With the wealth of information at our fingertips in this age of information, technology, and artificial intelligence, it is compelling to believe that automation is on its way to fulfilling our every need; and, for those who are even more anti-social than the average (and that’s saying a lot in the modern age), they even view this progress as obviating the need for human interaction, that human interaction is now, or soon will be, antiquated, unnecessary, or replaceable. However, that is simply wishful thinking among the anti-social and misanthropic types who underestimate the intangibles of human wisdom and the necessity of human relationships. So far as flesh-and-blood human beings are to inhabit this planet, there are simply no substitutes for those intangibles.
Wisdom comes through the transmission of values and culture, not from Google, and personality is developed through real relationships and childrearing; each having a major bearing on personal, academic, and professional outcomes in life. For evidence, the reader can study attachment theory, which shows that early caregiver bonds influence later relational and emotional functioning (John Bowlby). It is established fact that early environments shape long-term capability development, including personality and cognitive skills (James Heckman).
What’s more, technology itself, including any online resource, is not universally trustable; while it may in certain cases instruct on how to successfully accomplish specific tasks, it cannot be relied upon absolutely, and it cannot live out a person’s life. It cannot instruct on how to live life, how to assign value in life, how to discern between the trustworthy and the untrustworthy, or what is the purpose of life. No technology can be universally trusted to instruct on what is good and right and just, and it cannot imprint on children, raise children and model behavior for children, or show children how to physically manage in life; and that is precisely the capacity in which parents — good parents — are irreplaceable.
We, as people, are simply not capable of automating every aspect of human existence, and likewise it is just as impossible to replace all parental functions through technology. As social animals, relationships define much of our existence, and chief among those are our relationships with our families and parents — and given the fact that our relationships therein are supposed to be the best and the safest, they form the basis of our understanding of the world, the lens by which we view others, and whether we feel safe, secure, and competent within our social environments. Indeed, social learning theory corroborates as much, demonstrating that people learn behavior and social norms through observing and modeling others, not through disembodied instruction alone (Albert Bandura).
Additionally, if there are unresolved issues where parents have abused or neglected their children, the parents are absolutely responsible for repairing those relationships and offering some kind of restitution and support to help compensate and aid in the care and treatment that are necessary as a result. Indeed, well-documented trauma and developmental psychology research shows that adverse childhood experiences are linked with later life mental health and social outcomes (Felitti et al., 1998). Whereas all parents owe their children continued support through their adult lives (particularly through thoughtful guidance and hard-earned wisdom), the parents who have subjected their children to neglect or abuse owe their children the support they will need as they navigate adulthood — where the continued failings of parents, who are rightfully blamed, threaten to instead become the liability of ‘society’, particularly where propagandists abstractify the issues and a welfare state stands to incur the costs. In fact, in such cases, properly placing responsibility on abusive or neglectful parents gives them an opportunity to become better parents and, importantly, grandparents — better influences, mentors, and leaders than they are or would be otherwise (intergenerational transmission of behavior and trauma is well-documented; Yehuda et al., 2001).
In the absence of the necessary changes, adult children can then, with the benefit of conscience, disconnect from their parents and move on with their lives (clinical research on boundaries and psychological well-being in adult estranged children supports the psychological necessity of distance from harmful relationships). Of course, this does not mean that adult children can navigate adulthood optimally without parents, but rather that optimal results depend upon constructive relationships maintained between parents and their children — in the absence of which the children are left making decisions under suboptimal conditions (decisions including the severing of ties) just to mitigate the harm and risk presented by the parents. While the children will no doubt have access to resources and technologies to aid them, they will (in the absence of wise parents or in the presence of abusive or neglectful ones) continue through adulthood with massive obstacles and hindrances to their mental and emotional well-being, with effects not limited to capped potential in academic, professional, and social life.
Respectfully, this perspective may be unfamiliar to the reader, and that is ok. I encourage reflection on these remarks while bearing in mind that one’s life experience cannot remotely account for the trauma suffered and carried into adulthood by children mistreated or neglected by their parents (dose-response relationships between childhood maltreatment and adult mental and physical health outcomes have been demonstrated in multiple ACE studies).
The extremes of torment and suffering that escape casual understanding would (once revealed) astound many, but ultimately, it is through the courage to confront the truths of our most formative relationships — to demand accountability where it is owed, and to nurture the bonds that can profoundly heal or break — that we shape the quality of our lives, the safety of our communities, and the humanity and wisdom that we pass on to subsequent generations.
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