The Myth of Normal 132

In this chapter we’ll look at two ways modern Western culture’s idea of normal undermines parenting: the erosion of our instinct for the enterprise, and the creation of isolating or stressful conditions inimical to raising healthy children. If it takes a world to raise a child, it takes a toxic culture to make us forget how to. Suppressing Instinct, by the Book Recently a parenting manual by an economist with no background in developmental psychology, beyond being a mother herself, became a bestseller. Having crunched the numbers, Emily Oster presents Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool. It devalues, among other things, such ancient practices as breastfeeding and co-sleeping with one’s newborn. As a sympathetic New Yorker profile expressed it, “A major refrain of [this] book is that a parent’s preferences are important. What do you want?” The plaudit is telling: the governing principle is what the parent prefers, not what the child needs. Here’s the problem: any cultural context is bound to shape the preferences of its members in its own image. What we adults “prefer” in unnatural circumstances may well clash with what our nature would have us opt for. It so happens that parents today take their cues from a culture that has lost touch with both the child’s developmental needs and what parents require to be able to meet those needs. Oster’s intentions are no doubt good. Around the time her book was published, the New York Times ran an op-ed by her with the online title “The Data All Guilt-Ridden Parents Need.”[1] Freeing fellow parents from shame is a laudable objective. But quite aside from the fact that even the most carefully selected data are a poor antidote for guilt, what if the issue is more complicated? What if the angst parents feel speaks not to a lack of information or figures but to a long-brewing, culturally induced alienation from their own deepest instincts? Quite like the genes in which they are coded, instincts do not assert themselves in an automatic or autonomous way. Rather, they have to be evoked by the proper environment, or else we are liable to lose touch with them. This is as true for human beings as it is for