Very interesting article, you are a good writer and the effort you put into your writing shows, - it should absolutely have more than 2 likes! Question if I may. You noted that Mate referenced Jordan Peterson and Emily Oster (going from memory so may have this woman's name wrong) as current examples of 'poisonous pedagogies' and have an example for the woman but not Jordan Peterson- can you give an example of what Mate identified in Petersons work as poisonous?
Ooh, I'm glad you asked this! I was trying to stay under a word/size limit for emails and left a lot of tangential stuff out, including this ... I linked to an article criticizing Peterson's parenting advice instead of explaining, but the gist is that he recommends mild forms of corporal punishment for children in his books, and people like Gabor Mate and Alice Miller are strongly opposed to any sort of hitting or painful "flicking" (Peterson's words) of children. Research supports that physical punishment has negative long-term consequences.
I'm actually unsure about this ... my dad sometimes spanked me when I was little and did something wrong (and my brother was spanked way more), with a hand, and nothing that could cause any real damage, just kind of painful. And, honestly, I don't remember being that "traumatized" by being spanked. I was way more traumatized by stuff like yelling, insults, or guilt-tripping, which many parents use now as punishment or to control behaviour instead of spanking. I've talked to other people who were both yelled at and spanked, and ALL of them say that the verbal "abuse" was more traumatizing than spanking. Jordan Peterson points out that "magnitude" and "context" matter -- "How hard someone is hit, and why they are hit, cannot merely be ignored when speaking of hitting".
So I really don't know. I don't plan on spanking my daughter if she acts out, but I'm not convinced that (not-that-painful-and-causing-n0-real-damage) spanking in and of itself is worse than yelling or even the creepy scripted therapy-speak that many parents are advised to use today.
I haven't read Jordan Peterson or Emily Oster's books, just am familiar with their ideas from some of their online content. So there's probably lots of stuff I'm missing here.
It's worth noting that his daughter Mikhaila has/had many health issues (depression, early-onset rheumatoid arthritis, gut issues, OCD, chronic fatigue) that are associated with stressful childhoods, but she seems to attribute this more to dietary factors (which could explain it, diet is ENORMOUS) and claims to be cured by her all-meat diet.
I'm always skeptical of people who claim parenting expertise who do not have particularly healthy children themselves ...
I'm a pretty avid follower of Jordan Peterson. I've watched most of his YouTube stuff and read both his books and I certainly don't think he advocates for Corporal punishment at all. I do think that the new approach to parenting is an epic fail. So the hands off, let your children do as they please isn't a good idea. I was spanked as a child and hit in a violent manner. And so I was quite opposed to that. I was only able to spank my son 5 times over his entire life and he needed everyone of those spankings. They didn't hurt him, but certainly hurt me, i hated doing it. I guess everybody has their own ideas but I certainly don't think Jordan Peterson gives dangerous parenting advice. And I would really encourage you to read his stuff. Thanks so much for getting back to me. I really appreciate that as I was quite interested.
Yeah, I haven't directly engaged enough with his work to be equipped to properly discuss it. But I also wanted to cite Gabor Mate completely, and Peterson and Oster were the examples he gave. I strongly agree that Emily Oster's advice is harmful, based on what I've read on her blog and in (positive) reviews of her work.
The criticisms I read of Peterson's parenting advice included direct quotes, so he clearly does suggest that mild forms of physical punishment are okay or even a good idea depending on the context. So he does advocate for mild forms of corporal punishment. But I do think there are better examples of toxic parenting ideas than his book (e.g. Instagram influencers who tell parents it's fine if your picky kid's diet is 80% chicken nuggets and boxed macaroni and cheese, anyone who tells you never to say "no" to your child, cry-it-out advocates, the whole umbrella of "affirming" every self-diagnosis, etc).
An interesting observation: Conservatives are more likely to spank their children (and claim it's not a big deal) than liberals. Liberals have significantly higher rates of diagnosed mental illness.
I feel like this could be a whole other essay topic, tbh. I have a bunch of other stuff lined up, so not any time soon here, but if I decide to go there, I'll definitely read 12 Rules first so I'm not relying on other people's interpretations.
I just found this critique as well, which claims Peterson advocates for sleep training and cry-it-out, which I definitely consider to be a "poisonous pedagogy". He apparently also promotes behaviourist ideas (Skinner), which I'd consider a misunderstanding of child development as well.
"Peterson’s emphasis on evolutionary psychology is also highly selective. He cites it in support of his ideas about dominating children but ignores the findings of evolutionary psychology that would inform other parenting decisions. For example, there are very good arguments for co-sleeping from evolutionary psychology. In our pre-history, babies never slept alone. It would have been incredibly dangerous to leave babies to sleep alone when we were in the hunter gatherer stage of our evolution (which was for the majority of our evolutionary development as humans). All children would have slept in the same place as their parents. But Jordan Peterson is certainly not an advocate of co-sleeping. He thinks children should be left to cry it out, and trained not to disturb their parents at night."
