Costly parenting choices
To make radical parenting work requires radical changes in society. Maybe not all of society but it might require something radical in your society, in your family. Maybe not in the national or international economy but certainly in your family economy.
Some parents find they may have to abandon the concept, popularized during the Industrial Revolution and rare before it, that work needs to be performed away from home, that career means pulling at your roots every day, hoping that the plants don’t suffer too much.
Some parents may have to give up the idea that watching how electronic people live, instead of living yourself, is a good use of your time. The average American child spends hours a day in front of a screen of some sort. Think how much he or should could accomplish in that same amount of time if he didn’t. How much could you accomplish?


June 7th, 2007 at 6:27 am
Our family knows just how radical this is. My kids believe they are deprived, because their friends have to explain pop culture from television.
June 7th, 2007 at 9:15 am
I manage to pick up enough popular cultural knowledge to have fairly intelligent conversations, even without a television. Discussions of some televisions shows wouldn’t count as intelligent conversation anyway.