The evolution of culture
How anti-rational memes sabotage culture, education and the Enlightenment.
parenting
New parent? Planning to have a baby and questioning the standard parenting ideas? Don’t miss this critical discussion!
A conversation between prospective parents, about taking children seriously.
“Why do you like IFS but not ‘Self-led parenting’?”
Coercion, including covert coercion imposed with a soft voice and loving words, is deeply disconnecting, and it certainly does not feel compassionate to the person on the sharp end. What seems to be called ‘Self-led parenting’ is a far cry from the deeply respectful, non-coercive spirit of the Self of IFS when they are talking about adults.
“Surely studies show that parents have little impact on how people turn out?”
If the ‘research’ alleges that whether you behave morally or immorally, it makes no difference, does that make immoral behaviour unobjectionable?
“Isn’t taking children seriously a risky experiment with children? Is there any evidence that it works? Has it been studied?”
If you were in the American slave-holding South in the days of slavery, and a supporter of slavery was demanding studies and ‘evidence’ to justify your argument for ending slavery, would that not strike you as a highly immoral stance?
“If children are people just like adults, why should we treat our children any differently from how we treat adults?”
The slight asymmetry is because the parent has chosen to put the child in the situation in which the child finds herself, whereas the child has not chosen to be in that situation or to put the parent in the situation.
“How is the word ‘parenting’ not taking children seriously?”
Why is it that there is a word “parenting” but no word “childing”? Because in our culture, children are not taken seriously. Words like “parenting” embody the idea of hierarchical, top-down paternalistic/authoritarian parent-child relationships in which the parent is actively doing to the child and the child is passively done to. The parent is actively moulding and shaping the child from above.
“Which parenting style is Taking Children Seriously? Authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, or uninvolved?”
Taking Children Seriously is not permissive, uninvolved, authoritarian or authoritative. Those approaches coerce children instead of taking them seriously as full people whose lives are their own.
“Why does parenting feel so hard?”
What most parents think they need to do as parents—moulding and shaping their children—is an impossible task. No wonder parenting is a nightmare for so many parents! But there is an alternative!
Taking Children Seriously: a new view of children
Taking Children Seriously is a new VIEW of children—a non-paternalistic view: children do not actually need to be controlled for their own good. An Oxford Karl Popper Society talk.
Rank pessimism
Wherever we are on the scale of moral evolution today, we can always go up a rung tomorrow. Unless we prefer to turn away from growth and start claiming there are no more rungs, of course.
The scar theory of parenting
People surprisingly often say they were taken seriously as children, and that they wish their parents had been conventional coercionist parents instead. But as soon as we get into the details, it is very obvious that their idea of taking children seriously is not taking children seriously.
What Taking Children Seriously is, and what it is not
A 2001 take on taking children seriously.
How I came to Taking Children Seriously
How the word ‘respect’ led this parent to Taking Children Seriously
Parenting by the book
A critical review of books aimed at parents.
Punishment as a teaching tool
Punishment has a very high risk of destroying not only the desire, but also the ability to learn.
The One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest school of parenting
Parenting books often advocate being calm and ‘empathetic’ in our coercive control of our children, instead of shouting at them. This makes the coercive control chillingly Nurse Ratched like in its double binding mixed messages.
Answering questions about Karl Popper’s epistemology
Once one begins to see how extremely general this notion of conjecture and refutation is, then it begins to seem much more likely that learning always follows that pattern.
Karl Popper on the growth of knowledge
Understanding that knowledge grows through creative conjecture and inner criticism facilitates non-coercive interactions.
Why giving children rules and boundaries is a mistake
Children are not born knowing the truth, so we should tell children our best theories, explain why we advocate certain forms of behaviour and not others, and try to persuade them through reason of the truth of our own ideas, but not coerce, manipulate or in any way pressurise them into enacting our theories. For our theories may be false: even becoming a parent does not confer infallibility upon us!
Why epistemology matters for parents
All interactions implicitly assume epistemological ideas, so it is worth considering what those ideas are and whether they are true or not.
“There are some issues on which I am authoritarian”
Coercion is stressful because it conflicts with most people’s wider ideas about morality, human relationships, and how to run a society, etc. Unless one mentions children or parenting, everyone agrees that consent-based solutions are better that coercion every time. That theory is held on some level by most people. They just suppress it in their parenting.
Why bother with the philosophy?
How you think people learn informs all your interactions with your children. If you view learning as a creative act in a critical-rational process, you will value highly the idea of consent in decision-making. If you believe people learn through divine revelation or by having knowledge poured into them, that will inform your interactions in a different way from if you think that they learn through conjectures and refutations: you may well think coercion necessary.
Why discussions take a philosophical turn
When people ask about a child staying at a friend’s house with no parents, do they want not only to know how they might handle it, but why that way, and why not the conventional way. Those whys are philosophy—ideas. That is why we get philosophical.
Branded lazy parents for not coercing
The lazy person’s approach is coercing children into reluctant compliance, as opposed to taking the time to see to it that all parties are satisfied with the outcome of every interaction.