'The latest research on the effects of environment and genetics on personality...'

'...what mattered to the babies was if the environment was consistent before and after birth. That is, the babies who did best were those who either had mothers who were healthy both before and after birth, and those whose mothers were depressed before birth and stayed depressed afterward. What slowed the babies' development was changing conditions -- a mother who went from depressed before birth to healthy after or healthy before birth to depressed after. -- In the long term, having a depressed mother could lead to neurological problems and psychiatric disorders, Sandman says. In another study, his team found that older children whose mothers were anxious during pregnancy, which often is co morbid with depression, have differences in certain brain structures. It will take studies lasting decades to figure out exactly what having a depressed mother means to a child's long-term health. "We believe that the human fetus is an active participant in its own development and is collecting information for life after birth," Sandman says. "It's preparing for life based on messages the mom is providing."'

'One thing we know about anxiety and depression is that they correlate significantly with people's sense of control or lack of control over their own lives. People who believe that they are in charge of their own fate are less likely to become anxious or depressed than are those who believe that they are victims of circumstances beyond their control. -- #Shift Toward Extrinsic Goals, away from Intrinsic Goals: Twenge's own theory is that the generational increases in anxiety and depression are related to a shift from "intrinsic" to "extrinsic" goals. Intrinsic goals are those that have to do with one's own development as a person – such as becoming competent in endeavors of one's choosing and developing a meaningful philosophy of life. Extrinsic goals, on the other hand, are those that have to do with material rewards and other people's judgments. They include goals of high income, status, and good looks. Twenge cites evidence that young people today are, on average, more oriented toward extrinsic goals and less oriented toward intrinsic goals than they were in the past. For example, a poll conducted annually of college freshmen shows that most students today list "being well off financially" as more important to them than "developing a meaningful philosophy of life," while the reverse was true in the 1960s and '70s. The shift toward extrinsic goals could well be related causally to the shift toward an External locus of control. We have much less personal control over achievement of extrinsic goals than intrinsic goals. I can, through personal effort, quite definitely improve my competence, but that doesn't guarantee that I'll get rich. I can, through spiritual practices or philosophical delving, find my own sense of meaning in life, but that doesn't guarantee that people will find me more attractive or lavish praise on me. To the extent that my emotional sense of satisfaction comes from progress toward intrinsic goals I can control my emotional wellbeing. To the extent that my satisfaction comes from others' judgments and rewards, I have much less control over my emotional state. -- My hypothesis is that the generational increases in Externality, extrinsic goals, anxiety, and depression are all caused largely by the decline, over that same period, in opportunities for free play and the increased time and weight given to schooling. By depriving children of opportunities to play on their own, away from direct adult supervision and control, we are depriving them of opportunities to learn how to take control of their own lives. We may think we are protecting them, but in fact we are diminishing their joy, diminishing their sense of self-control, preventing them from discovering and exploring the endeavors they would most love, and increasing the chance that they will suffer from anxiety, depression, and various other mental disorders.'

'When people in non-Western cultures hear about the Western practice of putting young children to bed in separate rooms from themselves, often without even an older sibling to sleep with, they are shocked. "The poor little kids!" they say. "How could their parents be so cruel?" Those who are most shocked are people in hunter-gatherer societies, for they know very well why young children protest against being left alone in the dark. Until a mere 10,000 years ago we were all hunter-gatherers. We all lived in a world where any young child, alone, in the dark, would have been a tasty snack for nighttime predators. The monsters under the bed or in the closet were real ones, prowling in the jungle or savannah, sniffing around, not far from the band's encampment. A grass hut was not protection, but the close proximity of an adult, preferably many adults, was protection. In the history of our species, infants and young children who grew frightened and cried out to elicit adult attention when left alone at night were more likely to survive to pass on their genes to future generations than were children who placidly accepted their fate. In a hunter-gatherer culture only a crazy person or an extremely negligent person would leave a small child alone at night, and at the slightest protest from the child, some adult would come to the rescue. When your child screams at being put to bed alone at night, your child is not trying to test your will! Your child is screaming, truly, for dear life.'

'"The Hand That Rocks The Cradle Is The Hand That Rules The World" is a poem by William Ross Wallace that praises motherhood as the preeminent force for change in the world.'

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

'A study published this week in the journal Pediatrics found that, within seconds of their birth, babies have the ability to sense whether their parents are losers. "From the moment they open their eyes, newborns can tell if their mother had no other options and was forced to settle for their father, or if their father is a sad sack who has no friends and gets drunk on a single glass of chardonnay," said researcher Dr. Stuart Lindstrom, explaining that despite their blurry vision, infants can still identify basic loser body types, and have specialized olfactory receptors allowing them to detect the odor of failure. "In fact, we've determined that as early as the second trimester, a fetus picks up on the income and social standing of its mother via the umbilical cord." The study also concluded that the screams of newborns stem from the sudden realization they will be stuck with their loser parents for at least 18 years.'

