The Home Factory System

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Hi Y'all!! Smile

:)The home factory system is in fact a way of expressing a body politic at the level of the family. Where each faimily reproduces out of itself a psychological replica of its own psychology or as near to it as family context can program. After considering the vitality of a new born, given that it is healthy in very way, then the defining principle of a childs psychology is determined by context/ environment. I would think if a study of families and a child's life experience were to be studied, the family would prove to be the childs greatest asset or the childs greatest liability, should we not reconsider this system, show concern for the children born into sometimes wretched conditions for both mind and body? What do you think?

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@boagie,

Boagie

It is an intriguing system but I would make the distinction between the physical impact of the environment on the child and the mental impact- physical impact can be dealt with by child services and relies on the relay of information from neighbors to the child services- as is usually the case when a neighbor hears banging or crying at unusual hours or smells a rancid environment. But the mental impacts, they can not be measure or detected so easily or so early on in the child's development. Another distinction needs drawing here, between mental development infringement and home-memes:

Mental development infringement (MDP will do Smile

) can be the impact of family actions on what would be considered 'normal' mental development- and will likely be the result of the aforementioned environmental physical impact, where as home-memes are going to be more related to things like enforced religious believes.

I think MDP is going to be a symptom of child abuse (a physical impact)- like stopping your child from receiving any form of schooling or physical/sexual abuse, but home-memes are subtle and not traceable- I guess bad home-memes could be described as 'teaching your child 'wrongly'.'

Would you say you refer to all of the above distinctions- physical impact and mental impact which is divided into MDP and home-memes, or just one or a few of them?
And are we not treading on subjective territory?

Dan.

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@de budding,

de budding, Smile

Excellent you have clearfied the topic nicely!! My main concern, though not the only one, is this assualt on the mental health of the individual child. Often it is not intentional, it is but the way certain people maladjusted themselves see the world, and pass this disablity of function on to their young. I do not think it an ill founded suspicion, that parents do set the limitations of the child and again not necessarily on a conscious level, if the parent is ill adapted to society themselves, that is how they see their world, through that ill adapted lens, thus, their interpretation to the child is one of stifling limitations. Physical abuse on the other hand is more easily detected, but, I would think that where there is physical abuse, it is almost certain there is psychological abuse as I have discribed. Context defines you might say, by the time these children are subject to a public school teacher, the childs limitations are already set, making the teacher swim against an already existing current. Is it time to pay more than lip service to the old adage, that the young are the best investment for a bright future?

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@boagie,

I understand you, loud and clear Boagie and I see the problem as a truly objective and real problem- rather than a matter of opinion of child raising.

But what on earth can anyone do about it?

In the UK there is a new system coming to birth, where a text message is sent to every mobile phone of every parent with advice and reminders... for example- 'Do you know where your child is now?' or 'Is your child happy now?' etc. But we can hardly send a text out saying- 'Are you considering the mental implications of your actions and believes on your child?'

Quote:

if the parent is ill adapted to society

I have to ask as well, what is ill adapted? The first step would be recognizing what kinds of people make for the defects which qualify as a limitation.

Dan.

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@de budding,

de budding, Smile

I have heard a mother state to her child and she probably said it many times over which was not over heard. "Why do you try, you know you will only fail." or, "The most you can expect from life is to get by." Heaven only knows what I did not hear. These I think you will agree, are extremley damaging messages, if not consciously mean't to cripple, surely crippling at anyrate.

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@boagie,

I'm not exactly up on my psychological literature, but from what I recall, the studies indicate that peers are far more influential than parents.

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@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas wrote:

I'm not exactly up on my psychological literature, but from what I recall, the studies indicate that peers are far more influential than parents.

Didymos Thomas, Smile

Who has the greater access in their early years than the parents, we are talking of a continued conditioning from day one. From my experience of being a teenager, my peers were of little influence on anything that mattered, other than an insistence upon greater autonomy from the domination of the parents. By this time at anyrate the job is complete, the psychological make up is pretty much what it will be for the duration.

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@boagie,

That's all fine and well, but again, from what I recall, studies show otherwise. I'm off to class in a few minutes so I don't have time to look anything up at the moment, but I'll try to find some examples when I get home. Maybe Aedes knows more about the topic.

Quote:

From my experience of being a teenager, my peers were of little influence on anything that mattered, other than an insistence upon greater autonomy from the domination of the parents. By this time at anyrate the job is complete, the psychological make up is pretty much what it will be for the duration.

