This post will look at the third point brought up by the British nanny - we have lost the village. She maintained that parent competition is the main reason for this, but it involves a whole lot more. I will look at this from an American point of view.
Have we lost the village?
The answer to that question is unequivocally yes, and parent competition does have somewhat to do with it. When I was a child, all the adults in a community banded together as a united front to some degree. If a child got in trouble at school, that news usually beat him/her home, and he/she caught it again from the parents. To say that this deterred a great amount of bad behavior would be an understatement. For me, I caught it before I ever left school because my mother worked in the school system, my father was my bus driver and my uncle was my principal. Only one time in my elementary years did I have an episode where I had to be strongly reprimanded, and I cried so hard that I made myself sick. Fast forward to the present. We just recently had an episode in our area where a kindergarten child that had been removed from the classroom and set in the hall for being disruptive simply walked out of the front door and started walking down the 4 lane highway outside of the school. A couple spotted the child and brought the child back to the school. The teacher barely escaped being fired over this situation, and all the schools in the county had to readjust all of their security measures to accommodate this scenario. What happened to the child? Absolutely nothing. There was no reprimanding of any sort. The parents blamed the school. If this had happened when I was growing up, the child would have been held accountable. Number one, a child that was so disruptive that he/she had to be removed from the classroom took a trip to the principal and the matter was settled in short order. That is no longer the case. Number two, most parents and teachers stood with each other and children were expected to know better. Now, a great deal of the time, teachers bear the blame for most everything, and we expect nothing from children.
What happened?
The village did not just one day disappear, but it diminished gradually over time. Several factors contributed to this occurrence but one book in the 1940s triggered an acceleration of the village's demise. That book was Common Sense Baby and Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock. That book sparked the philosophical divide that now exists on the subject of parenting and introduced the beginnings of the "best practice" movement among early childhood theorists. It took nearly 4 decades for the teachings of Dr. Spock to become the consensus. However, even now in the rural areas of some parts of the county and among conservative and fundamentalist populations, Dr. Spock is still considered a heretic. Before I dive into the philosophical divide, I want to look at some of the other factors that have contributed to the demise of the village although the philosophical divide is by far the most prevalent.
The Great Melting Pot
One of America's greatest attributes also contributes to the problem at hand. Diversity of cultures melting into the great whole has always been considered a mighty blessing of our country. However, until recently that diversity within communities and neighborhoods did not exist as it does today. Neighborhoods and small communities tended to be mostly homogenous until about the late 1980s. Children tended to grow up and stay within their home communities until the 1970s. The trend to relocate started gradually but increased massively in the late 1980s and 1990s. Now even small towns have a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds. Families no longer live close together like they used to do. This trend when added with the philosophical divide that really began to take off in the 1980s produced the death knell for the village. Proponents of celebrating diversity tend to forget the benefits of a homogenous community. When everyone in a community knows one another and all of each other's relatives and is basically on the same page philosophically, a trust builds in that community that cannot be duplicated in a diverse community. A diverse community can respect one another, but that trust to oversee each other's children does not necessarily exist. Too many differing perspectives and priorities exist, and each family pulls into itself to maintain the core philosophy and beliefs of that particular family. This is true whether or not a family is religious or not. Everyone has a core belief system. It is called their world-view. When neighborhoods and communities do not share a core belief system or world-view, the village cannot exist.
The Philosophical Divide
What started as the debate over disciplining children has escalated into so many different factions of parenting that it is hard to keep up with them all. Anyone that is a student of history and has studied church history might see some similarities between what is going on today in the parenting world with the splintering of the church into denominations. It started with one schism which led to another schism and then another and another until we are so splintered that no one can agree on anything. The debate over vaccinations has probably brought this problem more to the forefront than anything else has in a while. However, this divide is very real. We all think that we have found the perfect way to raise our children, and we do not want anyone to tell us differently. This problem is made much worse by the "best practice" culture of early childhood theorists. Many conservative or fundamentalist populations have great problems with what these early childhood theorist consider "best practice" because it follows a liberal atheistic worldview, which they do not share. However, those in power have embraced the "best practice" views and are shoving it down everyone's throat whether they agree with it or not. This only serves to further entrench the distrust among groups. Therefore, the village is dead.
Can We Bring Back the Village?
I actually do not think it is possible in today's diverse culture to bring back the village as it once existed. The village calls for homogenous communities, and homogenous communities are typically viewed as a bad thing. All we can hope for is respect among the differing views. I also would like to see the demise of the "best practice" culture. Best practice varies so widely among differing worldviews that one set of 'best practice" standards really is not feasible. We must build our own villages among those we trust and lament the end of the way it used to be because it will probably never be again. The demise of the village has been a long time in the making, and parent competition is just the very tip of the iceberg.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
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