Could the wisdom of our grandparents hold the key to better-behaved children and healthier young minds? Join me on a journey back to the 1950s to uncover the secrets of a generation of obedient, tantrum-free kids. Through a compelling narrative, I juxtapose the serene child-rearing landscape of my youth with the emotionally tumultuous terrain of today's parenting.
Could the wisdom of our grandparents hold the key to better-behaved children and healthier young minds? Join me on a journey back to the 1950s to uncover the secrets of a generation of obedient, tantrum-free kids. Through a compelling narrative, I juxtapose the serene child-rearing landscape of my youth with the emotionally tumultuous terrain of today's parenting.
You got yourself some children. They all be running wild, driving you crazy. They're keeping you up all night long. You better turn on your radio Dial up to John Goldman's show, because I said so. Yes, hello out there, welcome, or welcome back, as the case may be, I'm John Roseman, your host. This is, because I Said so, the only podcast on the worldwide or even universe wide web where you will hear the truth about America's mental health professions, children and child rearing, or what we now in America and have for the last 55 years called parenting.
Speaker 1:
I was born in 1947, november the 25th to be exact of 1947. And so, yes, I qualify officially as a geezer, but let it be known that my physical apparatus is in fine working order, according to my physician and as a result of my latest physical and as a result of my latest physical, and my mind and I hope this is obvious to the listener is as sharp as it's ever been. So don't be fooled by dates and numbers and other such trivia. Anyway, I was born 76 and one half years ago. My 77th birthday will occur, as I just told you, on November the 25th, just in case you might want to throw me a lavish party or give me lavish gifts, but I digress, which is my want.
Speaker 1:
So I was pondering my very unusual childhood the other day, which I may tell you about sometime, which we geezers are inclined to do, we are inclined to ponder our childhoods. I realized that when I was a child I never, ever, saw another child throw a tantrum or even the beginnings of one. I never saw another child yell at a parent. I never saw another child ignore a parent or a teacher. I never saw another child defy a instruction from a legitimate adult to them. And when adults gave instructions, children obeyed is, yes, rather parochial. But I've checked this out with other people my age and they confirm my childhood experience. Most people my age will attest they didn't see any other children throwing tantrums. They didn't see other defying adults yelling at adults, ignoring adults the sort of thing you see everywhere today. I mean everywhere being figurative.
Speaker 1:
According to the best sources available, the mental health of children in the 1950s and early 60s was 10 times better than it is today, or has been since around 1980, when the effects of taking child-rearing advice from mental health professionals mental health professionals who were by then calling it parenting, instead of taking such advice from our elders, the traditional source began to show. The effects in question include tantrums, defiance, disrespect and other forms of proto-sociopathy. During the four years I attended a 5,000-student high school in the suburbs of Chicago Proviso West High School, hillside, illinois. 5,000 students this is when we baby boomers were flooding America's high schools. During those four years, 1961 to 1965, I never encountered or heard of a student who was heard of a student who was incapacitated with depression or anxiety. During those four years no student committed suicide. No female student starved herself to the point of emaciation.
Speaker 1:
We got into fights boys mostly, although there were fights between girls. I mean boys mostly, although there were fights between girls. I mean fist fights, pulling hair fights. We got into fights where we tried to hurt each other, but no student was purposefully hurting themselves. No-transcript.
Speaker 1:
Most of the people in question were, like me, psychologists and other mental health sorts, clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists and so on. Mental health is a service industry. We mental health professionals, we are not selling a tangible product of one sort or another. We're not selling widgets or hamburgers. We're selling something called counseling or therapy. We're selling the idea that if you are experiencing a problem in your life, it would be best for you to talk to one of us, because supposedly we've been trained to help people with life problems, and those life problems include problems you may be having in the course of raising your children.
