What is to be done with parenting?

[kijuna]

Quite frankly we need an alternative to parents because parents more often than not regard their children as property and they are not as infallible as they wish they were.

What do you propose?

Comments

[spiritualcanvas]

l we certainly can't rely on the government for that... they'd brainwash them into obedient little soldiers.
Corporations? all they'd care about is profit.
There is the foster system, but they're stretched as it is and I can tell you from personal experience that it is not all that great.
Unless you can get a bunch of moral, loving, selfless people who want to raise thousands, if not millions of kids (i'm thinking a commune of sorts), it wouldn't work any other way, unfortunately. Like I said, the foster system fails at it as it is.

[rabbitwrath]

You seem to have a rather romanticised notion of 'parenthood'. Of course they aren't perfect. Who expects that?

You blithely talk about an 'alternative to parents'. I can't think of a single idea that doesn't give me the shivers.

[sergeantbrother]

I agree with this. Human beings are flawed, children will be raised by human being. Any alternative to parents that is devised will be run/administered/operated by the same imperfect people who become parents. Some parents suck and none are perfect, but generally nobody is going to care more about children that the parents and no government hired bureaucrats are going to seek the best interests of children like their parents will. Of course, there are exceptions, usually in the case of really terrible parents.

Parenting may be flawed but the alternative - the government taking away children from parents in order to indoctrinate them in what the state deems is best - is considerably worse. Probably the best solution to bad parenting to prevent people who are likely to be bad parents from having children.

[sergeantbrother]

Then you would just end up disappointing them when they found out that you didn't like to fling poop, eat bananas, or climb trees.

[sergeantbrother]

I for one don't mind marriage alternatives and communal ""parenting"".

I think that is an interesting idea and wouldn't bother me as long as it was voluntary. In a way, its kinda like it was in the past when people lived in more close knit communities around their extended families. I wonder though, when communal parenting is practiced if the biological parents likely have a greater role in the upbringing of their own children and play favorites even if they do so subconsciously.

[rabbitwrath]

Of course they would, and it shouldn't surprise anyone. But unless you're in a situation with scarcity - be it food or affection - every child will have enough even if parents favour their own. Favouritism doesn't imply the exclusion of all others.

I think communal childrearing is very healthy. The kids have a much wider social and support network, and the parents aren't under the stress of being the sole providers.

[sergeantbrother]

In many ways, I have exactly the opposite opinion. That parents, for all of their flaws, are the best people to raise and influence their children and that today other non-familial groups have way to much influence on children. From a young age kids are sent away to school where government employees teach them government-approved propaganda. Parents plop their kids in front of the TV for hours at a time where Hollywood and big corporations can teach them how to think and what to like and how to behave. Parents and local communities have never had less of an effect on children than they do now, and I think that its a bad thing.

[saxface]

I'm curious what you mean when you say that many parents regard their children as property. Could you expand on that?

In your opinion, what should parents be doing to make themselves infallible (if at all possible)?