A primary reason I am not fond of pop psychology and self-help books is that they tend to present matters in an overly simplistic fashion for the sake of mass appeal. Parenting books are no exception. They will claim, "To deal with problem behavior, the good parent will do X." A more sophisticated claim might be, "To deal with problem Y, the parent with attributes A will do X for child with attributes B." Yes, that's kinda complex, but it more accurately presents what we know about real-world psychology.
A second important reason I am not fond of pop psychology and self-help books is that tend to consist of culturally-attractive reasoning while neglecting hard data.
And speaking of data, we have this finding posted over at Eurekalert:
Kids' anxiety, depression halved when parenting styled to personality
The finding: From their 3-year study it was determined that --
the right match between parenting styles and the child's personality led to half as many depression and anxiety symptoms in school-aged children. But mismatches led to twice as many depression and anxiety symptoms during the same three years.
No, one size does not fit all when it comes to parenting. Or, at least when it comes to this piece of research and many others like it. At least that's the more reasonable conclusion to make at this time.
Tags: critical thinking, culture, parenting
September 20th, 2011 at 5:46 am
Very nice! I have always argued against a one-size-fits-all pop psychology. Interestingly, I wonder if religions can likewise be found to be good vs bad fits for certain personality types. My suspicion: Yes!
Heck, maybe even Atheism is a bad fit for some personality types. OR, there are different versions of atheism and you should find the one that fits you best.
Hmmmmmm