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Comment by anonytrary | Hacker News Reader

I have no doubt that better parenting is the secret, preventative solution to many of the problems in this world. I think there is a feedback loop, though -- the problems in this world may cause poor parenting, which in turn cause more problems.

> Children being born today are some of the first to have parents that even understand what child abuse is

I disagree. Even the most base animals have instincts to care for their young, no? I find it hard to believe that all parents, before a certain time, were unaware of abusive/non-abusive behaviors.

I find it more likely that there is a subconscious instinct to protect one's offspring, and this instinct may exist in people to different extents.

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Evolution selects for child-rearing practices that ensure that offspring will live to reproduce -- not necessarily child practices that are optimal for the offsprings mental well being.

Furthermore, there may have been a time in the past where evolutionarily selected child-rearing practices that today we would consider abhorrent were actually necessarily to ensure survival. In a brutal world you need to be brutal to survive and one way to ensure that your offspring is brutal is to well... brutalize them.

Our western world is far less brutal a place than it was even fifty years ago and that may necessitate developing child-rearing methods that are counter to our evolutionary ingrained instincts.

That's a good point, and I think there are definitely things we do today which we will look back on in disgust, too.

What we consider to be “mental well being” is also a product of evolution, and there is certainly correlation between mental health and ability to survive. It’s unlikely that evolution ever favored practices that go strongly against mental health, though it is possible that the criteria for mental well being has also changed by evolution.

Whether today we consider ancient practices abhorrent or not is a different matter though. In general those can be explained by cultural differences, and there is no need to invoke mental health. Improvements in psychological well being isn’t universally correlated with increased pacifism, as some people here seem to think. Modern western civilization is a product of very specific historical events - not a progression toward our "evolutionary ingrained instincts". If anything, judging by the vast majority of human history - our "evolutionary ingrained instincts" are far more tuned toward violence than what is considered acceptable today in the western world.

A mentally healthy individual in modern US would act very differently from a mentally healthy individual in ancient Rome.

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