not have magical ancestral instincts whispering in my ear what to do. Can I get those "instincts" in a textbook instead?
swozey 3y ago
I'm 39 and pretty sure I have no idea how to raise a child. I mean, I have dogs. They have to be fed. One often doesn't tell me when he needs to go out because he's anxious. The other I can't walk with the other dog because he'll try to fight other dogs for whatever reason, so I walk them separately. Every being has nuances you have to work around feeding them and keeping them safe. Who knows what my kid would be like but they're my kid. Maybe it is just pretty innate but that doesn't mean I know the best way to do it. I don't know HOW to train my dogs well, I know how I train my dogs. But without learning how professionals etc do it I'm not min-maxing, basically. I've had a hard time training that one dog to let me know he needs to go out. He just doesn't tell me. So I've been looking around for better ways to do it. I almost given up on my little dog being reactive to other dogs. It sucks. Poor guy never gets to go on walks but I can't keep him calm, I don't know his past life, and I'm by no means a dog trainer.
empath-nirvana 3y ago
Humans evolved in an environment that is completely unlike the world in which we live today and a lot of things that people do intuitively might be actively harmful. That's true for lots of things, not just parenting. Your instincts are not enough to successfully navigate human society as it exists today. Aside from that parenting for as long as we have been around has been something that was taught -- from your own family, if nothing else. The evidence of that is the experience of literally every single person who has had children who have family members tell them that everything they are doing is wrong.
lukan 3y ago
For millions of years people were living in close communities. Before you had own children, you saw it every day and took active part in parenting. That's a little bit different, from single child families, who see their relatives with newborns once a year. Not much chance to naturally learn parenting this way, until you are thrown in the cold water once it is your turn. For me it was fortunately easier, mainly because I often visited and helped with my siblings children as they lived close. But if they would have lived far away, everything would have been way, way harder. So formally teaching it for those who do not had that experience, makes some sense, I think. That is, until we find ways to be closer again by default. There is an old saying: it takes a village to raise a child. So many people bored and living alone. So many parents with no energy left to play with their children. It doesn't have to be this way forever.
monknomo 3y ago
Yeah, I don't think we should assume that, or rather, that assumption ought to be verified. The world changes, society changes, cultures change, and parenting is contextual in all of these.
mmmpetrichor 3y ago
It has been done for millions of years, within small tribal groups who all collectively observe child rearing from within overlapping multi generational families living in close proximity in a group of dwellings connected by walking paths. I think the article is spot-on. I'm speaking as the parent of a 3year old.
lazide 3y ago
And what natural evolutionary process has led to us naturally knowing how to change diapers, deal with economic crises with kids in tow, teach kids how to deal with tech, how to have the right balance of ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ to be successful and also not a terrible person, etc? I think the bigger issue is how are you going to come up with a curricula when you won’t get any group larger than 1 to agree on the right answer to any of these topics. And there are incentives to teach most kids the wrong answers for a few people, so their kids get a leg up.
thom 3y ago
I’m not sure that it was instinct for the majority of human history, I suspect it was extended families passing down knowledge and sharing the work. Many people no longer have that support network. I do believe parents should follow whatever instincts they do have though. A diversity of parenting approaches guarantees a diversity of children which I think is a good thing.
asdff 3y ago
You are making the assumption complex behavioral traits might be innate. We can look at other species and see how this isn't the case easily. An area might host a rich history of a certain species. It might be culled one day. It might then go on to be reintroduced, but oftentimes these reintroductions fail because the species that were established in captivity or in another environment entirely do not harbor the learned behaviors that permitted that older exterminated population to survive. Take a human case as well. We have lived in the bush for millions of years. Left to your own devices, would you survive in the bush for very long without having learned to live off the bush from others? Would you expect a feral group of children to have much success establishing a society in the bush? Would they innately know to construct a fire or what shelter designs survive in the sort of environments they reside in? I would not expect any of these traits to be innate at all. Learning to rear young is also something to learn. We are not a species that abandons their young to their own behaviors. We are one that needs to rear our young and teach them behaviors. You see, there is a fitness advantage to leaning off the body in a way, of pairing down the organism to its most basic and necessary parts so that you might survive and breed on less resources while others, bogged down by unneccessary cost centers, are less successfull. As we gained the abilities to teach others things that we have learned, we have also gained an entire world of abilities that would not be innate, or would be much more statistically rare to establish innately (e.g. how many mutations would a human need to be born speaking mathematical proofs? consider this is also weighed against the likelihood that a mutagenic event does not hit on whatever site(s) contribute to this behavior).
neogodless 3y ago
Maybe it helps to think about children's needs as human needs using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs[0]. Parents fulfill basic needs pretty well without much struggle learning how. Psychological needs are often neglected (though I say that without a good reference for statistics on this, but I suspect it's something that isn't hard to agree on.) Sure, they say "No one knows how to raise kids merely by instinct," and this is maybe half-true, in that it's pretty instinctual to give them food, share the shelter you provide for yourself, and protect your kids from physical danger. But beyond that, it's not instinctual. [0] https://canadacollege.edu/dreamers/docs/Maslows-Hierarchy-of-Needs.pdf https://canadacollege.edu/dreamers/docs/Maslows-Hierarchy-of... (PDF)
highmastdon 3y ago
From your response I assume you have no children or maybe one. There’s a vast array of character traits in children that require different parenting in a way that your parents haven’t treated you or your siblings or you’ve been unaware of the way they’ve treated you differently from your siblings. I had on child, a girl, and I though the same way as you. Everything went well and was reasonable. Until my second was born. A boy with a “do-then-maybe-think” character trait. He’s awesome and loving and his emotions are like valleys and mountains. Totally different kid. Radically different way to communicate and raise him. I’ve been reading “Good Inside” and this resonated with me. It’s a radically different way of looking and caring for your kids than I used to be treated. Can recommend
- staplers 3y ago
  Similar experience here, children are highly volatile and deserve a basic level of care to ensure both parent and child have the tools they need to function and cope with life. It should be vastly generalized but for many parents having a foundation of broad knowledge to build upon would be a major help.
feoren 3y ago
Lots of others have addressed the fact that Humans did in fact teach each other how to raise kids, but there's another point not yet addressed: why are you assuming parents haven't been terrible for millions of years? Raising angry, depressed, violent, narcissistic bullies might have been an advantage. It's also possible they were all great parents, but that's the point -- we have no evidence either way, so appealing to our ancestors as paragons of parenting is doubly flawed.
3minus1 3y ago
No. Evidence and research regarding childcare is absolutely better than what parents "naturally know", and when there is clear and compelling evidence it should be taught. Furthermore the idea that we should shy away from the word 'taught' itself is nonsense. Consider the modern guidance that newborns should sleep on their back. Prior to the 90s people were told newborns should sleep on their stomach. When this guidance was reversed it resulted in a 50% reduction in SIDS[1]. As in other areas, science is a trustworthy and reliable means of improving our knowledge about parenting, and parents should approach their duty with humility to learn not over-confidence in their "instincts". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_to_Sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_to_Sleep

