Is there any particular research on this topic that would provide some depth for the curious?
How do you go about qualifying and reviewing the abilities and performance of non-adult caretakers in a way that is also useful to their own development?
Why do we need a 'scientific study' for everything? This is particularly evident in 'nutritional science' too, when I see an article 'such-and-such vegetable is good for you' I just laugh. Of course it is, we've been eating plants (and animals) for hundreds of thousands of years. What else?
How should we humans raise our young? It'd be pretty difficult to do worse than the current standard.
I remember watching Koyaanisqatsi a couple of decades ago and just thinking "Yep, pretty much." In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means "unbalanced life"
One of our issues in these times is that we are all so sceptical we demand 'evidence' for everything, then go on to doubt the methodology and debate how to interpret the results, and then fail to act.
We've reduced the family unit to 1 -we literally live alone- and then wonder why children, adolescents, and adults aren't 'well adjusted'. Are families are (often) so sick it's little wonder we move away from them. Not to mention the economic incentives: we can sell more lawn mowers if everyone has to own one. It's good for 'the economy', as though The Economy is some entity separate from ourselves.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. - Krishnamurti
Mustn't've had my medication today.
There's value in knowing that we do something because it's actually a good thing to do, and not just a quirk some ancient monarch had that was adopted by the peasantry.
There's also value in knowing why something is good to do. Maybe we can find more ways to do it.
Perhaps a certain vegetable is known to provide the most nutrients for the longest storage time. This could benefit people in third-world countries, whose food storage is at a premium.
I get it, you're disillusioned with people who demand scientific evidence uber alles. But the approach has its benefits. And what you may think is obvious because it was true in the past may be proven wrong.
What I don't understand is that you seem to be asking for people to think less critically. We should end science and just return to the olden times? Some of your argument makes a lot of sense to me (sharing lawnmowers with our neighbors rather than owning them entirely). But you also ask people to act without knowledge.
Your argument doesn't offer much in the way of solutions besides immediately acting without data.
This stuff needs scientific study because simply being ancient doesn't mean something is any good. Sometimes these things are great, sometimes they're useless, sometimes they're harmful. Science is how you figure out which is which.
Which is incidentally like a lot of other destructive ideas and traditions.
In the field of psychology, counterintuitive things happen all the time. And there's plenty of things our forebears did that were not optimal - one easy example is women being second-class citizens pretty much everywhere people settled down.
But can only be replicated a few times.
But can only be replicated a few times.
That said, there is (in general) much too little evidence-based policy around, we don't need less of it.