'Roughhousing requires your child to adapt quickly to unpredictable situations. One minute they might be riding you like a horse and the next they could be swinging upside-down. According to evolutionary biologist Marc Bekoff in his book Wild Justice, the unpredictable nature of roughhousing actually rewires a child’s brain by increasing the connections between neurons in the cerebral cortex, which in turn contributes to behavioral flexibility. Additionally, roughhousing helps develop your children’s grit and stick-to-itiveness. You shouldn’t just let your kids “win” every time when you roughhouse with them. Whether they’re trying to escape from your hold or run past you in the hallway, make them work for it. Playtime is a fun and safe place to teach your kids that failure is often just a temporary state and that victory goes to the person who keeps at it and learns from his mistakes. Roughhousing builds social intelligence ... they learn to tell the difference between play and actual aggression. Roughhousing also teaches children about taking turns and cooperation. You might not recognize it, but when you horse around with your kids, you’re often taking part in a give-and-take negotiation where the goal is to make sure everyone has fun. Also, roughhousing teaches our children about the appropriate use of strength and power. As I mentioned earlier, when we roughhouse with our kids, we often take turns with the dominant role. Because we’re so much bigger and stronger, we have to handicap ourselves. The implicit message to your child when you hold back is: “Winning isn’t everything. You don’t need to dominate all the time. There’s strength in showing compassion on those weaker than you.”'

'School-age children whose mothers nurtured them early in life have brains with a larger hippocampus, a key structure important to learning, memory and response to stress. ...researchers conducted brain scans on 92 of the children who had had symptoms of depression or were mentally healthy when they were studied as preschoolers. The imaging revealed that children without depression who had been nurtured had a hippocampus almost 10 percent larger than children whose mothers were not as nurturing. "For years studies have underscored the importance of an early, nurturing environment for good, healthy outcomes for children," Luby says. "But most of those studies have looked at psychosocial factors or school performance. This study, to my knowledge, is the first that actually shows an anatomical change in the brain, which really provides validation for the very large body of early childhood development literature that had been highlighting the importance of early parenting and nurturing. Having a hippocampus that's almost 10 percent larger just provides concrete evidence of nurturing's powerful effect."'

"Attachment is impossible under such circumstances."

'The people who read books like Chuas hoping to learn something start from a wrong motivation: they aren't looking to raise better kids, they are looking to be better parents. If you don't see how those are different, your kids do. "From 3 to 12, kids are mainly animals," he says. "Their humanity and social nature still aren't complete. So you have to use Pavlovian methods to educate them." This is where all the enlightened humanists in the audience are supposed to freak-out. Kids aren't animals, individuality is important, blah blah, but what's important is the word Pavlovian: his violence is not random, it is not surprising. I could be wrong, but it appears from these articles that Xiao doesn't beat his kids into Peking U out of anger, but out of a system. Not saying corporal punishment is the way to go, but I am 100% positive it isn't the beating itself that molded the kids, but the very clear rules and consequences, which requires an awesome level of energy, vigilance, and self-control on the parent's part, which is why most people who beat their kids only get high school dropouts. Parenting requires consistency.'

'Early relationships alter our brains before we learn to speak. As you learn together with your earliest caregivers how to regulate your emotions, your brain will be making lots of new pathways that are necessary for you to learn to become comfortable with your emotions and manage them for yourself. Your earliest bonds also serve as a model for all subsequent relationships, teaching you to form nourishing, enriching, and mutually beneficial relationships throughout your life. The bulk of these neural connections happen before you are two years old. In other words, much of the wiring up that determines how you respond emotionally and conduct relationships, happened pre-verbally. The logic, reason and language part of your brain develops so slowly that most of the patterns for how you feel are formed before you can reason with yourself and others.'

"The most destructive thing that we've allowed to have an expectation of each other is that we will instantly respond to each other ... and almost without thinking." "If you need to be constantly responding, you can only answer in little bits that really show no thought." -- "The kid comes out of the school, is desperately trying to make eye contact with the parent, and the parent is sitting there glued to the phone..." "This generation has grown up seeing technology as the competition. I don't think they're going to raise their children this way."

"Essentially what the relationship is an interactive mechanism for generating very high levels of positive affect. And the positive affect is ... enjoyment/joy and interest/excitement."

'How much longer do I have to bang every emotionally distant man in a 12-mile radius before I come to terms with the man who I unconsciously picked up demented ideas of intimacy and sexuality from? Come on already! So my dad left when I was 19, ran off with a girl who could have been my sister, and blamed the whole thing on me through a series of passive-aggressive letters over the next several years. It's not that complicated! Sleep around a lot in your mid-20s, experience an epiphanic moment of clarity, put to rest your lifelong male-acceptance issues, and move on already! People do it every day, right? But I've nailed plenty of dudes (and I mean plenty), and where's it gotten me? Unresolvable Sexual Tension City, that's where! Even when I let coworkers finger me in the back of the supply closet, that crazy old hollow feeling won't go away. And it's not through lack of effort on my part, that's for sure! I've got a rash on my ass from all the carpet burns!'

'The study, experts say, suggests that men’s bodies evolved hormonal systems that helped them commit to their families once children were born. It also suggests that men’s behavior can affect hormonal signals their bodies send, not just that hormones influence behavior. And, experts say, it underscores that mothers were meant to have child care help. In the new study, said Christopher Kuzawa, a co-author and Northwestern anthropologist, having higher testosterone to start with “actually predicted that they’re more likely to become fathers,” possibly because men with higher testosterone were more assertive in competing for women or appeared healthier and more attractive. But regardless of initial testosterone level, after having children, the hormone plummeted. Scientists say this suggests a biological trade-off, with high testosterone helping secure a mate, but reduced testosterone better for sustaining family life.'