Speaker 1:
Mind you, prior to what I call the psychological parenting revolution of the late 60s and early 70s, parents had sought advice, when they felt the need for it, from their elders, from their children's grandparents and great aunts, and so on, and, by the way, the elders in question might not have had more than a fifth grade education. But the young people, the young parents who sought their advice, understood that, regardless of the number of years they had spent sitting in classrooms, they were invested with an understanding of children and a wisdom concerning children that could not be matched. And so, when it came to dispensing child-rearing advice, america's elder class was our competition. By our, I mean America's elder class was competition for the mental health professional class. So, in order to get parents to come to us for child-rearing advice, instead of going to elders and their extended families, churches and communities, we mental health professionals had to offer advice that was new and different. Parents were not going to pay us for advice they could obtain for free from elder persons. So we mental health professionals in the late 60s and early 70s, we came up with new and different advice. Our advice therefore qualified as progressive. It was new under the sun, and I'll get to that in a moment. It was new under the sun, and I'll get to that in a moment. Furthermore, to get parents to come to us for advice and pay us for advice, we had to demonize the advice elder persons would have given. We had to convince parents that elders gave bad advice. It was psychologically toxic. And that is precisely what we did. We came up with a completely untested set of ideas concerning children and the raising of children, and we marketed these ideas to a public who had every reason to believe that people with capital letters after their names knew what they were talking about. So let's talk about some of these differences.
Speaker 1:
Elder persons told parents to punish children for misbehaving. Mental health persons, beginning in the late 60s, claimed without evidence, without having done any research whatsoever, any credible research into the issue. Mental health persons said punishment damaged a child's self-image. It caused children to feel shame, they said, and shame was emotionally crippling. It caused children to feel bad about themselves, to acquire negative self-images, to become self-destructive. Again, no research. They just made this stuff up and marketed it to an unsuspecting public.
Speaker 1:
Elder persons believed children needed to be taught humility, which is a biblical value and which is, in biblical terms, defined as loving your neighbor as much, if not more, than you love yourself. Mental health persons, on the other hand, said children needed to develop high esteem for themselves. That high self-esteem was essential to good mental health and lots and lots of laudable accomplishment. So I ask my audience, especially those of you who are believers in the Lordship of Jesus Christ did Jesus Christ say blessed are those who think highly of themselves? No, he did not. And yet I am sorry to tell you that many nominally Christian churches have embraced self-esteem theory as if it is the new legitimate gospel.
Speaker 1:
Elder persons were focused on developing proper character in their children. Mental health persons emphasized achievement and accomplishment, and so parents shifted their focus away from character and on to helping their children get good grades, get into gifted and talented programs, get onto the right teams, get into elite colleges and so on and so forth. It's what the bumper sticker is all about. Folks I mean people my age we cannot imagine our parents driving around with signs on their cars saying that we were in the gifted and talented program at school. That bumper sticker, window sticker, wherever it is on the car in question, is nothing more than a rather demented sign of the times.
Speaker 1:
Elder persons were focused on developing proper character in their children. Oh, by the way, to retrace my steps here, yeah, if you have that bumper sticker on your car, then you need to get rid of that bumper sticker. I mean, let me put it to you this way, folks, it is simply rude and disrespectful to drive around town with a sign on your car saying you have something someone else doesn't have. Would you drive around town with a sign on your car saying my husband earned six figures, sorry for you. Or we live in a gated country club community? Is that where you live? No, you wouldn't drive around town with signs on your car like that. You would realize immediately those signs are disrespectful. Well, what's the difference between driving around town with those signs on your car and driving around town broadcasting that your child is supposedly a genius? Well, there is no difference. If you got that sign on your car, get rid of it today. Send it to me and I will send you a free copy of my latest book. No, I'm not kidding. Send that sign to me, and it has to be obvious that you ripped it off your bumper or your window. Send that to me, along with your name and address, and I will send you a free copy of my latest book, the Bible Parenting Code, which is, by the way, the best book I've ever written.
