@011235813 First off, I'm sorry if I took your thoughts out of context; I didn't mean to. (The part I quoted, and your lovely phrase 'messy world of every day parenting' really resonated with me!) I've edited the original post to link to your comment to clarify.
On policy, I'm always torn. I generally worry that saying anything about policy will lead people to think I am left-wing/right-wing and that polarisation will then kick in and the debate will become unconstructive. (Though in my specific case, I did end the article with policy recommendations!)
@011235813 I love this in the context of the original post. Personally I would love to see us discuss this more on here: the nuances of application. It's the part I love. I often don't chime in when I have something to contribute on this topic for three reasons. First, I find in order to he useful, these discussions often require a conversation, not a comment or two. I usually don't find people want to get into it online, which is fine. Second, I often come by my thoughts from years of reading and thinking so it's difficult to reference even when I know my thoughts are at least to some degree, scienc based. Third, I'm not too interested in things getting heated, which happens a lot on line, sometimes it's better to just say nothing.
My other thought is processing scientific evidence into practice takes a lot of steps. The individual studies, review papers, and discussion pieces like the one OP wrote start it off. I feel like application to policy is a different step and requires a different (more complex and more time consuming) approach to research and communicate it well. Personally I am all for general discourse on such topics but I think it's more difficult to be rigorous.
@rockdrik Yep. I realize it’s reasonable to expect every every bit of science to be presented with practical application to parenting or with defined policy you can take to a politician and say “do it!”, but I have sometimes had negative reactions from people here who just post the science and then can’t seem to get their head around that people responding are actual parents who are trying to figure the rest out. (And if you ask a question they can’t answer, then they imply you’re just too dumb to understand the science.)
I understand it’s easy to take something personally also, because what if something touches your life/ your child’s life, and you cannot change that? What I don’t like seeing is flat responses that undermine or try to shut down the nuanced and complicated reactions parents will inevitably have, because the comment doesn’t align with the research presented or because they haven’t gone down the rabbit hole on Google scholar to present an alternate view with citations.
I have had good conversations here and elsewhere online, but I think it’s important for people who just want to talk about the science understand that a lot of us are here for way more than that.
@rockhopper72 This is off topic but I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to actually write the article. I’m a doctor who has done a systematic review and your article is certainly very convincing to me at least. Will certainly change how we do childcare (grandparents!).
