Great, I love a good article that shames me for all the parenting I’ve been doing “wrong”.
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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Denormalizing Western parenting habits and looking at science as well as other cultures isn't shaming. What's shameful is putting your fingers in your ears and telling yourself the way my parents raised me was right, I'm right to do it even if it's not the best for my kids, and everyone trying to educate me as to potentially better methods is trying to 'shame me for being wrong'.
i.e. It's not shameful to not know any better. It's shameful to continue when you do.
So my hundreds of hours researching and thousands of dollars of hiring professionals, and the dozens of people in my community with whom I consult is shameful? I’m not raising my kid anything in the way my parents raised me.
I’m just sick of labeling western methods of parenting as bizarre or unnatural. Parenting ideologies are filled with giving a stink eye for doing something that you didn’t do.
Did you read the article or just kneejerk at the title? Sleeping in separate beds increases the risks of SIDs, for example. It is weird that western parents continue doing this to 'instill individualism' when it literally kills our children and slows down parent/child bonding in primates. Shit, we still circumcise most male babies because the Korn Flakes guy thought it was dirty for boys to touch themselves. We are weird!
If you prefer to feel ashamed rather than learning something when you encounter new information because of a clickbait article title, well, I can't stop you. Or even blame you.
But the shameful part isn't doing something weird out of ignorance, but continuing once we have better information. Putting our pride ahead of our children. That would be a shame.
ikr? we should just stop doing science because it might offend someone.
Unusual ≠ Wrong
That’s not what I got from the article. It’s a culture piece, and as a Westerner I appreciated the look into how other societies treat their young.