Letter 2 - A Culture of Parental Detachment
in which i ponder the question “how did we get here?”
I trusted their intelligence and mistook it for maturity. It was hard to admit that this was what I thought and that I didn't continue with my normal parenting routine I caused a schism in our relationship. I was unavailable to them because they were smart. I see this in other parents’ stories and wonder if they have looked at the parental attachment theory and alienation.
We are starting a new feature - Letters - in which we exchange ideas about the state of progressive gender politics, the anti-woke movement, and the general state of the culture of child rearing and pedagogy, and directions to take. We will talk frankly about the underlying issues as we see them, and share the latest work on being a brain-savvy human + parent. This is the second letter in the series, by me. You can read Letter 1 here, and you can read the reply here. We hope to start a dialogue, to stimulate constructive conversation and drive solutions-based actions. We welcome genuine thinkers and solution-oriented people into the discussion. What are the issues underlying the current problems facing kids and parents? Can we provide a healthy + compassionate + evidence-based alternative to the SOGI modality of child psychology?
OOPH. I felt that. How often do we confuse an intelligent child’s giftedness with maturity? Very often, I should think. Do we live in a culture of parentification and detachment, then? It looks that way. I wonder if rabid individualism has weakened natural attachment lines? It seems myopic to teach children to see their Self as so fixed they need to subject their body to damaging hormone therapy and disfiguring surgery to affirm that Self. Yet here we are, talking about that very phenomenon.
Um, the Self lives in a physical body—a person is the fusion of the Self and the physical body. How on earth does the Self get affirmed if we profoundly damage that physical body to force it into a shape not compatible for it’s design? This seems like saying you want to give your house an upgrade by removing a load-bearing wall and replacing the electrical wiring with dental floss. Good luck with that.
I came across a paper comparing parenting styles across cultures. Eastern cultures focus on secondary control to teach children self regulation whereas western cultures focus on primary control. Meaning the west teaches children individuality - to see themselves as fixed objects around which the world revolves - whilst the east teaches children collectivism - to see themselves as part of a larger whole with which they must balance and harmonise.
Western child-rearing emphasises independence, assertiveness, and self-realization, eastern child-rearing emphasises obedience, self-control, and cooperation. Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future, writes David Mitchell in Cloud Atlas. Western children learn to express negative emotions such as anger to develop self-assertiveness and eastern children learn to mitigate their negative emotions to preserve inner harmony.
Remember in my last letter I quoted ChayaLeah from
we think too much about our feelings? Uh-huh we do. What would it look like if we decided to feel our feelings, rather than make up stories about them? How do we think we empower children by teaching them they are highly specialised fixed objects? Didn’t Darwin say those who adapt survive? So doesn’t it follow that teaching kids malleability would better ensure their resilience, and therefore survival?The same study compared teaching self-regulation in children across culture— following instructions and learning cooperation versus recognition of one’s own face in the mirror. And it also compared maintenance of self-regulation—community service + involvement + continued close attachment to the family versus emphasis on individuality, separateness, uniqueness. Strong early parental attachment fosters the connection required for parents to influence their kids. Our north american culture of parental detachment seems to work well for predators, and I don’t mean sexual predators here, they have always been a threat. I mean social predators, I mean opportunists who know that the most effective “marketing strategy” involves targeting the kids. So we really hate kids, we are cutting off their best chances by forcing this unnatural detachment of parents from kids.
How are we teaching kids to live in their bodies when we tell them their body is the enemy we must put down with opposite-sex hormones + amputations + genital mutilation? It baffles me, it defies logic and it defies physical material reality. How are we teaching kids tolerance when we are telling them they have the entitlement to override everyone’s boundaries and needs and force their own?
So, how did we get here? To use a metaphor — I think we got here because messianism got in the car, the Original Sin + dualism model, and dropped us off at the party, gender roles and the cult of hyper sexuality, and we are hopelessly lost at this ridiculous party of subversion and chaos.