Do you mean that the students in the experiment were coerced (experimenters basically pressured students even after they said no) and not properly debriefed about the study? I'm familiar with the experiment and why it was created but I'm not sure what you mean by the "original" experiment. That he changed the shocks from being labeled stuff like "severe shock" to the more vague "xxx"? I realize the study, like most psychology studies, would be compromised by the sample being pulled from the student body of an elite university, and that many of the participants suspected that the shocks weren't real / they were being tricked.
The motivation for the experiment was to find out what was wrong with Germans (for following orders to the Holocaust). The first experiment in the US was supposed to establish the baseline for comparison with Germany.
Yes, I know. I have a psych degree, and while they don't teach you nearly enough of the important stuff, they do cover that :-/
A big problem with that is that elite US college students back then would have been "WEIRD" (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic), as were the Germans. Studies on "WEIRD" populations often do not generalize to all of humanity.
As well, Milgram's experiment could only look at the question of whether people can be compelled to do cruel / violent things under orders, but could not factor in the complexity of the anti-Semitism that drove the Nazi movement. Unlike other forms of "white" racism, which typically look down on other races (seeing them as "lesser than"), anti-Semitism is a resentment of looking UP at Jewish people (seeing them as unjustly having too much power, influence, respect, success etc). Thus, the anti-Semite convinces himself he is punching up when he punches Jews. Envy is very dangerous.
Alice Miller pointed out that many Germans seemed to be taking the abuse they experienced in childhood out on the Jewish people in concentration camps etc.
Plus any psychology student will participate in several studies and they usually get the gist after one or two and know there are tricks involved and that researchers are not allowed to do anything too unethical (like shock someone to death). So there's no way to know if those students would have behaved that way outside of a research setting.
Milgram's experiment was too simple to be of much use, compromised by the research setting and the observer effect. This can be said of most psychological studies.
Very interesting article, you are a good writer and the effort you put into your writing shows, - it should absolutely have more than 2 likes! Question if I may. You noted that Mate referenced Jordan Peterson and Emily Oster (going from memory so may have this woman's name wrong) as current examples of 'poisonous pedagogies' and have an example for the woman but not Jordan Peterson- can you give an example of what Mate identified in Petersons work as poisonous?
Ooh, I'm glad you asked this! I was trying to stay under a word/size limit for emails and left a lot of tangential stuff out, including this ... I linked to an article criticizing Peterson's parenting advice instead of explaining, but the gist is that he recommends mild forms of corporal punishment for children in his books, and people like Gabor Mate and Alice Miller are strongly opposed to any sort of hitting or painful "flicking" (Peterson's words) of children. Research supports that physical punishment has negative long-term consequences.
I'm actually unsure about this ... my dad sometimes spanked me when I was little and did something wrong (and my brother was spanked way more), with a hand, and nothing that could cause any real damage, just kind of painful. And, honestly, I don't remember being that "traumatized" by being spanked. I was way more traumatized by stuff like yelling, insults, or guilt-tripping, which many parents use now as punishment or to control behaviour instead of spanking. I've talked to other people who were both yelled at and spanked, and ALL of them say that the verbal "abuse" was more traumatizing than spanking. Jordan Peterson points out that "magnitude" and "context" matter -- "How hard someone is hit, and why they are hit, cannot merely be ignored when speaking of hitting".
So I really don't know. I don't plan on spanking my daughter if she acts out, but I'm not convinced that (not-that-painful-and-causing-n0-real-damage) spanking in and of itself is worse than yelling or even the creepy scripted therapy-speak that many parents are advised to use today.
I haven't read Jordan Peterson or Emily Oster's books, just am familiar with their ideas from some of their online content. So there's probably lots of stuff I'm missing here.
Here's the critique of Peterson's parenting advice:
https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/05/jordan-peterson-corporal-punishment-a-critique/
It's worth noting that his daughter Mikhaila has/had many health issues (depression, early-onset rheumatoid arthritis, gut issues, OCD, chronic fatigue) that are associated with stressful childhoods, but she seems to attribute this more to dietary factors (which could explain it, diet is ENORMOUS) and claims to be cured by her all-meat diet.
I'm always skeptical of people who claim parenting expertise who do not have particularly healthy children themselves ...
