Content area
Full Text
What is the empirical evidence that childrearing is evolving? This case study presents evidence that Lloyd deMause's helping mode of childrearing is the most likely preferred choice of childrearing by a significant margin in a cohort of Australian teachers at the beginning of their teacher training.
Lloyd deMause has for more than 30 years heralded a vitally important message of monumental consequence for the future of our planet. He argues that "The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken" (deMause 1974, p. 1), that there is a continuous "evolution of human nature", that "changes in parenting precede social change", and that attitudes and behaviors towards children drive history (deMause 2002, p. vii) such that the evolution of childrearing practice is the major impetus in human history, and that there are things that we can do to improve the lives of children. As part of his theory, deMause divides human history into six childrearing styles or modes: (1) infanticidal mode (to 4th century C.E.), (2) abandonment mode (4th century to 13th century), (3) ambivalent mode (13th century to 17th century), (4) intrusive mode (18th century), (5) socialization mode (19th century to mid20th century), and (6) helping mode (mid-20th century to the present). The name given to each mode best describes the most advanced childrearing behavior characterizing that particular historical period (deMause 1974, pp. 51-54). He writes:
. . . that the evolution of child rearing is an independent cause of historical change, with the slow growth of love and trust in parent-child relations as the central sources of historical progress, creating new modes of human nature- what I have termed new psychoclasses- which then change social institutions (deMause 2002, pp. vii-viii).
He observes that childrearing is improving, which is improving children's lives, which in turn is improving human society, which in turn is further improving childrearing, and so on. The view of deMause is thus positive and hopeful.
DeMause challenges us all today, as academics, educators, parents, and citizens, not to take a passive role, but to assist this evolutionary process in human nature by realizing through our social policy "what we can do now to improve the lives of children and bring about a more peaceful,...