Be Careful With Science

You have to be careful with encouraging parents to follow scientific recommendations, particularly those that come out of "developmental psychology." Developmental psychology makes generalizations about human populations, but doesn't address individual needs which is what parents need to be focused on. Furthermore, parents will often misinterpret the advice and parent their children poorly.

My thought is, we are biologically hardwired (in terms of evolutionary psychology) to nurture and care for our young. Well developed members of society have been born and raised for thousands upon thousands of years. There is an intuitive, biologically driven guide to raising children (call it a mother 's / father's intuition, if you will) and I don't think we need books to do this.

I mean, sure new research in developmental psychology can help parents being better parents - but the core strategy is built into you and is the best guide no matter what research may say.

(Obviously my statements do exclude some people, some parents just suck at parenting for whatever reasons).