>I've never understood why people look at parenting differently than any other skill you have to learn.
Parenting should be assimilated (learnt if you like) gradually over time from those around you. Humans IMO function best as family groups within a [close-knit] tribal system: under such a regime one learns from one's own parents, parents of peers, parents of younger children, older intra-generation peers and peers as parents as well as from looking after younger children as a child, looking after younger children as a teen, ... you get the idea.
Even under such a regime it's possible that you can learn "better" parenting from outside the group but you're going to be able to actually do it already just like learning to eat or prepare food.
The thing is we mostly don't have such a structure.
It seems to me that society is in death throes; that as populations burgeon so we value one another and interaction with one another less-and-less. But perhaps this is just me; I tend to be too introverted and pessimistic for my own good.
From experience I've seen that this "learn by your parents" is truly starting to be weak in the Western "thinking" countries. Poor countries on the other hand use this a lot.
I was raised in a post-communist Albania, and people weren't influenced by consumerism. It was a more warm-environment for the child to grow. My sister was raised in Italy (during 00'). Between me and my sister, assuming the same age, I would learn better from my parents then her.
"Parenting should be assimilated (learnt if you like) gradually over time from those around you. Humans IMO function best as family groups within a [close-knit] tribal system: under such a regime one learns from one's own parents, parents of peers, parents of younger children, older intra-generation peers and peers as parents as well as from looking after younger children as a child, looking after younger children as a teen, ... you get the idea."
This doesn't seem to work so well in today's society, as we tend to consider older generations' ideas of parenting "old-fashioned". Maybe rightfully so, maybe not... but discarding the experience from older generations means you have to relearn everything all over. In that context, it may be useful to have books (etc) on parenting that tell you, "do X", "don't do Y", maybe put in a contemporary context, so there's less of a stigma of being "out of date".
Parenting should be assimilated (learnt if you like) gradually over time from those around you. Humans IMO function best as family groups within a [close-knit] tribal system: under such a regime one learns from one's own parents, parents of peers, parents of younger children, older intra-generation peers and peers as parents as well as from looking after younger children as a child, looking after younger children as a teen, ... you get the idea.
Even under such a regime it's possible that you can learn "better" parenting from outside the group but you're going to be able to actually do it already just like learning to eat or prepare food.
The thing is we mostly don't have such a structure.
It seems to me that society is in death throes; that as populations burgeon so we value one another and interaction with one another less-and-less. But perhaps this is just me; I tend to be too introverted and pessimistic for my own good.