s/o Scientific research and discipline - Page 2

[One_Girl]

I don't go out and look for research to back up how I parent. I believe in GD because it feels right to me and because it really seems to work. I co-slept, breastfed, and continue to try to stay away from punishments because they felt right and they worked well to raise a child who continues to be loving and kind.
A lot of research is very biased whether it is for or against something and this is something that many people are aware of which is why not everyone chooses to go with what a researcher claims is the only way to parent, for many people who don't know how to look at research in depth they go with what seems to work for them. Statistics isn't required for everyone in college and many people don't go to college so it makes sense that they would do what works for them. I think that it would be silly to continue to parent in a way that clearly wasn't working for you even if you did read a lot of research that seemed to support that way of parenting and it is also silly to just decide that someone else is wrong to parent using a certain style just because it is one that everyone uses. It is a personal choice and I am sure that there are many people who feel very strongly that the research for GD is biased and the research for their way of parenting is not.

[LynnS6]

Originally Posted by BellinghamCrunchie

I am totally in favor of using and studying scientific evidence, as long as it supports what I already believe. If it doesn't support what I believe, it must be a flawed study. Clearly.

I am a scientist and a professor. I love research (much to my students' dismay sometimes). At the same time, I bring a healthy dose of skepticism to the research. It's hard to get a 'perfect' study, especially when you're dealing with people. People are not always amenable to being slotted into their spot in the scientific research method. And then there's the whole observer's paradox: just by observing you are changing what they're doing.

Research is only part of what brought me to AP/GD. Research is relatively silent on the 'best' way to GD. What it clearly shows is that spanking (a) doesn't work and (b) results in kids who have less internal control and (c) results in kids who are more likely to use force. But what does it tell us about different types of GD? What I don't know is whether there have been good studies examining, for example, the use of time-outs vs. not.

Part of my thinking in terms of AP is also derived from my interest in cultural anthropology and evolutionary biology. (These not areas I study, I just like them.) Culturally speaking, AP seems to be norm for babies - co-sleeping, baby-wearing, extended breastfeeding are common around the world. It also makes sense evolutionarily that we adapted to do this.

But I don't think GD is necessarily supported by cross-cultural studies or evolutionary biology. actually, I've never really thought about it before. Hmm... interesting. (There are lots of cultures where spanking is the norm; that doesn't make it right, but it does make it harder to make a cultural argument for GD than it is to make one for co-sleeping, say.)

Part of my thinking comes from my own background and what feels right to me.