Rigid Adults Take Control: What Happened?
Baby rage in adult clothing
The USA is being turned upside by ideologues who are not interested in negotiation or compromise but only obedience to their mental models. The nested pathway does not produce such outcomes. So, how did this come about? Why are there so many of us adults who are rigid and motivated to impose our beliefs and practices on others? Why do so many express derision and contempt (fear and rage) for diverse ways of being, whether in biology, color, ethnicity, origin or religion?
In mid-twentieth century, researchers and clinicians were focused on research that helps address questions like these.
At that time, in study after study it was noted that young children need mother love (or primary-carer love) for healthy development (Montagu, 1955). They noted two critical periods for healthy development of the Freudian categories of ego (self) and super-ego (conscience). One period involves intense companionship and the other trust in the child’s inner compass. Both are often violated in modern child raising practices.
First, towards the end of the first year, the child tests whether he can control the mother (primary carer) to meet his needs—is the mother reliably present and providing what is needed? The ability to control the carer, baby omnipotence, helps form a secure ego-self. On the other hand, without a reliably responsive carer, the baby experiences helplessness. The longer the space between need arising and need fulfillment, the greater the anxiety seeded in the personality. As a result, due to the anxiety of unmet needs, dependency on the carer only continues to increase. The ego-self then develops weakly, unable to meet life independently. This affects the success of the second critical period.
The second critical period occurs in ages two and three, when the child is seeking independence, freedom to explore, testing personal agency. Like a little scientist, the child is discovering how the world works, what happens with this or that action. With wide exploration, the child is finding out what powers he has to make changes in the world. Only gradually does he come to understand that others have different minds. If the carer thwarts his agentic initiatives, he will interpret these as interference, as punishment to self. The child will internalize this orientation, building a self-punishing conscience. Thwarted children “will be rigid in their ideas of right and wrong, overconforming in behavior, unduly disturbed by the wrongdoings of other children. They will prefer well-defined structured situations to those which allow for more freedom of choice.” (Montagu, 1955, p. 225, quoting Stendler, 1952). They’ve internalized distrust of self and, moving forward, harbor rage towards those who thwart their impulses.
In our ancestral context of hunter-gatherer civilization, babies are not put down but held in arms of someone most of the time (fostering healthy biological and psychological development) (Hewlett & Lamb, 2005; Sorenson, 1998). The baby receives and returns the joyfulness of relating, building a secure sense of self-in-relation. A two-year-old might test out the power of a stick and run at someone. But the community knows that it is harmful to scold or punish a child. That would distort his spirit. Instead, they honor the child’s energy and respond playfully.
In our ancestral context, community members know that young children don’t yet have their full selves in place. “Personhood is gradually achieved through social interactions, especially those involving reciprocity and interdependence, for these comprise and teach the child’s social identities…For them, infants are humanity-in-becoming; for us, animality-to-be-overcome” (Sahlins, 2008, pp. 101, 102).
For ego-self development in the first critical period, the carer needs to be present to the child whereas for superego development in the second period, the carer needs to be absent to the child (non-interfering), allowing the child to discover their fittedness in the world. Freedom to play and take risks is critical (Gray, 2013; Skenazy, 2013). Without respectful treatment of these different developmental needs, the child becomes over dependent, fearful of separation, initially clinging anxiously (and then perhaps giving up), muting the weakly grounded ego-self. Anxiety becomes part of the personality.
In some parenting manuals from the 19th and 20th century, authors urge the breaking of the child’s spirit, from ignoring baby’s signals, to punishing toddlers for disobedience (e.g., Dobson, 1992; Holt, 1935). Based on the conditioning of rats, behaviorist parenting manuals advised detachment in babyhood –condition the baby to not expect parental response (Watson, 1928) and then condition the child in toddlerhood to expect parental interference and punishment if parental desires are not obeyed. Dependency thus is increased. Such approaches ensure, without healing, the neurotic personalities we see in adults.
Here we can see the dangers of parenting ideologies that motivate parents to NOT meet baby’s signals, to NOT let baby be in control of their needs being met. These ideologies instead emphasize parent power over the baby and child. As I’ve mentioned before, these were the kinds of practices that Nazis advised in order that the child grow up to be submissive to authoritarian commands (Rowold, 2013). Such practices and outcomes seem to be taking place today in the USA.