I'm a pretty avid follower of Jordan Peterson. I've watched most of his YouTube stuff and read both his books and I certainly don't think he advocates for Corporal punishment at all. I do think that the new approach to parenting is an epic fail. So the hands off, let your children do as they please isn't a good idea. I was spanked as a child and hit in a violent manner. And so I was quite opposed to that. I was only able to spank my son 5 times over his entire life and he needed everyone of those spankings. They didn't hurt him, but certainly hurt me, i hated doing it. I guess everybody has their own ideas but I certainly don't think Jordan Peterson gives dangerous parenting advice. And I would really encourage you to read his stuff. Thanks so much for getting back to me. I really appreciate that as I was quite interested.
Yeah, I haven't directly engaged enough with his work to be equipped to properly discuss it. But I also wanted to cite Gabor Mate completely, and Peterson and Oster were the examples he gave. I strongly agree that Emily Oster's advice is harmful, based on what I've read on her blog and in (positive) reviews of her work.
The criticisms I read of Peterson's parenting advice included direct quotes, so he clearly does suggest that mild forms of physical punishment are okay or even a good idea depending on the context. So he does advocate for mild forms of corporal punishment. But I do think there are better examples of toxic parenting ideas than his book (e.g. Instagram influencers who tell parents it's fine if your picky kid's diet is 80% chicken nuggets and boxed macaroni and cheese, anyone who tells you never to say "no" to your child, cry-it-out advocates, the whole umbrella of "affirming" every self-diagnosis, etc).
An interesting observation: Conservatives are more likely to spank their children (and claim it's not a big deal) than liberals. Liberals have significantly higher rates of diagnosed mental illness.
I feel like this could be a whole other essay topic, tbh. I have a bunch of other stuff lined up, so not any time soon here, but if I decide to go there, I'll definitely read 12 Rules first so I'm not relying on other people's interpretations.
I just found this critique as well, which claims Peterson advocates for sleep training and cry-it-out, which I definitely consider to be a "poisonous pedagogy". He apparently also promotes behaviourist ideas (Skinner), which I'd consider a misunderstanding of child development as well.
https://www.jakedesyllas.com/blog/2020/1/30/a-critique-of-jordan-petersons-parenting-principles
Quote from article:
"Peterson’s emphasis on evolutionary psychology is also highly selective. He cites it in support of his ideas about dominating children but ignores the findings of evolutionary psychology that would inform other parenting decisions. For example, there are very good arguments for co-sleeping from evolutionary psychology. In our pre-history, babies never slept alone. It would have been incredibly dangerous to leave babies to sleep alone when we were in the hunter gatherer stage of our evolution (which was for the majority of our evolutionary development as humans). All children would have slept in the same place as their parents. But Jordan Peterson is certainly not an advocate of co-sleeping. He thinks children should be left to cry it out, and trained not to disturb their parents at night."
"which makes me wonder if Germans are aware that non-sexual forms of physical affection exist"
You might profit from reading why and how Milgram designed his experiment, and why he didn't bother with the original experiment in the end.
Do you mean that the students in the experiment were coerced (experimenters basically pressured students even after they said no) and not properly debriefed about the study? I'm familiar with the experiment and why it was created but I'm not sure what you mean by the "original" experiment. That he changed the shocks from being labeled stuff like "severe shock" to the more vague "xxx"? I realize the study, like most psychology studies, would be compromised by the sample being pulled from the student body of an elite university, and that many of the participants suspected that the shocks weren't real / they were being tricked.
The motivation for the experiment was to find out what was wrong with Germans (for following orders to the Holocaust). The first experiment in the US was supposed to establish the baseline for comparison with Germany.
Yes, I know. I have a psych degree, and while they don't teach you nearly enough of the important stuff, they do cover that :-/
A big problem with that is that elite US college students back then would have been "WEIRD" (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic), as were the Germans. Studies on "WEIRD" populations often do not generalize to all of humanity.
As well, Milgram's experiment could only look at the question of whether people can be compelled to do cruel / violent things under orders, but could not factor in the complexity of the anti-Semitism that drove the Nazi movement. Unlike other forms of "white" racism, which typically look down on other races (seeing them as "lesser than"), anti-Semitism is a resentment of looking UP at Jewish people (seeing them as unjustly having too much power, influence, respect, success etc). Thus, the anti-Semite convinces himself he is punching up when he punches Jews. Envy is very dangerous.
Alice Miller pointed out that many Germans seemed to be taking the abuse they experienced in childhood out on the Jewish people in concentration camps etc.
Plus any psychology student will participate in several studies and they usually get the gist after one or two and know there are tricks involved and that researchers are not allowed to do anything too unethical (like shock someone to death). So there's no way to know if those students would have behaved that way outside of a research setting.
Milgram's experiment was too simple to be of much use, compromised by the research setting and the observer effect. This can be said of most psychological studies.