Thread by @suzannezeedyk

New THREAD on authoritarianism & attitudes toward children.
I woke to enthusiasm frm many of you abt my thread yesterdy on this topic, so I thought I might expand on it. I believe that understandng these links helps give depth & sense to much of what is happening in our society.

2. Here is ystrdy's thread.
The most essential thing I say in it is: Fight fear.
The second most essential thing is: Adults hold beliefs about how children shd 'be'. Those beliefs are related to their sense of threat.
(Yes, that can feel surprisng.)

https://twitter.com/suzannezeedyk/status/1448735301254488064?s=20

3. Stanley Feldman is a leading political science researcher. Here is his 2020 paper, drawing on data frm 1763 Americns in 2016. His key conclusn: t more authoritarian a person is (more controlling of children), t more intolerance & threat they feel. stanleyfeldman.site44.com/Feldman_Author…

4. Let me show a few graphs from his paper. This one shows that the higher a person is on authoritarianism (what he sometimes calls 'the child-rearing measure'), the more they are opposed to the building of mosques in US cities.

5. This one shows that the higher a person scores on authoritarianism (the more they wish children to be controlled), the more they support airport profiling of people from middle-eastern countries.

6. And here's one more. The higher a person scores on authoritarianism, the more they support using military force against countries that threaten the USA.

7. There are lots more insights in his paper. I'm just trying to give a flavour of his findings to illustrate a core idea: People high in authoritarianism become more intolerant when they feel THREATENED by a lack of social conformity.
In short: disorder feels scary for them.

8. Some of you hv said that understanding ths link has been a 'penny dropping moment'. Yeah! 🙂It helps explain why some ppl, some leaders (inc, yes, some schools) can become attached to behavioural control of childrn. Especially whn we are living in these anxious COVID times.

9. Let me pull in a few other cultural themes. Many authors (such as @SimonPartridge @axrenton @Okwonga @BeardRichard ) have recently been trying to help us understand how boarding school experiences of UK politicians shape current govt policy. Boarding school = control.

10. Australian author Robin Grille has written extensively about how cultural attitudes to rearing children have shaped societies including America, Israel, Germany at various times in history. I think everyone should know of his work.

11. Stanley Feldman ends his 2020 paper with this thought: "An important question for democratic theory is whether liberal democracies can contain authoritarian and intolerant impulses among members of the public." THAT'S HOW IMPORTANT CHILD-REARING IS. IT MATTERS FOR DEMOCRACY!

12. Other authors are talking abt this link too. Michal Shapira wrote a fantastic, unsettling book entitled 'The War Inside: Psychoanalysis, Total War and the Making of the Democratic Self in Post-War Britain'.
(For Bowlby fans - that's him on the cover.)

13. Here's a review of Shapira's book. It begins with a striking statement: "Sometime, around the middle of the 20th century, the British began to think differently about the well-being of children."
My question: HAVE WE FORGOTTEN?
reviews.history.ac.uk/review/1600

14. Here's another line from that review, which ties together authoritarianism, democracy, attachmnt &, yes, CHILDCARE: "Any new mother in Britain will recognise t cultural paradigm that demands she trust her maternal ‘instincts’ alongside t pressure to return to paid employmnt."

15. I am trying to do somethng simple &yet complex in these threads on authoritrnism. I am trying to say that t way we adults were treated as childrn shaped us biologically. Our treatmnt shaped what we find threatning/scary/anxiety-provoking. Often those fears remain unconscious.

16. I am also trying to say that THE WAY WE TREAT CHILDREN NOW is havng a biological impact on them. How we treat them in families, in schools, in childcare, in communities. WE ADULTS provide the experiences that enable them to tolerate uncertainty or get overwhelmed by it.

17. I value authors who offer us in-depth political & cultural analyses. For ex, @IanDunt has a great book out on t history of liberal democracy. For many people, politics can feel like a too-big canvas. I'm trying to show how it actually ties to our treatment of small babies.

18. There has been much talk on Twitter this week about the whispered possibility that childcare ratios in England could be changed to 1adult - 5babies. That will make childcare cheaper. It will also create scared babies. Which yes: threatens democracy!

https://twitter.com/suzannezeedyk/status/1444560048320139266

19. We live in increasingly anxious times. All the angst over COVID masks & vaccinations? I read them through t lens of anxiety, one's sense of control/disorder/threat. All of these are ultimately abt attachment. Seeing these links makes confusing behaviour interpretable.

20. Around the world, authoritarian leadership is on the rise. Including in Britain. The fear & entitlement that Trump unleashed? It didn't go back in its box just because Biden got elected. The world has known such unease before. It leads to WARS. It leads to SUFFERING.

21. My aim in these threads is to try to foster understanding & insight. That reduces confusion. A reduction in confusion reduces fear & anxiety. Ppl can think better abt strategies & ethos for their organisations & their lives. It makes it easier to say NO to damaging treatment.

22. Yep,I'm a bit scared as I write these threads. Twitter is an aggrssive playground. But I'm more scared by what I see happning around me. I'm scared by how we treat our childrn, how we treat their parents. I'm scared by how we treat desperate ppl on our shores. So I write thm.

23/end. What does the scientific literature on attachment teach me?
FIGHT FEAR. SPREAD KINDNESS.
When I'm scared, reach for STUBBORN KINDNESS.
Thank you to all of you who say you find these threads helpful. I like knowing I am part of a big choir.