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[[File:Raising_Children.jpg|thumbnail|left|200px|<i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1108400302/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1108400302&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=1c55602ffd247fada326a08bab762343 Raising Children: Surprising Insights from Other Cultures]</i>]]
By Joshua J. Semerjian
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David Lancy’s <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1108400302/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1108400302&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=1c55602ffd247fada326a08bab762343 Raising Children: Surprising Insights from Other Cultures]</i> from Cambridge University Press is an anthropological study of childhood that reiterates and reinforces what we already know about parenting practices in the West. He emphasizes that our educative and protective modes of childrearing expect too much in the present and assume too much about the future. He starts by explaining that childhood as a part of life development is a modern invention, and Lancy articulates a concern that parents in developed societies have packaged growing up into a notion of normalcy that stands on shaky evidence. His method is comparative and particularly focused on the differences between Western practices and Village practices in raising children. The umbrella term he uses for the West is neontocracy, which is a society that prioritizes the needs of children.
Conversely, in gerontocracies, adults are privileged and powerful. Lancy further provokes neontocracies as WEIRD – an acronym for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic – suggesting that the universalism of Western individualization and the particularism of Village communitarian values implicate liberalism’s unequal distribution of wealth which impacts how children are raised around the world. Modernized WEIRD societies compel childrearing prescriptions with significant consequences to the well-being and future possibilities of children in all cultures.
Most importantly, what is generative about the book is that in all the ways that children might learn and grow, most turn out to be just fine. For readers, this will raise the common but important question in raising children: how do we find the right balance between protection and freedom, between supporting and letting them be? To me, this suggests that the free-range movement that has been underway for the past decade is a move in the right direction for the prospects of WEIRD children.
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