The Myth of Normal 148

and magnifies with the disinformation parents receive on how to rear their young. Reinforced by educational systems that too often stress students with pressures to compete, the process culminates in the exploitation of children and youth for the glory of the consumer market. Parents do their loving best; I know I did. I also know full well how my “best” was constrained by what I didn’t yet know about myself, nor about child-rearing. However noble our intentions, our ability to carry them out is heavily influenced by our own early experiences and unresolved traumas, by the social expectations we are charged with transmitting to our children, and by the stresses of life. Does that knowledge liberate me from feelings of guilt, especially when I see the marks left on my kids by my limitations as a younger man? No, not automatically. But at least I’m aware that guilt and blame are unhelpful and beside the point, especially when we understand the context. As James Garbarino urged in 1995, “We need to put aside blaming parents and take a good hard look at the challenge of raising children in a socially toxic environment.”[1] Garbarino, at that time codirector of the Family Life Development Center and professor of human development at Cornell University, noted that among the many facets of the socially hazardous environment for child-raising were “violence, poverty and other economic pressures on parents and their children, disruption of relationships, nastiness, despair, depression, paranoia, alienation—all the things that demoralize families and communities.” He also wrote of “many, many others that are subtle yet equally serious. High on the list is the departure of adults from the lives of kids.”[2] This radical disruption of evolutionary norms is taken for granted, to the point where we barely even notice it. Worse, we mistake it for the natural state of things. An automatic consequence of the weakening of communal and family ties is that our kids must seek their attachment needs elsewhere. Children, like the young of many species, must attach to someone in their lives: their neurophysiology demands it. Absent a reliable attachment figure, they experience fear and disorientation. Their brain wiring will go, well, haywire. In effect, essential brain circuits having to do with capacities such as learning,