Project 10 of 12 toward high-nurturance family relationships

What Is Co-parental
and Self Neglect?

By Peter K. Gerlach, MSW

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The Web address of this article is http://sfhelp.org/basics/neglect.htm

        Clicking links below will open a full window or an informational popup, so please turn off your browser's popup blocker or allow popups from this nonprofit Web site.

        This is one of over 150 articles focused on healing psychological wounds,  building high-nurturance family relationships, and preventing divorce. This introduction describes the Web site's purpose and the best ways to use its resources. Each article is part of a mosaic of ideas, so the more you read, the more sense they'll all make. These articles augment, vs. replace, other qualified professional help.

        Before continuing, reflect: why are you reading this - what do you need?

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        Options: before reading further, say your definition of "parental neglect" out loud. Then picture yourself before the age of six, and/or any other child/ren you care about at that age. Keep those images with you as you read.

        Then read these brief research summaries on American neglect trends, and how childhood abuse and neglect change young brains and promote later suicide.

        Premises: starting before birth, children depend on their birth mother and other caregiving adults to fill...

  • daily survival needs (nutritious food, water, shelter, protection) and...

  • emotional / spiritual / socializing (developmental) needs.

Co-parents who conceive children and/or agree to care for other people’s child/ren are morally, legally, and socially responsible for...

  • learning the youngsters’ needs at each stage of their growth, and...

  • doing their best to fill them (nurture) adequately.

        Adequate co-parents want to do this, vs. feeling obligated to from guilt, shame, and/or anxiety. For personal and/or environmental reasons, co-parents range from adequate to inadequate in their ability to nurture a child over two decades to prepare them to live independently and nurture kids effectively them-selves. Thus co-parental adequacy may not be apparent until 25 or more years elapse after their child's birth.

        This site is founded on the premise that co-parents who consistently provide a high-nurturance envi-ronment for dependent kids and themselves raise Grown Nurtured Children (GNCs). Two key traits of such young adults is that they (a) develop harmonious personality led by a competent true Self, and they clearly have filled their developmental needs by the time they choose to live independently.

        Grown Wounded Children (GWCs) come from low to moderate-nurturance families. For whatever reason, I view their birthparents and any delegates as neglectful: they (a) didn't conceive responsibly, and/or (b) prepare themselves to nurture adequately. I propose that that co-parent ignorance of kids' needs and effective parenting attitudes and behaviors is a result of their and their ancestors' neglect, not an excuse for it. This recent research documents the common results of inherited parental neglect.

         Divorce is a strong indicator of each mates' psychological wounds from childhood neglect. Re/divorce confirms this. Over half of modern Americans divorce psychologically or legally. Millions of others prefer not to or can't commit to primary relationships. The key reasons that most American adults seem to be moderate to major GWCs seems to be that...

  • their ancestors were unaware and dominated by false-selves (wounded), and...

  • our society (laws) has implicitly condoned parental neglect.

If we didn't condone neglect, adults would have to demonstrate parental competence before being allowed to conceive and raise a child. Notice your reaction to this opinion.

        A major symptom of childhood neglect is self neglect in adult life: ignoring or minimizing personal wholistic health.  This seems to stem from deeply buried shame ("I'm worthless and unlovable, and don't deserve to care for myself") learned as a very young child. By definition, child abuse is a clear symptom of co-parental wounds + ignorance + unintended neglect.

        This nonprofit site exists to (a) alert people to the results of widespread childhood neglect (psychological wounds and major social problems), and (b) propose an effective way to break the toxic bequest of wounds and neglect: co-parent Project 1. Project 10  focuses on building an effective co-parenting team to help fill typical stepkids' developmental and family-adjustment needs - i.e. to nurture them effectively.

Resources:

        Pause and reflect: has anything changed for you since you read this? What are you thinking and feeling now, and what does that mean?

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Updated  August 25, 2008