Speaker 1:
Elder persons were focused on developing proper character in their children. Mental health Persons emphasized achievement and accomplishment. Elder persons stressed the need for parents to act like authority figures. Mental health persons, beginning in the late 60s, told parents that their primary job was to have wonderful relationships with their kids and, in fact, mental health persons demonized the traditional exercise of parent authority over their children. And so parents began. In the late 1960s, early 1970s, parents began doing something that previous generations of parents would have thought was completely absurd, and that is they began trying to be liked by their kids. To be liked by their kids.
Speaker 1:
Elder persons believe children should try to please adults. By stressing the supposed need for parents to have wonderful relationships with their kids, mental health professional types turned that upside down and parents began trying to please their children. Elder persons believed adults should not give reasons for the instructions and decisions they made, because giving reasons causes arguments. Mental health persons said children deserved reasons, and so parents stopped saying because I said so, began giving reasons to children, and children began arguing in response. Elder persons would have thought the idea that families should be democratic, where, in other words, children had a voice equal to their parents' voice when it came to family decisions, was absurd, ridiculous, dumb. And so, wouldn't you know it, mental health professionals began promoting the democratic family. Elder persons believe children should pay attention to parents and other adult authority figures, and so mental health types said parents should pay as much attention to children as they are able to pay. And so families became child-centered and children began developing attention deficit disorder and oppositional defiant disorder and bipolar disorder and explosive personality disorder and other manifestations of expecting to be paid attention to by adults and expecting adults to give them what they want. In short, other manifestations of being allowed to be brats.
Speaker 1:
I could go on, but I'll stop there. The point of the story, folks, is you cannot raise children in two entirely different ways and arrive at the same outcome if you raise two groups of children in two entirely different ways, and here I'm talking about group one being children in the 1950s and early 1960s, group two children since 1970. If you raise two groups of children in two entirely different ways, you will arrive at two entirely different outcomes. And that is exactly what has happened. Since American parents stopped taking advice from their elders and began taking advice from mental health professionals, child behavior and child mental health have gone down the proverbial toilet. There is zero evidence and I mean zero, none, nada, zilch that mental health professionals know what they are talking about when it comes to children. At this point in our history, we have more than enough evidence to say unequivocally that mental health professionals are a bunch of know-nothings. Invitation If any mental health professional is listening to this podcast and you said mental health professional if you disagree with me, write me at johnrosemondataolcom and tell me why you disagree your subject line, so that I will notice your email should be I disagree with you, mind you. Now, if you write me, you automatically give me complete, unfettered permission to read your email on this podcast, including your name, and respond to it. I hope you mental health types out there will accept my invitation. I'd love it.
Speaker 1:
In fact, the Bible the Bible which guided child-rearing in America for 300 years, until the psychological parenting revolution of the late 60s, early 70s. The Bible tells us there is nothing new under the sun. It affirms this in the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 1, verse 9. Read it 1.9. Read it there is nothing new under the sun. That well-known verse does not mean there are no new technologies. Every generation brings technological innovation into culture. Ecclesiastes 1.9 means there are and have been no advancements in human understanding and wisdom since God gave us his word as a guide for living, have made, when we fell collectively for mental health, professional propaganda concerning children and child rearing and brought about sea changes in our understanding of child nature and our understanding and approach to their upbringing understanding and approach to their upbringing. We now have 55 years worth of evidence to the effect that the parenting experiment we embarked upon in the late 1960s has been an unmitigated disaster for all concerned children, parents, marriages, families, schools, communities and culture. It is high time we retraced our path down the road never before traveled and realized that our foremothers and forefathers had it right when it came to the most important responsibility an adult can take on in his or her life.
Speaker 1:
Next week, I'm going to take this a step further by answering the question is it too late to turn this disaster around? I hope you'll join me again and that's a wrap. Thanks for giving me your precious time. If you appreciate this podcast, please tell as many people as possible about it, shout it from the rooftops and remember I also have a weekly Substack essay that can be found at substackcom. My websites are at parentgurucom and johnrosemondcom, and this is, and has been John Rosemond, encouraging all of you to keep on rocking in the free world, because if we don't keep rocking, we're going to lose them.
