Talk:Parenting/Archive 1

What about bad parenting

This article seem dreadfully biased to my eyes. Nowhere is bad parenting covered. What about the people that sell their children to prostitution, mutilate their genitals, starve them to death, kill the female baby's in favor of the males? What about the parenting styles of the accidental parents that amuse themselves by beating their offspring in the privacy of their own home. What about the parents that marry off their children at the age of 6 (in case of Mohammeds favorite wifes parents for example) What about non-parenting (ignoring your children until the social services come)? What about adolesent parenting where children parent each other? What about the historical role of the mother/communal parent in prehistoric times when the role division was simpler and the male could be off hunting without the crying baby? What about reverse parenting where the child has to take care of the 'parent' because for example intoxication? I find this article biased, flowery and squirrely. Where does the article disclose the perils of parenting, and that the gov't uses children as weapons to force parents to do exactly as it says 'or else we'll take your children away' ? Is this supposed to be a 'best practices guide' or an encyclopedic article describing parenting, not in a sense of some book someone read, but in the sense that it covers what is known about child rearing?

Allso I feel that links to abortion and such should be added in the planning parenthood section and for holistic purposes the POV of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Kidding should be brought out.

Many a young girl have naive positions towards making new humans and they need to consider stopping the parenting before it even begins. Allso adoption and such should be included, as in my view creating DNA specific copies of yourselves on an overcrowded earth is quite narsistic, as there are plenty of baby's pre-made 'in the open market' --82.181.230.17 (talk) 14:07, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Format

Obviously this page needs to be expanded. There is nothing about parenting after kids go to school and I can only imagine the type of support parents whose kids are going through puberty might require. But the article wuill get long. I recommend separate articles for each stage of parenting (by age) and potentially be gender, if needed. This page would be a summary with links to those articles as per many history-related pages. Not being a parent I don't feel qualified, however, to actuall make these additions.

Disambiguation

This article focuses on human parenting. In line with the NPOV guideline this should not be the case here. I recommend writing this article as if it was a part of ethology, as parenting is a behavior, and the parent is the one which displays such behavior. -- kanzure 13:15, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

• I disagree. Proper linking procedure is to go to the most common form of definition and human parenting is going to be the most common requested form of parenting by far. The proper solution would therefore to be have a disambiguation note at the top of the Parenting article that takes you to some form of "Animal Parenting", assuming said page is ever made. See the discussion on the American Civil War as an example.

Bias?

The line "Where parents are unable or unwilling to provide this care" seems pretty judgmental. There are many other reasons why parents may not directly look after the children themselves, especially in some non-western societies.

Not sure about the specification of biological mother and father either given the number of children raised by either single parents, or the number of cases where the 'father' raising the child is not in fact the biological one.

Right. For example, a kibbutz is a wonderful system for raising children. They learn the existence of the group and how to get along in society at an early age. I've noticed that children raised in a kibbutz grow up to be good neighbors, and productive, helpful people. They aren't raised by their parents but by those whose job it is to do this, but are fully aware of who their parents are.Momofiii 00:03, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the introductory paragraph "It has recently become a very popular topic...." in its entirety one can only perceive bias. The quoted sentences are flat out illogical, and do nothing but show how the original author is biased against the moral ideal of "in loco parentis." Must be? So a parent must educate their child in driving an automobile differently from a driving instructor? A parent must educate their child about how to write an essay differently (and potentially improperly) from a writing instructor? Just because one is a parent, does not make one an expert on life. Scientific knowledge imparted without a moral context, ie. wisdom, is potentially dangerous. I am a parent and my parents' child; I do not see my education of my children at home "as the opposite" of their education in school. They supplement each other. According to the author's logic parenting is solely the realm of a parent by definition, therefore teaching must be solely the realm of a teacher... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bluebow (talk • contribs) 12:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I've completely rebuilt the opening and am hoping to do more if no one reverts me. This article seems to have been written by people with opinions about what parenting should be, and while there's nothing wrong with healthy platitudes, I think we need to find a solid base. In other words, this shouldn't be a "how-to-guide" to parenting (one section tells the reader directly "you would be wise to be committed to this child's well-being, since the rest of your life will have to be centered around it."), but a more sociological look at human parenting and what it does. With opinions on the side, of course. --Estemi (talk) 07:07, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed merger with Child discipline page