lapcat 3y ago

> We should assume they instinctively know and can do it, like has been done for millions of years. Why should we assume that? My own parents seemed to be generally clueless about parenting. I assume that our ancient ancestors were generally clueless too. Instinct is for animals, learning and science for humans.

empath-nirvana 3y ago
There's sort of a base level of parental instinct, but that gets you about as far as not letting them die.
- lazide 3y ago
  Anecdotally? Only most of the time for most people.
  - empath-nirvana 3y ago
    I think that's true of pretty much every instinct, including fairly basic ones like self-preservation.

thimp 3y ago

This is a very naive perspective. As a parent for the last 20 years, I had no idea what I was doing and did a shitty job of the first decade. And to this day I see people making the same mistakes I did.

EgregiousCube 3y ago
I don't think it's naive at all. Not everybody will agree on what a mistake is, and not everybody will agree that it's important to avoid mistakes. Parenting, like all human relationships, is a messy one-size-doesn't-fit-all proposition.

Zondartul 3y ago

I, for one, do not have magical ancestral instincts whispering in my ear what to do. Can I get those "instincts" in a textbook instead?

swozey 3y ago

I'm 39 and pretty sure I have no idea how to raise a child. I mean, I have dogs. They have to be fed. One often doesn't tell me when he needs to go out because he's anxious. The other I can't walk with the other dog because he'll try to fight other dogs for whatever reason, so I walk them separately. Every being has nuances you have to work around feeding them and keeping them safe. Who knows what my kid would be like but they're my kid. Maybe it is just pretty innate but that doesn't mean I know the best way to do it. I don't know HOW to train my dogs well, I know how I train my dogs. But without learning how professionals etc do it I'm not min-maxing, basically. I've had a hard time training that one dog to let me know he needs to go out. He just doesn't tell me. So I've been looking around for better ways to do it. I almost given up on my little dog being reactive to other dogs. It sucks. Poor guy never gets to go on walks but I can't keep him calm, I don't know his past life, and I'm by no means a dog trainer.

empath-nirvana 3y ago

Humans evolved in an environment that is completely unlike the world in which we live today and a lot of things that people do intuitively might be actively harmful. That's true for lots of things, not just parenting. Your instincts are not enough to successfully navigate human society as it exists today. Aside from that parenting for as long as we have been around has been something that was taught -- from your own family, if nothing else. The evidence of that is the experience of literally every single person who has had children who have family members tell them that everything they are doing is wrong.

lukan 3y ago

For millions of years people were living in close communities. Before you had own children, you saw it every day and took active part in parenting. That's a little bit different, from single child families, who see their relatives with newborns once a year. Not much chance to naturally learn parenting this way, until you are thrown in the cold water once it is your turn. For me it was fortunately easier, mainly because I often visited and helped with my siblings children as they lived close. But if they would have lived far away, everything would have been way, way harder. So formally teaching it for those who do not had that experience, makes some sense, I think. That is, until we find ways to be closer again by default. There is an old saying: it takes a village to raise a child. So many people bored and living alone. So many parents with no energy left to play with their children. It doesn't have to be this way forever.

