Tag Archives | Childhood

Body Pleasures and the Origins of Violence

By on January 1, 2013 in News 0

A classic article, deserving a place in the Disinfo archives. James W. Prescott outlines the link between modern child-rearing practices and their impact on development, psychological well-being and adult behavior. He covers deprivation of loving touch, sexual repression, infant neglect, and the results to the adult psyche. Joseph Chilton Pearce started this conversation and Prescott fleshes it out. The discussion of these issues is still ongoing.

Via The Origins of Peace and Violence website:

The sensory environment in which an individual grows up has a major influence upon the development and functional organization of the brain. Sensory stimulation is a nutrient that the brain must have to develop and function normally. How the brain functions determines how a person behaves. At birth a human brain is extremely immature and new brain cells develop up to the age of two years. The complexity of brain cell development continues up to about 16 years of age.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 0

Why We Should Take Fewer Pictures Of Our Children

By on November 7, 2012 in News 10

Via the New York Times, David Zweig has a harrowing observation on the first generation of children raised under constant digital surveillance:

“I want to look at pictures on daddy’s phone!” I can’t recall when this entreaty started. I only know it has been repeated like a mantra nearly every day by my 3-year-old daughter for as long as I remember her being able to speak in sentences.

On the surface a child’s preoccupation with personal photos seems quite benign, or even beneficial. And yet I fear her photo obsession may hasten her self-consciousness to a degree that’s no longer constructive.

Our children’s lives are being documented to a degree never done before. I often have over 100 new pictures per month added to iPhoto on my computer. Like adults, kids often act differently when they know the camera is on. There’s a reason posed shots almost always seem so awkward and artificial compared with candid ones.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 10

Remembering The Barbie Liberation Front

By on June 26, 2012 in News 1

An ahead-of-its-time covert shopdropping (the opposite of shoplifting) endeavor, in which the mass produced toys sold to children were “corrected”:

The Barbie Liberation Organisation was an organization that caused a significant cultural jamming intervention in 1993. Having purchased many Barbie dolls and GI Joe action figures, the group switched the voice boxes from a pair of dolls (one from either group) and then placed them onto store shelves. Customers who purchased the toys were surprised to find gung-ho, combat ready Barbie dolls or effeminate GI Joes that were more interested in shopping than shooting.

Continue Reading · 1

The Strangest School In The World?

By on April 26, 2012 in News 5

From the archives of British Pathé, a look at Burgess Hill, a one-of-a-kind British boarding school in which nothing was forbidden and students were “allowed to find out for themselves whether conventions are good or bad.” In other words, plenty of cigarette smoking, mod styles, R&B dancing, abstract painting, and motorbike races. Based on the revolutionary idea that kids should be happy:

Burgess Hill was a progressive boarding school in Hertfordshire, England in the 1960s. Run by a Cambridge graduate, it allowed the kids to do what ever they liked! We can’t quite work out whether this is the best or worst school in the world. Would actually be interesting to know what became of these kids.

Continue Reading · 5

Student Loans On The Rise — For Kindergarten

By on April 11, 2012 in News 5

play and playthingsWell, I suppose this makes sense in that school is supposed to prepare people for the rest of their lives. SmartMoney on a new trend:

It used to be that families first signed up for education loans when their child enrolled in college, but a growing number of parents are seeking tuition assistance as soon as kindergarten. Though data is scarce, private school experts and the small number of lenders who provide loans for kindergarten through 12th grade say pre-college loans are becoming more popular.

The loans can also be expensive. The interest rates — which can be fixed or variable — range from around 4% to roughly 20%. (Lower rates are given to parents with higher credit scores.)

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 5

The Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood

By on March 16, 2012 in News 3

summerhill (8)I can’t even imagine what a childhood without advertising would be. Boston Magazine writes:

Susan Linn and her tiny but hugely influential nonprofit Boston nonprofit, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, have become a child marketer’s worst nightmare. Just ask Disney, Hasbro, Scholastic, and Kellogg.

The CCFC is concerned with two overlapping issues: the amount of time children spend in front of an ever-growing array of screens — TVs, computers, smartphones, tablets — and the marketing messages they are subjected to while glued to them. Under Linn’s direction, the group has taken on some of the biggest and most powerful corporations in the world. It forced Kellogg to remove SpongeBob SquarePants and other cartoon characters from the packaging of foods that were light on nutritional value. It got Hasbro to shelve plans for a new line of dolls based on the sexpot pop act the Pussycat Dolls (“Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?”).

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 3

How Ayn Rand Ruined My Childhood

By on April 29, 2011 in News 46

ayn-rand-cigaretteIn keeping with the Ayn Rand ruins everything meme in honor of the release of Atlas Shrugged: The Movie, enjoy a blackly amusing recollection of what can happen when your Rand-obsessed parent attempts to raise you by the dictates of Objectivist philosophy. (Big mistake!) Alyssa Bereznak writes in Salon:

It was odd growing up in an objectivist house. My father reserved long weekends to attend Ayn Rand Institute conferences held in Orange County, California. He would return with a tan and a pile of new reading material for my brother and me. While other kids my age were going to Bible study, I took evening classes from the institute via phone. (I half-listened while clicking through lolcat photos.)

“We were wondering if you would petition to be emancipated,” he said in his lawyer voice. “What does that mean?” I asked, picking at the mauve paint on my hands. I later discovered that for most kids, declaring emancipation is an extreme measure — something you do if your parents are crack addicts or deadbeats.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 46

Letters To Santa Have Taken A Sad Turn

By on December 17, 2010 in News 14

Has the “modern family” structure put pressure on children to grow up too quick, or just be more considerate? Letters to Santa usually contain kids’ materialistic desires, but lately they’re more concerned with the happiness of their family and education of their siblings. Via NPR:

This year, postal workers opening and processing letters to Santa Claus have noticed a significant change in tone from years past.

“Normally the letters would be greedy-type things — big televisions, Xbox, Wiis, things of that nature,” Pete Fontana, the head elf in New York City’s main post office, tells NPR’s Robert Siegel. “This year, the letters are single moms, three kids, no winter coats, no shoes, blankets, can’t pay the bills, not enough food in the pantry. So the need has changed tremendously.”

Fontana, who has been working in U.S. Postal Service’s Operation Santa Claus program for 15 years, shares an example:

Dear Santa, my name is Chisertopher.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 14

Is Civilization Psychologically Damaging, or Just American Culture?

By on September 26, 2010 in News 11

From ScienceDaily:

Three new studies led by Notre Dame Psychology Professor Darcia Narvaez show a relationship between child rearing practices common in foraging hunter-gatherer societies (how we humans have spent about 99 percent of our history) and better mental health, greater empathy and conscience development, and higher intelligence in children.

“Our research shows that the roots of moral functioning form early in life, in infancy, and depend on the affective quality of family and community support,” says Narvaez, who specializes in the moral and character development of children.

The three studies include an observational study of the practices of parents of three-year-olds, a longitudinal study of how certain child rearing practices relate to child outcomes in a national child abuse prevention project, and a comparison study of parenting practices between mothers in the U.S. and China. The longitudinal study examined data from the research of another Notre Dame psychologist, John Borkowski, who specializes in the impact of child abuse and neglect on development.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 11