Perhaps that desired autonomy is the root of the peer influence. I do not think that by the time peers become influential that our 'psychological make up is pretty much what it will be for the duration'. I know I have certainly changed since I began significant interaction with peers of my own age.

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@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas wrote:

That's all fine and well, but again, from what I recall, studies show otherwise. I'm off to class in a few minutes so I don't have time to look anything up at the moment, but I'll try to find some examples when I get home. Maybe Aedes knows more about the topic.

Perhaps that desired autonomy is the root of the peer influence. I do not think that by the time peers become influential that our 'psychological make up is pretty much what it will be for the duration'. I know I have certainly changed since I began significant interaction with peers of my own age.

Thomas,

It was my experience in hindsight that my peers were struggling with the same difficulties as I was, they did have the answers. If they were fortunate enough to find an older mentor or two they did alright, if not they blundered along blindly. Unless they have rewritten those psychology books, those early years are called, The Formative Years.

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@boagie,

boagie wrote:

Thomas,

It was my experience in hindsight that my peers were struggling with the same difficulties as I was, they did have the answers.

Or so we envisioned them to have the answers, because we wanted them to. We wanted what we desired more than the truth, so even if the answers were false, then they were still the ones we wanted, which is what caused us so much trouble in those formative years and also what separated us from our parents in what became known as the generation gap. It wasn't a gap in generation so much as a gap in social behaviour and attitudes.
Which brings us to...

boagie wrote:

If they were fortunate enough to find an older mentor or two they did alright, if not they blundered along blindly. Unless they have rewritten those psychology books, those early years are called, The Formative Years.

They most certainly were, and we most certainly did...but blundering along is what the human race does best, isn't it?

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@Aristoddler,

Aristoddler wrote:

Or so we envisioned them to have the answers, because we wanted them to. We wanted what we desired more than the truth, so even if the answers were false, then they were still the ones we wanted, which is what caused us so much trouble in those formative years and also what separated us from our parents in what became known as the generation gap. It wasn't a gap in generation so much as a gap in social behaviour and attitudes.
Which brings us to...They most certainly were, and we most certainly did...but blundering along is what the human race does best, isn't it?

Aristoddler,

So all is well, nothing to worry about, for the majority that may be true, but, in order to ensure an even playing field we must consider the possiablity that we could be insuring that each and every child is not crippled psychologically. Those formative years are called that because of the consequency that they imply. Do we wonder why the children of well educated and sucessful people produce, generally speaking, well educated and sucessful children. We should not wonder when children of ill adapted parents, psychologically ill adapted to society are found lacking by society. To which of these children do we owe our loyalty. That even playing field will never be even ignoring society's failures. What is the answer, I do not know, but the failure is blatant. Perhaps the time has come that people will need to qualify to raise children, if one wished to raise hogs, one would not do so utterly uninformed, unless a fool.

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@boagie,

Interesting topic here boagie. I hear what you're saying, and I agree that parents can have a huge detrimental affect on the child. I do think that we as a society need to take notice and do what we can to help insure that each generatioin gets the best chance they can.

But at the same time, I have some concerns you haven't mentioned. On the large scale, we see a million parents making a million different mistakes. This, to some degree, at least allows for the variety that allows a child to find out that their parents weren't right on this or that idea, and do their best to correct themselves later. Like if my parents were terrible at encouraging, I might have a friend who was raised with encouraging parents, and in turn can help me along in that regard. But my parents might have at the same time have been great at challenging me to work hard. Maybe my friend's parent never challenged him, and I can help him that way. So in a way a society can help each other simply by have a variety in their strengths/weaknesses. But what happens if the government/social leaders try to "standardize" child-rearing? All that variety will be lost, and whatever mistakes they make (and they will make mistakes) will be forcably universal. I guess I just don't have the faith in the idea of some group or another having that much control over a society.

And on a small scale, as I look at the prospect of raising children in the next years, it really scares me to think of someone else having too much control over how I raise my children. I don't want Big Brother breathing down my neck and essentially turning me into a government directed baby-sitter. I want to be a parent, just as I had parents.

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@NeitherExtreme,

NeitherExtreme, Smile

All very genuine concerns, there is a way to intercede though I believe, but not without upsetting a good many people, parenting class, some psychological evaluation, do the parents have any history of interacting with the society in a postive way ect.. The idea is to screen the parents before they are parents, they must qualify as responsiable people before taking on that responsibility. I know even this will sound harsh to a great many people, but, what other job requires no skills. In some ways, in some instances, it is little more than the breeding of animals if there are no requirements. Even the best idea's are fought with a passion, simply because people do not like change. After some system has been in place for sometime, people would wonder how mindless the process had been in the past.

