A couple of weeks after my conversation with Diane from The Story Spot, I received an email from Nancy McDermott. Nancy is a fellow parent and fellow New Yorker, and had recently written an article for spiked.com called “Parenting: it’s not rocket science.” She thought I might find it interesting. More than interesting, I found it profoundly relevant to my situation.
She writes,
The idea that parenting is more complicated than ever before is an observation I hear often from my older relatives….
It’s not simply that parents are spending time deliberating things like whether their baby’s first food should be rice cereal or pears or avocado – once simple decisions that are now apparently terribly complicated. It’s the way we are deliberating. The whole language we use has undergone a transformation. We investigate. We research. We weigh the evidence.
Exactly what I had been doing almost every morning since Sally went back to work. Every claim I heard was subject to my scrutiny. Those that I thought were post-worthy would receive more attention. I would spend hours on each post, making certain my research was accurate, and that I had not fallen into any logical fallacies. Whenever CJ slept, I pulled out the Google and went to work.
Imagine my surprise when I read the next paragraph.
The highly technical language we use to discuss ordinary aspects of childrearing belies a collective lack of confidence.
Just two weeks before, I had an experience that I described as rare, and yet here it was happening again. Truth was revealing itself to me as I saw myself mirrored in McDermott’s writing.
We no longer feel comfortable justifying our beliefs about bringing up our children on the basis of ‘common sense’ or experience.
Sally and I live far away from most of our families. We cannot rely on the wisdom of our older relatives when confronted with commonplace parenting issues. We must find something else to help us with these questions. In the process of discovering our answers, we look back at our own childhoods and laugh uncomfortably at some of the things our parents did.
But, even with all the knowledge of the ages at our fingertips, modern parents can still only do what works for them. It is the same thing our parents did. McDermott writes,
The decisions we make as parents are reasonable: that is, they are the product of our judgement, synthesising what we know of the facts and our own child, what is expected of us by others and our own moral sensibilities, into a solution that is right for our individual situation.
Further, there is no Universal Infallible Theory of Parenting.
no scientific theory can ever serve as a guide to individual action. It’s like giving 10 people pots of yellow and blue paint and expecting them all to mix the same shade of green. It’s possible in the abstract, but the reality is far more complex.
Our parents had very little information. They relied on their pediatricians, their relatives, maybe Dr Spock, but mostly on their own judgment and common sense. And indeed, that is what McDermott thinks may be the greatest resource for modern parents as well.
It may be that the most ‘rational’ course of action for parents in these circumstances is to rely first and foremost on their own judgement and leave contesting science to the scientists.
Educating yourself is essential. But so many parenting issues have no definitive answers, only competing science. We can educate ourselves in the methods of science to assist us in evaluating all of the studies, but, honestly, how often does it change our behavior? I can think of at least 3 things we do with CJ that probably aren’t in accordance with the latest science.
Skepticism is a tool, an excellent tool, but it is not an answer. It helps us make decisions, but it cannot make them for us.
Next post: Skepticism Is a Tool
(cross-posted at domestic father)