Parenting
Fine thread, on one of the most important subjects for any humane being.
For good info on natural children, Alice Miller, Carl Rogers and Jean Leidloff have written some fantastic stuff ...... my daughter is 15, and I have utilised all the above in my 'learning' to be a parent - I had to literally throw out all my pre-concepts (and I had many ...) of parenting when she cam along, and had to start with her, who she was.
I was supported in this by a group called parentlink or parentline, that hosted weekly facillitation sessions that tough me much about how they way I was treated as a child had become the way I would treat my child, even though I swore I'd never do what was done to me, and that i'd be better - huh!
The early years have a profound impact upon the core psychology of the child and do determine the future adults core self-image and health ... much is forgotten, in order to survive, and what is forgotten remains .... if issues are not resolved, they are passed on in spite of best attempts ... children learn by feeling their parents as much as by seeing, and can sense and are confused by any incongruence, and they will do their best to adapt to it to 'fit in' - they have no choice really, for the parent is ALL they have.....
I was lucky.
Since then I have some to feel that an adults life is defined by how they leave the world for their children - do they leave a mess to clean up, or do they leave a sustainable and safe world. For what ever the parenting generation does not deal with, their children will be forced to deal with it.
Being a parent has politicised me in ways that have brought a deeper connection, a clarity and a more then determined activism........ positive parenting is the true role of all adults, whether they 'have' children or not, for those children belong to no-one, are not possesions or objects to complete what the parent has not completed for themselves (living through the children).
In the indigenous cultures, more often than not, parenting is shared by the whole community, and is thus better equipped to give the child a good sense of their own beingness, and thus a better inner quality of life........
My parents wanted me to be someone else, to be the right kind of heir to their legacy. And that is the worst thing that can happen to a child - I did get over it, I am over it, yet it is what our culture does to all it's children. It's best to let the child tell you who she/he is ...