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@boagie,

To get you started on looking at the influence of parents, you might start here:

Judith Rich Harris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1 Reply

@boagie,

boagie wrote:

NeitherExtreme,

All very genuine concerns, there is a way to intercede though I believe, but not without upsetting a good many people, parenting class, some psychological evaluation, do the parents have any history of interacting with the society in a postive way ect.. The idea is to screen the parents before they are parents, they must qualify as responsiable people before taking on that responsibility. I know even this will sound harsh to a great many people, but, what other job requires no skills. In some ways, in some instances, it is little more than the breeding of animals if there are no requirements. Even the best idea's are fought with a passion, simply because people do not like change. After some system has been in place for sometime, people would wonder how mindless the process had been in the past.

I guess you're feeling optimistic on the subject, while I'm playing the pessimist. Wink

Something to think about is that, from my perspective, beurocracy always increases in complexity, bias, and cumbersomeness (is that a word!?), and never decreases. You can't effectively turn back the clock. It just slowly marches on until it becomes either non-functional or tyranical or both. So you can see my reluctance to see a beurocracy start making rules about parenting. Even with the best of intentions and the utmost attempt at self-restraint, I only see an unpleasant end.

A bit pessimistic, no? :rolleyes:

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@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas wrote:

To get you started on looking at the influence of parents, you might start here:

Judith Rich Harris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thomas,

I shall keep an open mind, but it will take some conveincing that the formative years are not formative. Perhaps this is a timely philosophy in that parents more and more are abandoning there responsiabilty--latch key kids and all that. If indeed parents are not instrumental in the development of their children, perhaps they should not then protest intervention.

1 Reply

@NeitherExtreme,

NeitherExtreme wrote:

I guess you're feeling optimistic on the subject, while I'm playing the pessimist. Something to think about is that, from my perspective, beurocracy always increases in complexity, bias, and cumbersomeness (is that a word!?), and never decreases. You can't effectively turn back the clock. It just slowly marches on until it becomes either non-functional or tyranical or both. So you can see my reluctance to see a beurocracy start making rules about parenting. Even with the best of intentions and the utmost attempt at self-restraint, I only see an unpleasant end. A bit pessimistic, no? :rolleyes:

NeitherExtreme,

I shall hold you to your name, perhaps the answers lay somewhere between our extremes.

1 Reply

@boagie,

Quote:

I shall keep an open mind, but will take some conveincing that the formative years are not formative.

I think we have to ask in what way are the parents influential. The formative years are formative, and we do take a great deal from our parents. I do not think Ms Harris tries to suggest that parents are of no influence, only that our peers are more influential.

Quote:

Perhaps this is a timely philosophy in that parents more and more are abandoning there responsiabilty--latch key kids and all that.

It isn't philosophy, though, it's science. We might still reject her science in favor of the more conservative scientific assumptions.

Quote:

If indeed parents are not instrumental in the development of their children, perhaps they should not then protest intervention.

Which is why we need to be more sensitive. Parents are certainly influential - I would argue that they are, anyway.

Imagine, though, off at college. Kid remembers his good parents, always stressing the importance of an education, the dangers of drinking, ect. Yet, that kid may very well slack off on his classes and spend too much time at the bar with his running buddies. He knows he shouldn't, and recalls his parent's good advice, but acts contrary to that parental influence in favor of peer influence.

I think that's the general idea - parents are influential, but when it comes time to make decision X, peer influence is generally more immediate and pressing than parental influence.

To be honest, I'm not sold on Harris' arguments either. I think parents are, fundamentally, more influential than peers. The very peers we chose often reflect some influence from our parents - I've noticed myself that I tend to prefer women that remind me to some extent of my mother, even though those women tend to have greater influence on me at any given point in time than my mother.

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@boagie,

boagie wrote:

NeitherExtreme,

I shall hold you to your name, perhaps the answers lay somewhere between our extremes.

Sounds reasonable.

1 Reply

@NeitherExtreme,

Didymus, your last post reminded me of somthing that I've heard from a very respected aquantance of mine. She said that she's convinced that the first place/culture that a child/adult is a part of after they first leave home will be extremely influential on them. It's not science or anything, but it struck me as insightful, and I've kept in mind since and it seems to be a fairly accurate assessment IMO.

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