'...the attention that we receive as babies impacts on our brain structures. Babies rely on their carers to soothe distress and restore equilibrium. -- ...children who lived with a depressed parent in infancy are more reactive to stress later in life; children who lived with a depressed parent later in childhood showed no such effect. This makes sense if we remember that the stress response is probably being "set" like a thermostat very early in life. It also makes sense in evolutionary terms to have newborn brains which are unfinished, because they can be adapted to fit the needs of the social group. In effect, they can be programmed to behave in ways that suit their community. However, it is a risky strategy. In a harsh environment, a baby's cries may be ignored, or he may be punished for being distressed. This is likely to produce an individual who becomes, in his turn, relatively insensitive and prone to aggression – and this could be useful in a tense, hostile community.'

From the book: 'A baby cries out. It is frightened, hungry, dirty or cold. The baby wants comfort, a parent and some human contact, an adult's strength, power and protection. The initial call is in Second Circle and expects and deserves a Second Circle response. If there is no response the cry will get more distraught and desperate, and will move into Third Circle. If there is still no response, the baby will withdraw into a detached First Circle. A genuine cry should have a genuine response. Is that too much to ask? The parent won't become the baby's slave, which is the parent's fear. Actually, the unanswered call will eventually come back to haunt parents and society. If appropriately answered, the baby will stop crying out, knowing they will be answered. In this way they develop confidence and self-esteem which allow them to stay present to and in the world. Confidence is a manifestation of entitlement and entitlement starts with the answered call.'

'The shocking science about the long-term effects of corporal punishment, essential viewing for every parent.' -- "Changing from how you were parented to how you are parenting is one of the most difficult – and essential – things in the world."

'Early experiences with caregivers gradually give rise to a system of thoughts, memories, beliefs, expectations, emotions, and behaviours about the self and others. This system, called the "internal working model of social relationships", continues to develop with time and experience. Internal models regulate, interpret and predict attachment-related behaviour in the self and the attachment figure. As they develop in line with environmental and developmental changes, they incorporate the capacity to reflect and communicate about past and future attachment relationships. They enable the child to handle new types of social interactions; knowing, for example, that an infant should be treated differently from an older child, or that interactions with teachers and parents share characteristics. This internal working model continues to develop through adulthood, helping cope with friendships, marriage and parenthood, all of which involve different behaviours and feelings.'

'The attempt to escape from feelings has its origins in a babyhood in which the baby's feelings have not been identified and responded to in a contingent way. You can only change emotional processing by doing it differently. When a particular feeling is aroused, neurotransmitters are released from the subcortex and old neural networks automatically become activated to manage this state of arousal in the old way. If your therapist accepts your feelings, they do not have to be denied by the neural network which would normally do that, or acted upon by the neural network that would normally respond in that way. The therapist's acceptance allows a mental space to reflect on the feelings and consider how to respond afresh. Whilst the feelings are alive and active, so too are the stress hormones which will assist new (higher brain) cortisol synapses to be made in response to the sub-cortical signals. Together with the therapist, new networks can be developed.'

'They didn't rush because the kid can't handle pain, but because they can't tolerate the kid's pain.' -- 'I know this is going to run me afoul of every comfy-chair therapist in America, but there is no reason to write anything down, ever. You're not a detective, you're not looking for inconsistencies or lost time, the patient is there for answers and the structure of your relationship is itself the answers. We can discuss good and bad technique later; the point here is to establish that these two people are creating "environments" that are safe for themselves. It may also be safe for the patient, it may be labeled as "for the patient" but I hope it is evident that the real impetus is the comfort of the therapist. With me so far? Ok: that's also how they parent.'

'The root of statism is our view of children.' -- "Parents have no clue why they're telling their children to do stuff – it's just cultural photocopying over and over – and children get that very quickly. And children are hurt by that. Children are very hurt by their parents being revealed as not only false gods but very often as devils claiming to be good. The merciless light of the curious and optimistic child – the skeptical but not nihilistic child – that irradiates most adult souls. That combination of curiosity and optimism, questioning rationality – and trust... [parents] feel that children are aggressing against them... And so they have to convince the child that questions are evil... and fundamentally, it's because the child can see the truth that the parents don't want them to see. ...all of the parent's hypocrisies and falsehoods become clear and parents can't handle that and so they project all of their falsehoods and manipulation and corruption onto the child..."

'...the history of humanity is founded upon the abuse of children. Most historical families once practiced infanticide, erotic beating and incest. Most states sacrificed and mutilated their children to relieve the guilt of adults. Even today, we continue to arrange the daily killing, maiming, molestation and starvation of children through our social, military and economic activities. I would like to summarize here some of the evidence I have found as to why child abuse has been humanity's most powerful and most successful ritual, why it has been the cause of war and social violence, and why the eradication of child abuse and neglect is the most important social task we face today. -- The main psychological mechanism that operates in all child abuse involves using children as what I have termed poison containers – receptacles into which adults project disowned parts of their psyches, so they can control these feelings in another body without danger to themselves.'

'...the human brain at birth is not fully developed. The abilities a person's brain develops depend on experiences in the first three years of life. Studies on abandoned and severely mistreated Romanian children revealed striking lesions in certain areas of the brain and marked emotional and cognitive insufficiencies in later life. According to very recent neurobiological findings, repeated traumatization leads to an increased release of stress hormones that attack the sensitive tissue of the brain and destroy existing neurons. Other studies of mistreated children have revealed that the areas of the brain responsible for the "management" of emotions are 20 to 30 percent smaller than in normal persons. In the absence of positive factors, affection and helping witnesses, the only course open to the mistreated individual is the disavowal of personal suffering and the idealization of cruelty with all its devastating after-effects.'