There is clearly much overlap in subject matter between the two pages. It looks to me to be a case of content forking or POV forking. I think a single more complete, more balanced article could be made by merging the two, instead of having two pages with different points of view on the same subject matter. Also both pages need a lot of work; it seems more efficient to combine them so the people who have time to devote to this can work together more effectively and build a good-quality page. The Child discipline page is rather incomplete, for example representing only one religion. --Coppertwig 02:35, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I see Child discipline as only one aspect of Parenting, if its just a section in size then it makes sense to just include it as part of parenting, but if we beleive we've got enough content then I think it can be justified as its own page without a problem. If people think it will expand in its own right, them Im for leaving it separate. My two cents. --Evolve2k 13:10, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

For those who edit and research: I have yet to find any elementary aged childrearing anywhere based on research of anykind. The books are simply not written. That may be why the article seems incomplete on different topics. Parental knowledge is incomplete or are access to it is limited. This seems an enlighted group and I hope that anyone who finds information would share with those who are looking for relevent advise. Perhaps the language is limiting and child rearing might be better explaining different ways children are brought to and advised about adulthood in their own unique society.

Interwikis (interlanguage links) from this page are wrong

I've looked at some of the other languages linked to the Parenting page and I have the impression that they aren't really the same subject. Parenting is the details of how parents care for (look after, educate) their children. The other language pages I've looked at seem to be talking about things like: definitions of words about family structure, such as "sister", "parent", etc; ancestry; sociology of family structure, etc. Could be considered a closely related subject, or not really all that close. I looked around on the French Wikipedia and didn't find any article corresponding closely to Parenting. (If I remember right they have early childhood education and other things sort-of related but nothing I thought really right for an interwiki link to here.) --Coppertwig 14:09, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Someone recently changed the Russian link; I asked someone else to verify and it seems that the newer link ru:Родительская любовь is better than the old one which was ru:Родственные отношения. --Coppertwig 14:26, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

The German interwiki has been changed from de:Verwandtschaftsbeziehung to de:Erziehung and now looks correct as far as I can tell. --Coppertwig 17:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

External Links

I'd like to have my site considered for inclusion in the external links section of this page. It's the UK's leading independent parenting website, with parenting skills advice and child development information written by experts in the field and edited by the site's founder and child psychologist, Dr Pat Spungin. I didn't want to add it before putting it up for debate, but looking through the existing external links I think it's as valid a link as any. http://www.raisingkids.co.uk Rkeditor 15:58, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm writing on behalf of the Tufts University Child and Family Webguide to ask that our website be considered for an external link on this Wikipedia page. Our website is maintained and developed by a staff of evaluators who search the web for articles and sites that contain valuable information for children and their parents regarding various medical/developmental topics. This link leads to our "Parenting Teens" site, which contains strategies and tips for parents with teenage children:

http://www.cfw.tufts.edu/topic/2/29.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.64.134.109 (talk) 01:36, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Rearranging the content

Hello, I have worked on the whole article during two days and added some structure and content, cleaned the doubling links and left the external links intact. Why not. Let people enter their links with a proper introduction. Abuhar 22:36, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that this entire article was written without forethought. It's rather random, and categorizes and sorts unnecessarily. If it isn't fixed soon, I'll be the first to lobby for deletion.

What means 'recently' ?

In the very first sentence,
"It has recently become a very popular topic . . . ",
it seems unclear to me what is meant with 'recently'.

Given that the human species has been thinking
about how to raise children for (pff...) the last million years,
'recently' could mean the last 1000 years.

On the other hand, since this is a sparkling fresh
encyclopædia, 'recently' could also mean the last 4-6 months.
Or, in terms of internet content, weeks !

Furthermore, in my opinion the word 'very', (see same sentence)
is risky when used in reference material.
It wants to be neutral.
I find superlatives should be omitted in most Wikipedia articles.
Especially with things that are not easily measurable.

The described trend could change, and could be local.

I am not editing the text. Just wanted to give feedback.
Tristan Laurillard (talk) 05:50, 12 March 2008 (UTC)