Violence and Contact

For this topic, which appropriately enough comes after exposure to a group of parents and children on "play day", the focus was on whether or not violence results from a lack of love. All three articles/sources seem to touch on the subject, and thus I have prepared a short list of bullet points from the youtube video and two articles that will summarize the key aspects of violence and touch.

Key points:

It seems as if close contact and affection are closely related to peace. While there is violence galore in unstable households and cities, a foreign tribe that focuses on physical contact, love, and affection have little to no violence in there community.

Physical contact helps develop an indescribable bond that seems vital for proper and healthy development.

There is an inverse nature between affection and violence.

Ferocious tribes were characterized by repressive sexual taboos.

Brain development can be impaired when a mother is not present to show the necessary affection.

Breast feeding is supposed to go on for at least two point five years to ensure proper development.

Infliction of pain must be eliminated for proper growth and development.

There are seven B's of parrenting attachment: Bonding, breast feeding, babywearing, bedding close to baby, belief in crying, beware of baby trainers, balance.


Based on my reading and comprehension of these three articles/sources, the emotions that I feel are that of happiness towards the prospect of parenthood. It seems that if you take the right steps and make the right preparations, you can ensure that your child will live in environment of peace, have an aversion to violence, and feel nurtured. The youtube video was sad, because to showed that A. there are plenty of people out there living perfectly peaceful lives and B. We live in a society where violence is everywhere. Accordingly, it is depressing to think that our own lack of love, our own lack of affection, and our own lack of contact has caused some of the atrocities that have occured. I am not putting it all on our parenting and affection, but the death and murder rates may be lower if we all just learned a little bit about love and affection.

The connection I see here is to the mothers that came in to share their children with us. It seemed as if they were perfectly functioning kids, probably because their mother had shown them an adequate amount of love and affection. It helps that their mothers were all psychology professors and thus had prevalent access to this information. These articles also bring up topics addressed by Jensen. Would he have been different if his father hadn't beat him. It seems clear from all sorts of class material that affection is vital for the proper development of kids.

According to these recent and long term discoveries I have made about love and affection, I intend to be as loving and affectionate as I can from now until I die. If my physical contact and emotional connection with children can foster a society of peace and discourage violence, I intend to do so with all of my heart. It is amazing to here how isolated tribes live so differently and thus have different levels of emotional and physical well being. From now on I intend to foster optimal emotional and physical well being in my kids and all of the children around me.

Questions:

What if kids turned out ok regardless of physical touch and emotional care? Is there some way kids can overcome terrible parents?

Is a mother intrinsically more connected to her kids than the father is?