'...what of our post-modern society, in which father are very often unknown, or simply absent? Then there is no father with whom to have an Oedipal conflict, and no resulting internalization of the superego. ...the ego never forms, and the socialization—the internalization of the Oedipal conflict between desire and reality–never takes place. ...when the superego is not internalized, it is sought externally. The individual opens themselves to messages from outside, from the media, peer groups, gangs, tribes etc. to serve this ego function. And the group seeks a master to impose the reality principle. They seek a leader. The leader imposes the ego, functions as the ego for the half-formed members of the group, navigating their collective desires through the rules and limitations of reality and society. ...structure and authority have given way to immediate gratification, peer pressure, and groupthink.'

'The Poll-Parrot stage is the one in which learning by heart is easy and, on the whole, pleasurable; whereas reasoning is difficult and, on the whole, little relished. At this age, one readily memorizes the shapes and appearances of things; enjoys the mere accumulation of things. The Pert age, which follows this, is characterized by contradicting, liking to "catch people out" (especially one's elders)... The Poetic age is popularly known as the "difficult" age. It is self-centered; it yearns to express itself; it is restless and tries to achieve independence; and, with good luck and good guidance, it should show the beginnings of creativeness; a reaching out towards a synthesis of what it already knows, and a deliberate eagerness to know and do some one thing in preference to all others. Now it seems to me that the layout of the Trivium adapts itself with a singular appropriateness to these three ages: Grammar to the Poll-Parrot, Dialectic to the Pert, and Rhetoric to the Poetic age.'

'Stefan Molyneux: "Thinkers who ignore childhood and its effects on the psyche, and then say they want to reform society, are exactly the same as communists or socialists who ignore the workings of the free-market and say they want to optimize economics – it can’t be done and it’s just a kind of scam."'

'The mistreated and neglected child is completely alone in the darkness of confusion and fear. Surrounded by arrogance and hatred, robbed of its rights and its speech, deceived in its love and its trust, disregarded, humiliated, mocked in its pain, such a child is blind, lost, and pitilessly exposed to the power of ignorant adults. It is without orientation and completely defenseless. Its whole being would like to shout out its anger, give voice to its feeling of outrage, call for help. But that is exactly what it may not do. All its normal reactions, the reactions with which nature has endowed it to help it survive, remain blocked. Thus, the healthy impulse to protest against inhumanity has to be suppressed. Some therapists fear this truth. By refusing to forgive, I give up my illusions. A mistreated child cannot live without them. But a grown-up therapist must be able to manage it. His or her patients should be able to ask: "Why should I forgive, when no one is asking me to?"'

'Children who are given love, respect, understanding, kindness, and warmth will naturally develop different characteristics from those who experience neglect, contempt, violence or abuse, and never have anyone they can turn to for kindness and affection. Such absence of trust and love is a common denominator in the formative years of all the dictators I have studied. The result is that these children will tend to glorify the violence inflicted upon them and later to take advantage of every possible opportunity to exercise such violence... Children learn by imitation. Their bodies do not learn what we try to instill in them by words but what they have experienced physically. Battered, injured children will learn to batter and injure others; sheltered, respected children will learn to respect and protect those weaker than themselves. Children have nothing else to go on but their own experiences. Evil exists. But it is not something that some people are born with.'

'[Parents] have been prevented from loving their children as a result of the injuries inflicted on them in their own childhood. We can learn from them, and if we do, we will cease to idealize motherly love at all costs. Then we will no longer be forced to analyze infants as screaming monsters. Instead we will begin to understand their inner worlds, to grasp the loneliness and impotence of children growing up with parents that deny them any kind of loving communication because they themselves have never experienced it. Then we will recognize in the screams of the infant a logical and justified response to the usually unconscious but none the less factual and real cruelties of the parents, which have yet to be appreciated as such by society. And the worst thing is that children have to learn to see [parental cruelty] as quite normal behavior because they know nothing else. Children always love their parents unstintingly, whatever they do to them.'

("But Mommy said I was worth customized content. Mommy customized me exactly to *her* specifications.") -- Bad parenting meets world -- http://youtu.be/P81bb0Tzwbo

'The spectacular economic and political progress of much of the world in the 20th century was an achievement of the improvement in childrearing modes of the families that reduced child abuse, as more caring mothers began to give their children love and respect, plus were also able to reduce the jealousy of their spouses so fathers could be closer to their children. Yet because most 20th century families still abused their children, the improvement in industrialization during the century produced periodic "growth panics" during which adults re-experienced their parental abuse, and men went on more and more destructive wars to restore their masculinity and "get respect" from other nations. Plus of course the technological improvements soon led to a tremendous increase in the ability to kill others during wars, so that wars in the 20th century killed over 180 million people, mostly civilians—culminating in the current global-annihilation possibilities of nuclear nations.'

