Secrets Of A Maya Supermom: What Parenting Books Don’t Tell You

kawuli:

When you look around the world and throughout human history, the Western style of parenting is WEIRD. We are outliers. In
many instances, what we think is “necessary” or “critical” for
childhood is actually not present in any other cultures around the world
or throughout time.

Perhaps
most striking is how Western society segregates children from adults.
We have created two worlds: the kid world and the adult world. And we go
through great pains to keep them apart. […] But in many indigenous cultures,
children are immersed in the adult world early on, and they acquire
great skills from the experience. They learn to socialize, to do
household chores, cook food and master a family’s business, Lancy
writes.

Of course, just because a practice is ancient, “natural” or universal
doesn’t mean it’s necessarily better, especially given that Western kids
eventually have to live — and hopefully succeed — in a WEIRD society.
But widening the parenting lens, even just a smidgen, has a practical
purpose: It gives parents options.

One of the things I notice about having spent so much time out of the country is that a lot of the parenting discourse here just… makes no sense to me. Of course you should breastfeed whenever and wherever you damn well please? Of course whatever adult is around should take care of the kid who scraped her knee? Of course you shouldn’t expect mothers to stay home and take care of babies by themselves? Of course you should expect kids to run around in packs and play in the dirt more-or-less unsupervised? And yes, it’s more complicated in the US where you don’t usually have networks of friends and family living in close proximity, but maybe we should think about how we could make that happen more often? Or get to know some neighbors? And actually it is safer for kids here than it used to be, and safer than in a whole lot of other places, and while no, we shouldn’t be reckless or fatalistic about it, sometimes shit happens. There’s no way to 100% protect a kid from the whole world, and that shouldn’t even be the goal.

Anyway, one reason i don’t want kids is that I’ve internalized too many “poor country” parenting philosophies so while I wouldn’t let my 2-year-old play with machetes, I would totally get sent to jail for letting a 6-year-old walk to the store by herself because why on earth would that be a problem?

Secrets Of A Maya Supermom: What Parenting Books Don’t Tell You