monknomo 3y ago

Yeah, I don't think we should assume that, or rather, that assumption ought to be verified. The world changes, society changes, cultures change, and parenting is contextual in all of these.

mmmpetrichor 3y ago

It has been done for millions of years, within small tribal groups who all collectively observe child rearing from within overlapping multi generational families living in close proximity in a group of dwellings connected by walking paths. I think the article is spot-on. I'm speaking as the parent of a 3year old.

lazide 3y ago

And what natural evolutionary process has led to us naturally knowing how to change diapers, deal with economic crises with kids in tow, teach kids how to deal with tech, how to have the right balance of ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ to be successful and also not a terrible person, etc? I think the bigger issue is how are you going to come up with a curricula when you won’t get any group larger than 1 to agree on the right answer to any of these topics. And there are incentives to teach most kids the wrong answers for a few people, so their kids get a leg up.

thom 3y ago

I’m not sure that it was instinct for the majority of human history, I suspect it was extended families passing down knowledge and sharing the work. Many people no longer have that support network. I do believe parents should follow whatever instincts they do have though. A diversity of parenting approaches guarantees a diversity of children which I think is a good thing.

asdff 3y ago

You are making the assumption complex behavioral traits might be innate. We can look at other species and see how this isn't the case easily. An area might host a rich history of a certain species. It might be culled one day. It might then go on to be reintroduced, but oftentimes these reintroductions fail because the species that were established in captivity or in another environment entirely do not harbor the learned behaviors that permitted that older exterminated population to survive. Take a human case as well. We have lived in the bush for millions of years. Left to your own devices, would you survive in the bush for very long without having learned to live off the bush from others? Would you expect a feral group of children to have much success establishing a society in the bush? Would they innately know to construct a fire or what shelter designs survive in the sort of environments they reside in? I would not expect any of these traits to be innate at all. Learning to rear young is also something to learn. We are not a species that abandons their young to their own behaviors. We are one that needs to rear our young and teach them behaviors. You see, there is a fitness advantage to leaning off the body in a way, of pairing down the organism to its most basic and necessary parts so that you might survive and breed on less resources while others, bogged down by unneccessary cost centers, are less successfull. As we gained the abilities to teach others things that we have learned, we have also gained an entire world of abilities that would not be innate, or would be much more statistically rare to establish innately (e.g. how many mutations would a human need to be born speaking mathematical proofs? consider this is also weighed against the likelihood that a mutagenic event does not hit on whatever site(s) contribute to this behavior).

neogodless 3y ago

Maybe it helps to think about children's needs as human needs using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs[0]. Parents fulfill basic needs pretty well without much struggle learning how. Psychological needs are often neglected (though I say that without a good reference for statistics on this, but I suspect it's something that isn't hard to agree on.) Sure, they say "No one knows how to raise kids merely by instinct," and this is maybe half-true, in that it's pretty instinctual to give them food, share the shelter you provide for yourself, and protect your kids from physical danger. But beyond that, it's not instinctual. [0] https://canadacollege.edu/dreamers/docs/Maslows-Hierarchy-of-Needs.pdf https://canadacollege.edu/dreamers/docs/Maslows-Hierarchy-of... (PDF)

highmastdon 3y ago

From your response I assume you have no children or maybe one. There’s a vast array of character traits in children that require different parenting in a way that your parents haven’t treated you or your siblings or you’ve been unaware of the way they’ve treated you differently from your siblings. I had on child, a girl, and I though the same way as you. Everything went well and was reasonable. Until my second was born. A boy with a “do-then-maybe-think” character trait. He’s awesome and loving and his emotions are like valleys and mountains. Totally different kid. Radically different way to communicate and raise him. I’ve been reading “Good Inside” and this resonated with me. It’s a radically different way of looking and caring for your kids than I used to be treated. Can recommend

staplers 3y ago
Similar experience here, children are highly volatile and deserve a basic level of care to ensure both parent and child have the tools they need to function and cope with life. It should be vastly generalized but for many parents having a foundation of broad knowledge to build upon would be a major help.

feoren 3y ago

Lots of others have addressed the fact that Humans did in fact teach each other how to raise kids, but there's another point not yet addressed: why are you assuming parents haven't been terrible for millions of years? Raising angry, depressed, violent, narcissistic bullies might have been an advantage. It's also possible they were all great parents, but that's the point -- we have no evidence either way, so appealing to our ancestors as paragons of parenting is doubly flawed.

3minus1 3y ago

No. Evidence and research regarding childcare is absolutely better than what parents "naturally know", and when there is clear and compelling evidence it should be taught. Furthermore the idea that we should shy away from the word 'taught' itself is nonsense. Consider the modern guidance that newborns should sleep on their back. Prior to the 90s people were told newborns should sleep on their stomach. When this guidance was reversed it resulted in a 50% reduction in SIDS[1]. As in other areas, science is a trustworthy and reliable means of improving our knowledge about parenting, and parents should approach their duty with humility to learn not over-confidence in their "instincts". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_to_Sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_to_Sleep