'What about the puncher's mom? Surely she is not at fault? Well... her mistake, a crucial one, is she allowed herself to get blindsided by the Angry Mom's Cognitive Kill Switch – hijacking a discussion and making it a criticism of the person's identity instead of the actual issue. Rather than repeated I'm sorrys and he's not that kind of boy what she should have said is, "why are you yelling at me? I didn't punch your kid." That changes the whole movie, now we have a different main character. Now Angry Mom is put on notice: back off and let's talk rationally, or confirm to me you are a nut and face the consequences. But her reflex – a product of the generational forces to which she was exposed – was to square off and get defensive: my kid wouldn't do that, my kid wouldn't lie. She accepted Angry Mom's premise – the premise of Gen N – that the kid is only her, and so she took the Angry Mom's attack as an attack on her directly, which it was, because that's the premise.'

On statism: "Don't take candy from strangers." -- On truth: "People have a very strong desire for the truth. Children want to know the truth about everything. Truth = Punishment. We are adverse to truth simply because we are adaptive mammals who have been punished [as children] for asking about the truth." -- On freedom: "If we want people to not hunger after power, if we want people to not aggress against others, if we want people to be able think and reason without the static of prior abuse clogging up their mental tubes, then we need to find ways in which we can promote the peaceful and positive raising of children."

'Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman, in a lively tag-team, expose 4 facts that parents never, ever admit -- and why they should.'

Gisted/Quoted -- The problem with the idea that men are defective and that women are just better is the basic issue that nobody talks about: that men are raised by women. Women give birth to men; women raise men; and then if men turn out bad, all you get from feminists as an explanation is propaganda about "the patriarchy". There is no greater power disparity – there is no greater victimization – than that which is possible between a mother and a child. Power disparities in society are no more prevalent than the relationship between the mother and the child. That is something which is absolutely unspoken of in society. There is no possibility for society as a whole to look at female violence directly and straight on in the face. Men are raised by women and it's not just women in the home, it's women in the daycares, women in the primary schools. If you want to get to the root of violence and corruption in society, you've got to look at the mothers.'

"You don't just come up with a soldier out of nowhere. It takes incredible preparation to turn a wonderful baby into a willing killer. This is not something The State is responsible for; this is something parents are responsible for; this is something communities are responsible for. And given that this all has to happen before the age of 3 or 4 and that women are the primary care-givers, it can be said that the cause of war is mothers. The army just picks up the broken detritus left behind by bad parenting. ...to create a soldier you have to kill the capacity of empathy... empathy develops within the first year or three of life... and it is in that phase that the soldier is born. He *was* trying to help people. Absolutely. He was trying to help his mother avoid her own evil by acting it out himself. What we don't see is the mothers because of the enormous propaganda around motherhood. Wherever you see pictures of brutality, see the ghosts of brutal matriarchy in the background."

"The cycle of life is that children are inconvenient when they're very young, and parents are inconvenient when they're very old."

'I'll explain what's wrong with her thinking by asking you one simple question, and when I ask it you will know the answer immediately. Then, if you are a parent, in the very next instant your mind will rebel against this answer, it will defend itself against it -- "well, no, it's not so simple--" but I want to you to ignore this counterattack and focus on how readily, reflexively, instinctively you knew the answer to my question. Are you ready to test your soul? Here's the question: what is the point of all this? -- Take a step outside the article. This is a woman explaining why Chinese mothers are superior. The thing is, I don't know any Chinese mothers who would ever talk about their families this way, publicly, describe their parenting, brag about it. Never. And then you see it: Amy Chua isn't a Chinese mother, she's an American mother. She had a Chinese mother, but now she's a first generation American... And what do Americans do? They brand themselves. SuperSinoMom.'

"When you've got a gun to your head, morality is irrelevant. The only people who are perfectly guilty are the intellectuals. The intellectuals who have the intelligence, the ability and the language skills to introspect and to deal with their own childhoods, and to stop projecting their own trauma onto the world as 'philosophical' systems. They're trying to normalize their own childhood experience by projecting it as a universal ideal thus inflicting it upon other people. And that's part of the rage that abused people have towards those who never tried to help them. My whole struggle as a communicator about family history, if you wanted to sum it up in a nutshell, is to get you to stop normalizing your histories. To stop you from thinking it wasn't so bad. To stop you from thinking it could have been worse. To stop you thinking that your parents did the best they could. Because we need to denormalize our experiences relative to reality, not relative to social norms."

'Perhaps the most controversial modification is that self-actualization no longer appears on the pyramid at all. At the top of the new pyramid are three evolutionarily critical motives that Maslow overlooked: mate acquisition, mate retention and parenting. The researchers state that while self-actualization is interesting and important, it isn't an evolutionarily fundamental need. Instead, many of the activities that Maslow labeled as self-actualizing reflect more biologically basic drives to gain status, which in turn serves the goal of attracting mates. "Among human aspirations that are most biologically fundamental are those that ultimately facilitate reproduction of our genes in our children's children. For that reason, parenting is paramount." Kenrick adds, for humans reproduction is not just about sex and producing children. It's also about raising those children to the age at which they can reproduce as well. Consequently, parenting sits atop the revamped pyramid.'

How many fingers, Winston?: "My position that religiosity is fundamentally child abuse because it is the aggressive infliction of empty and bigoted conclusions upon the minds of children – and you do not have the right as a parent to inflict your bigotries and preferences and faith onto your children. You DON'T own their minds."

