Dr. David Orr’s New Parenting Rules

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Expert Opinion

Monday, May 30, 2011

Dr. David Orr, professor of environmental studies, Oberlin College, author of The Nature of Design: Ecology, Culture and Human Intention:

What will our children’s children’s children likely think about present child-raising practices? If they have the inclination and wherewithal, they will likely wonder about the depth of our affection for our children and our competence as parents. They will find it remarkable that we:

risked the future of all children with both nuclear weapons and climate change.
exposed our children to poisons that undermined their physical, mental, and reproductive health.
immersed our children in the artificial world of television, entertainment, and virtual reality, apparently without much thought to the toll that counterfeit reality would exact on their humanity.
removed our children from direct contact with animals, farms, forests, and wild places causing a kind of “nature deficit disorder,” an incalculable loss of both spirit and competence.

What can we do to improve parenting? Most important, we must protect children and childhood, which means changing our priorities. As a society, that means such things as fewer shopping malls and more parks; less television and more family time; fewer roads and more trails. It means no child left behind…in every way. It means we must understand how to prepare them to live and flourish in the post-fossil fuel world.

They need to know about solar energy, growing food, shelter, community building, and health. We must prepare them not only to survive in that new world but also to repair it. We should aim to foster and encourage physical stamina, clarity of mind, and commitment to each other and to preserve their common humanity.

That goal requires that we, parents and teachers, foster a sense of hope along with the competence to act faithfully. Hope and competence include old and durable standards of decency, compassion, and foresight but now extended to all life for as far out as we can imagine. But hope grows out of the practical necessities to:

love our children thoughtfully and consistently.
slow the velocity of life by eating together, playing together, reading together, working together.
eat well, which means mostly local, organic, and unprocessed foods.
engage the natural world – more accurately, to enjoy a love affair with it. The natural world is not an abstration…yet.

What parenting rules would you add?

Act now to create a better world for our children and theirs! Please watch and share our new video, ‘Sound the Alarm.’

Taken from Healthy Child Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home. Reprinted by arrangement with Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright (c) 2009 by Healthy Child Healthy World. To read more from Dr. Orr and many others, pick up your copy of our book, today.

Posted by Stephanie on 06/22/2011 at 08:13 PM

Love the article! So inspiring and true. My 6-year-old son just finished a year at an Environmental Science School and WOW! what an impact! He has a new appreciation for the world, the earth, for recycling, conserving water, living things, etc. I’m so impressed that at a young age he really gets the importance of preserving our world and resources.

Posted by Galina on 06/04/2011 at 06:22 AM

Thanks for this. What a brilliant summary!
Part of the danger is that children growing up without a love for nature don’t know what they are missing…

Posted by Betsy (Eco-novice) on 05/30/2011 at 09:00 AM

Love this. Although I don’t think our kids will judge us so harshly. Plenty of ridiculous things have been done by past generations that didn’t know better either. The chemical soup we live in is a tragedy, and indefensible that we continue allowing more and more products with untested chemicals in them to hit market—but when these new chemicals first hit the market, people thought they were wonderful, and that as long as something didn’t kill you, it was OK.

Mainly I think humans need to keep in mind that they can change their own environment much faster than their own biology can possibly keep up with. Humans are still essentially the same animal that they were thousands of years ago, and our physiology just has not adapted (and I don’t think ever will adapt) to living outside of the natural world, surrounded by technology and synthetic chemicals.

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