The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

by Gabor Maté

A wiser view requires a wider lens. Yes, parents are responsible for their children; no, they did not create the world in which they must parent them. Our cultural ecology does not support attuned, present, responsive, connected parenting. As we have seen, the destabilization begins with stress transmitted to infants still in the womb, with the mechanization of birth, the attenuation of the parenting instinct, and the denial of the child’s developmental needs. It continues with the increasingly intolerable economic and social pressures on parents these days and the erosion of community ties, and magnifies with the disinformation parents receive on how to rear their young. Reinforced by educational systems that too often stress students with pressures to compete, the process culminates in the exploitation of children and youth for the glory of the consumer market.