'...parents are the child's most lethal enemy, because inside the parents' psyches lie a powerful, dangerous alter that is their own parent's death wishes toward the child. "To appease the mother she must destroy the child, but the child is a love object too. To preserve the child she must renounce mother... She is trapped in a desperate conflict: kill mother and preserve the baby or kill the baby and preserve the mother." Mothers in the past routinely chose killing the baby, by the billions, driven to it by her devil alter (her own destructive mother image in her head). Women since the beginning of time have felt that their children "really" belonged to God-a symbol of the grandmother, and that "the child was a gift that God had every right to reclaim." When killing her child, therefore, the mother was simply acting as her own mother's avenger. What helped the dissociation was such beliefs as denying that the babies were human ... during most of history...'

'The act of having a child is, "the most forbidden act of self-realization, the ultimate and least pardonable offense," and brings with it inevitable fears of maternal retribution for one's success and individuation. Mothers in antiquity hallucinated female demons were actually grandmother alters in the mothers' heads, so jealous of their having babies that they sucked out their blood and otherwise murdered them. All early societies invented sacrificial rituals wherein babies were tortured and killed to honor maternal goddesses ... vowing that, "although Mommy wants to kill me for having sex and making a baby, if I kill the baby instead [usually the first-born was sacrificed], I can then go on having sex and other babies with less fear of retribution." Child sacrifice was the foundation of all great religions, depicted in myths as absolutely necessary to save the world from "chaos," that is, from terrible inner annihilation anxiety as punishment for success.'

'...mothers earlier in history mainly saw their children as their own screaming, needy, dominating mothers-forming a "hypersymbiotic relationship" wherein the child is expected to make up for all the love missing in the mother's own life, cure her post-partum depression and restore her vitality. The need to shut up the mother's angry voice in babies lead to their being tied up, neglected and beaten. It is only when one realizes their own severe neglect and abuse and the extent to which their babies are poison containers for their feelings that one can begin to understand why mothers in the past routinely killed, neglected and abused their children. What is miraculous – and what is the source of most social progress – is that mothers throughout history have slowly and successfully struggled with their fear and hatred with so little help from others and have managed to evolve the loving, empathic childrearing one can find in many families around the world today.'

'The problem with having only women raising children is that parenting is an emotionally demanding task, requiring considerable maturity, and throughout history girls have grown up universally despised. When a girl was born, said the Hebrews, "the walls wept." Japanese lullabies sang, "If it's a girl, stamp on her." In medieval Muslim cultures "a grave used to be prepared ... if the new-born was a female she was immediately thrown by her mother into the grave. Girls from birth have everywhere been considered full of dangerous pollution-the projected hatred of adults – and were therefore more often killed, exposed, abandoned, malnourished, raped and neglected than boys. To expect horribly abused girls to magically become mature, loving caretakers when as teenagers they go to live as virtual slaves in a strange family simply goes against the conclusions of every clinical study showing the disastrous effects of trauma upon the ability to mother.'

'Most of the time, parents simply reinflict upon their children what had been done to them in their own childhood. The production of developmental variations can occur only in the silent, mostly unrecorded decisions by parents to go beyond the traumas they themselves endured. It happens each time a mother decides not to use her child as an erotic object, not to hit it when it cries. It happens each time a mother encourages her child's explorations and independence, each time she overcomes her own despair and neediness and gives her child a bit more of the love and empathy she herself didn't get. These private moments are rarely recorded for historians, and social scientists have completely overlooked their role in the production of cultural variation, yet they are nonetheless the ultimate sources of the evolution of the psyche and culture. Childhood must therefore always first evolve before major social, cultural and economic innovation can occur.'

'The evolution of childhood mainly consists of parents slowly giving up killing, abandoning, mutilating, battering, terrorizing, sexually abusing and using their children for their own emotional needs and instead creating loving conditions for growth of the self. The psychogenic theory defines progress in evolution as increases in self awareness, freedom, human potential, empathy, love, trust, self control and a preponderance of conscious decisions rather than as an increase in technological, economic or political complexity. This means that some cultures on low technological levels could actually be further evolved in human terms than others that are more complex technologically and politically. The amount of time and resources any society devotes to its children's needs is far more likely to be an accurate index of its level of civilization than any of the anthropological indices of complexity or energy utilization. -- ...every expression of love toward children heals society...'

'In China before the tenth century A.D. men began to footbind little girls... This vicious anti-daughter emotional atmosphere extreme even for a time that was generally cruel and unfeeling towards daughters was obviously not conducive to mothers producing innovations in childrearing when the little girls grew up. Therefore China which was culturally ahead of the West in many ways at the time of the introduction of footbinding, became culturally and politically "frozen" until the twentieth century, when footbinding was stopped and boy-girl sex ratios in many areas dropped from 200/100 to near equality. The result was that whereas for much of its history China punished all novelty, during the twentieth century rapid cultural, political and economic evolution could resume. Japan, which shared much of Chinese culture but did not adopt footbinding of daughters, avoided the psychogenic arrest of China and could share in the scientific and industrial revolution as it occurred in the West.'

'#6. the main locus of epigenetic variations is the slow evolution of the individual conscious self that looks forward to its future and creates its own extended present, a self that evolves mainly through the growth of love in the parent-child relationship; #7. the rate of innovation in cultural evolution is determined by the conditions for parental love and therefore increase in individual self-assertion in each society, all cultural evolutions being preceded by a childrearing evolution; and #8. the locus of psychogenic evolution has historically been affected far more by maternal than paternal influence – indeed, entirely maternal in the crucial first nine months of life – rather than males and females each contributing half of the genetic information as occurs in neo-Darwinian evolution. -- ...it it has mainly been the mothers who have produced epigenetic novelty; so to discover the laws of cultural evolution one must "follow the mothers" through history.'

