The nuclear family: A bad idea
So, I’m fairly sure that two people together trying to raise children isn’t big enough. This is one reason polygamy seems like such a good idea.
Now, please note, I’m not advocating Mormon-style polygamy. This isn’t one man, many women – this is many men, many women. This is whatever configuration makes sense to the people building the family.
What I’m saying here is two people aren’t a big enough group to entrain a baby safely and well (one of the first steps when a human mind meets the world for the first time is entraining. Neural networks require training to become anything other than a blob of cells doing nothing – they require a signal in order to figure out what is good signal, what is bad signal, what is noise). Two people can be totally off their rockers at the same time very easily and then not provide a good entraining signal. A larger group of people increases the odds that the baby can find one sane signal to entrain on. And this entraining goes on for a fairly long time before more normal, world-inputs based learning takes over – I don’t know when the entraining period stops, but I would be surprised if it were before age 3.
So, I don’t think a couple should raise babies, because I think that leads to damaged babies unless that couple is just downright amazing at being a good sane source of signal.
How big a group is the minimum to raise a baby? I’m going to say five adults. That’s just a guess, though.
January 6th, 2015 at 2:49 am
The obvious side comment here is if you can’t find four other people you can be in a long term relationship with, you have no business having children.nn1
January 6th, 2015 at 2:49 am
And if you can’t imagine sharing your lover or lovers with other people, you also should not have children, because you’re going to be sharing them with the children – you have to, there’s no other way.
January 6th, 2015 at 2:51 am
FWIW, for my child, there were five people present during initial entrainment. I also note that even though the father of the child was in doubt during the episode, both potentials were there and we were both friends. People who think sex among multiple friends can’t work are just not opening their eyes to the truth.
January 6th, 2015 at 2:52 am
I also think groups bigger than two do a better job of not falling into the “my child is my property” or “I can tell you what to do because I know better even when what I’m telling you to do is based on old ideas that don’t fit who you are” disease that so often seems to exist around children.
January 7th, 2015 at 8:29 am
I absolutely agree, Sheer. A certain someone we both know would have been much better off had he had a larger group of people raising him from the start.