But there are aspects of our species-normal way of raising children that are missing in the description of these two critical periods. In the first period with reliable care where every need is met quickly, the child begins to answer “Why am I here?” with “To feel love and joy” (otherwise, “to feel despair and grief”). The answer comes from interaction with multiple nurturers, not just with mother. The communal evolved nest meets needs when they arise because the village is there to provide the scaffolding for healthy development, understanding that interference is harmful and support is essential.
In the species-normal second period, the child learns to listen to the rest of Nature, assuming some wildness and freedom within it. Nature offers love and relationships too and children evolved to be nurtured by its sentience (Sampson, 2015). The child finds self-in-relation to wind, sun, water, local plants and local animals. The child’s circle of connections widens and they find placefulness on Earth (Topa & Narvaez, 2022).
Species-atypical baby and toddler raising practices, along with other forms of trauma, have created adults who are stuck in treading over and over those earlier critical periods. I want the world to bow to my beliefs (my control). Isn’t that why I am here? And I want the freedom to do whatever I want. Restless and unable to listen to Nature, to slow into its rhythms, into the entanglements with all of life, we are reactionary to any threats to our beliefs or privilege. Stuck in baby-toddlerhood developmental gaps, we are unable to perceive our destructiveness, or, we celebrate it out of baby rage. (Grieving is needed instead. More later.)
Paul Shepard thought that the many underdeveloped adults in modern cultures arose from the lack of vision quests in adolescence. Yes, adolescence is a time to independently feel the full embrace of the universe and identify one’s gift to the community. But you can see that underdevelopment is initiated much earlier.
Should we blame today’s adults for acting like toddlers?
In one way, no—the community failed them—they did not provide the communal evolved nest. Social structures (still) instead isolate a parent with children, proffering myths and misleading research reports that assure parents that denying baby needs and breaking the child’s spirit are good. The culture has forgotten how to raise the young and how joyful life can be.
On the other hand, maybe yes. Perhaps we can put some onus on today’s adults, because adults should be able to recognize their deficiencies. They should be able to move beyond gut reactivity and narrow ego-self. They can realize that their addiction(s) are masking a need for healing. They can realize that their rigidity is unhealthy. They can take up practices that heal anxiety, reactivity and need for control. (They can learn to grieve. More later.)
Yup, we all need healing.
At EvolvedNest.org, we are all about healing and restoring the communal nest for all.
Here are some free offerings that can help.
And for those with interest in babies: 28 days of baby care
REFERENCES
Dobson, James C. (1992). The new dare to discipline. Tyndale House.
Gray, P. (2013). Free to learn: Why unleashing the instinct to play will make our children happier, more self-reliant and better students for life. Basic Books.
Hewlett, B.S., & Lamb, M.E. (2005). Hunter-gatherer childhoods: Evolutionary, developmental and cultural perspectives. Aldine.
Holt, L.E. (1935). The care and feeding of children: A catechism for the use of mothers and nurses, 15th ed. Applegate.
Montagu, A. (1955). The direction of human development, Biological and social bases: A scientific confirmation of the enduring belief that human love is essential all social growth. Harper & Brothers.
Rowold, K. (2013). Johanna Haarer and Frederic Truby King: When is a babycare manual an instrument of national socialism? German History, 31(2), 181–203.
Sampson, Scott D. (2015). How to raise a wild child: The art and science of falling in love with nature. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Shepard, P. (1998). Coming home to the Pleistocene (Shepard, F.R., Ed.). Island Press/Shearwater Books.
Skenazy, L., (2010). Free-range kids, How to raise safe, self-reliant children (without going nuts with worry). Jossey-Bass.
Sorenson, E.R. (1998). Preconquest consciousness. In H. Wautischer (Ed.), Tribal epistemologies (pp. 79-115). Ashgate.
Stendler, C. B. (1952). Critical periods in socialization and overdependency. Child Development, 23, 2-12.
Topa, Wahinkpe & Narvaez, D. (2022). Restoring the kinship worldview: Indigenous voices introduce 28 precepts for rebalancing life on planet earth. North Atlantic Books.
Watson, J. B. (1928). Psychological care of infant and child. W. W. Norton & Co.
Thank you for the detail.