At 1:47 PM 7/8/97, Joel VanLaven wrote:
>I hesitate to minimize the importance of biological parentage, but I hope
>that those people who find solace in it pause to consider other options
>and ways that people might get the same thing. Since I don't
>think that I personally get much of anything from my biological
>connections other than those derived from my non-biological interactions
>with them, I have no personal problem with the notion.
Me neither; I think bio parents are mainly important from a medical pov
(spotting and dealing with inherited weaknesses), but that the main point
of parents is that there be *someone* to play that role and play it reason-
ably well. There's been research lately supporting the idea that if a child
doesn't learn by age 2 or so that bonding with another person -- learning
to trust, in other words -- is possible and desireable, that child will
become an adult with absent or impaired bonding skills, to its own
misery and that of the people around her/him. Those with impaired intimacy
skills are basically unhappy adults because they never manage to trust any-
one enough to make the intimate connections we all crave; those with none
at all become our social monsters, showing up as criminals who murder
without compunction because they just don't get it -- that the "other" has
a self
just as they do. But it doesn't seem to matter very much *who* offers the
requisite pattern for establishing intimacy in early childhood, so long
as *somebody* does it long enough and well enough to establish the pattern
in the child's psyche.
Now, whether this is good science (as opposed to finding a "scientific"
stick with which to beat those who are already society's victims, ie inner
city crack babies or what-have-you) I can't be certain. But it does make
sense to me.
Suzy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:23 PDT