'#2. vehicles of transmission include neuronal groups in the brains of individual parents and children, not solely genes in the sexual organs of parents; #3. the selection of variations is accomplished through changes in a very narrow part of the human environment—the family, the main organizer of emotional symbols, particularly the mother—rather than simply through changes in the ecology; #4. preservation of emergent variations in some individuals is often prevented from being swamped by the less developed childrearing practices of the rest of the culture via the psychogenic pump effects of migration; #5. limitations to emergent variations (psychogenic devolution) occurs either because of conditions adverse to childrearing such as wars, plagues or droughts—or because sudden increased social freedom for adults creates excessive growth panic, anxieties which are turned against children as poison containers, thereby producing devolution in childrearing in a portion of a given society...'

'The psychogenic theory of evolution is based not upon Spencer and Darwin's "survival of the fittest" products of the most ruthless parents but upon the "survival of the most innovative and cooperative" products of the most loving parents. The processes of historical evolution, based upon the very slow growth of love and cooperation, are therefore the exact opposite from those of neo-Darwinian natural selection, based overwhelmingly upon conflict and competition. They include: #1. The production of variations through psychogenesis is by creating through more love different early epigenetic environments – more advanced fetal and early childhood developmental paths – not through random genetic mutations and recombinations i.e., through variations in the structures of neuronal groups achieved during post-genetic development after inception, not through mutations in DNA prior to inception...'

'The central hypothesis of the psychogenic theory of historical evolution is that epigenetic neuronal variations originating in changing interpersonal relationships with caretakers rather than only through genetic variations originating through natural selections are the primary source of the evolution of the psyche and society. "The more evolved the species is the greater the role of epigenetic mechanisms in the structure of the nervous system." The fundamental evolutionary direction in Homo sapiens is towards better interpersonal relationships, not just the satisfaction of biological instincts. While adaptation to the natural environment is the key to genetic evolution, relationship to the human environment is the key to psychological evolution, to the evolution of "human nature." Psychogenesis is also the key to cultural evolution, since the range of evolution of childrearing in every society puts inevitable limits upon what it can accomplish politically, economically and socially.'

'Environments are also opportunities, not just straightjackets. ..."men reach out to embrace and create their ecosystems, rather than the reverse proposition." It is when early childrearing experiences are impaired that children are forced to reduce their behavioral flexibility and are therefore as adults unable to improve their environments and experience cultural stagnation. The secret as to why England and not France or Germany spawned the Industrial Revolution first goes back to England's advanced childrearing in its smaller medieval households, not to any ecological advantage. English political freedom, religious tolerance, industry and innovation were all psychoclass achievements, dependent upon childrearing evolution. The most important unsolved question in cultural evolution is therefore to explain the rate of innovation and adoption of new techniques of exploiting what resources exist – factors that depend crucially upon the local rate of evolution of childrearing.'

'All mourning is ambivalence. You're never too far from age 2, when your rage is magically powerful. ...the unconscious never forgets even the briefest of hates. Sometimes the guilt has a convenient narrative: caring for a cancer-ridden, demented parent who exhausted your physical and emotional resources, and then finally(!) dies. -- In most (all?) zombie movies, there is always a scene in which a main character confronts a loved one turned zombie. The rest of the previous zombie attacks are merely prelude to that one, specific, pivotal interaction. Quick, bolt the door, ambivalence is coming. Movies give the loved-one zombie a momentary flash of the old self – is it remembering, is it a trap, or are you seeing what you want to see? ...how the living negotiate that bit of mourning determines if they'll be able to put the dead to rest, or are going to have be tied to them forever.'

'...teens are attacking themselves in a public forum while making it look like they’re being attacked by someone else. I can’t tell you how many teens I’ve met who’ve been bullied by people at school who then turn to tell me about how their parents are absent – physically, mentally, or emotionally. And how often I hear teens complain about their parents trying to “fix” things by getting involved in all the wrong ways. Ways that make the dynamics around bullying so much worse. And it breaks my heart when I see teens respond to their parents’ helicoptering by engaging in self-harm practices through eating disorders or self-injury (“cutting”) as an attempt to gain some form of control over their lives. And it scares me to think that a digital equivalent is brewing, a form of digital self-harm where words can be as sharp as knives and are directed at oneself.'

'...anorexics are dominated by fantasies of persecution by the Dragon Mother, who "gives her child the impossible task of filling her ‘limitless void'" so the child fears being "eaten alive." To prevent this, when these children grow up and try to individuate, they refuse to eat so they won't have any flesh on them for the Dragon Mother to devour. Economic depressions evidence similar group-fantasies of devouring mommies; they are "economic anorexias" where nations inflict economic wounds upon themselves to limit consumption, become "all bones" and not tempt the devouring Dragon Mother. -- One of the best defenses against fears of maternal engulfment is merging with a Phallic Leader to restore potency. The most effective Phallic Leaders [are] "narcissistic personalities ... characterized by intense self-involvement ... lack of empathy ... oscillate between feelings of grandiosity and omnipotence ... inferiority and low self-esteem ... susceptible to feelings of shame and humiliation."'

'Political leaders are intuitively aware that their main function is to provide grandiose manic antidotes to growth panic. Every society acknowledges somehow its function as a defense against maternal engulfment. The more primitive the dominant childrearing mode of a society, the more growth panic must be defended against. The fears of abandonment that are triggered by social progress are felt by nations to be dramatized in their relationship with their leader, who is felt to be growing more and more distant and less and less able to provide grandiose manic projects to defend against their growing growth panic. The increasing impotence and weakness of the leader can be seen in the much-watched "ratings" he gets in his public opinion polls, which, after starting at a peak, usually decline during his term, unless revived by some particularly effective defensive manic action that the leader engages in. ...growing growth panic makes [leaders] seem more distant, less potent.'

'Societies whose institutions progress beyond their average childrearing mode become the most fearful and most violent, since their growth panic depends upon both the amount of early trauma and the amount of social progress. Thus unaccustomed Weimar freedoms lead directly to Auschwitz in a Germany formed by brutal childrearing. If there ever were a society where parents really helped their children to individuate, it would be a society without growth panics, without engulfment fears and without delusional enemies. The enemy is a poison container for groups failing to grapple with the problems of an emerging self. The enemy therefore inherits the imagery of their growth panic, so the enemy is usually described in terms of our childhood desires for growth. "They" (for instance, Jews) are imagined to be guilty of the pejorative form of every one of our desires: "greed" (all our wants); "lust" (our sexual desire); "pushiness" (our striving) and so on.'

'...children whose immature parents use them for their own emotional needs, and who reject them when the child's needs do not reflect their own, develop a "false self," or even multiple selves, which may conform to society but cannot improve upon it. ...social evolution depends upon the evolution of the viable self, which in turn is achieved solely through the slow and uneven evolution of childrearing. Traumas are defined as injuries to the private self, rather than just painful experiences, since non-painful injuries to the self such as parental genital manipulation or being told by a parent that they wished one would die are more traumatic to the self than, say, more painful accidents. Without a well-developed, enduring private self, people feel threatened by all progress, all freedom, all new challenges, and then experience annihilation anxiety, fears that the fragile self is disintegrating, since situations that call for self-assertion trigger memories of maternal abandonment.'

'Some thoughts on philosophical parenting...'

'A wise listener and long-time parent takes issue with a few of my philosophical parenting principles.'

'How to plan your life to be a great parent.'

'A brief history of childlessness - mine included.'

'What I admire about my daughter.'

'The plan for philosophical parenting, and the results so far.'

'Choice is quality.'

'Talking to tykes.'

'An examination of the root justifications for parental authority.'

'Reducing conflict by earning respect.'

'The genesis and evolution of humiliation.'

"Motherland" -- Growth Anxiety: Inter-generational warfare, perpetrated by elder generation upon the younger generation. Elders send youngers off to fight foreigner "enemies" whom the elders have displaced their anger at youngers onto. Elders need to attack and punish the youngers for their enjoyment of freedoms that cause the elders anxiety about new possibilities to separate from mother they feel they can't anger for risk of the losing all hope of their love. Unprocessed abandoment trauma. Reactionary against progress. Fear of freedom. Fear of challenging mommy's narcissistic needs. Religious/Statist savior fantasies. "God" wears a dress. -- Parents believe child is going to fill emptiness within them. Doesn't happen: Parent false-self narcissism vs Child true-self narcissism. Child experienced as "selfish", "defiant". Parental rage, abuse, abandonment. "Mommy doesn't love me; I'm bad. I upset Mommy. Mommy, please love me!" Love not possible. Hope springs eternal. The cycle repeats.

'...the first helping mode parents—where both mother and father unconditionally love their children and help them achieve their own goals and own real selves from birth—have only been around for a few decades in the most advanced societies. ...my own children and some of their helping psychoclass friends ... are far more empathic and therefore more concerned about others than we [the socializing psychoclass] ever were, and this has made them far more activist in their lives in trying to make a difference and change the world for the better, mostly involving themselves in local activities rather than global political changes. They lack all need for nationalism, wars and other grandiose projects, and in the organizations they start are genuinely non-authoritarian. A world that loves and trusts its children and encourages them to develop their unique selves will be a world of very different institutions, a world without wars, jails and other domination group-fantasies.'

'In addition to a take-off in economic progress, the modern psychoneurotic personality began to achieve levels of intimacy between men and women that were simply unknown to previous psychoclasses. When mothers were incestuous, it was not surprising that women were feared as sexually insatiable by men, and pederasty and rape were preferred to intimate, married love. All women were in danger of turning into dominating mothers and therefore had to be beaten; Homer’s word for ‘wife,’ damar, means "broken into submission." In addition, that women throughout so much of history were accused of being unable to restrain their sexual appetites was not just a patriarchal myth—it was more the result of the widespread rape of young girls being restaged later in life, just as so many raped girls today grow up to repeat their sexual assaults later on in prostitution or adultery.'

'...the new socializing psychoclass child-rearing, [caused] a greater increase in material prosperity in the past two centuries than in all the rest of human history. The reason for this astonishing progress is that science, technology and economic development depend more on investments in parenting than investments in equipment, since they crucially require an "exploring self" constructed from childhood. A few economists realize that the wealth of nations lies in the development of psyches more than in the investment of capital. ...those nations furthest behind today in economic development suffer from a severe underinvestment in families and children, not in capital equipment. The historical record is clear: early pioneers in science and technology first had to overcome their alter projections before they could discover how the world worked. Every invention had its origin in the evolution of the psyche; every exploration of nature was a dimension of the exploration of the self.'