We Were Never Meant to Raise Our Own Children

One of the most liberating ideas for humanity is found in Conversations With God: Book 3 by Neale Donald Walsch, which says that “young child-makers were never intended to be child-raisers. Your child-raising years should really begin when they are now over.” It goes on to explain how children are taught who they are and how to live by people who, for the most part, have yet to figure these things out for themselves.

It claims that sexual taboo has been invented in an attempt to prevent immature young people from being tasked with raising children. So rather than placing the responsibility for child-rearing with those who possess more life experience, the young are encouraged to abstain from sex. Since this is so unnatural, contrived methods such as sexual shaming, repression, and fear-mongering have been employed to stop them.

It is interesting to view religious anti-sexuality attitudes toward youth primarily as defense against youth pregnancy. Religious anti-contraception and anti-sex-ed attitudes show how the idea has taken on a life of its own over the ages and now works contrary to its original purpose of preventing youthful parenting.

Of course it is the most natural thing in the world for youth to want to engage in sex, and their bodies are the most well-suited to child-bearing. If it were normal practice for children to be communally raised with the elders taking on the primary responsibility for education and values instillment then all of this negativity around sex would be unnecessary. The young people could fall in love and have children, the mother might nurse them, the father might play with them, but the community would be there to meet their needs and the elders would teach them. Whether the youthful couple remained together or their lives took them in different directions, the children would know a peaceful community life under the watch of the elders.

The father need not work continuously throughout his youth to support a residentially separate nuclear family requiring its own housing, transportation, goods and utilities, most often to the neglect of his passions and of his introspection and inner healing. The mother need not be stuck in the house or apartment juggling multiple children and homekeeping with scarce help, and oftentimes employment of her own.

The parents could spend as much time with their children as they wished, and could live with them if they chose, while still devoting their youth to celebrating life, pursuing their passions, exploring, learning, and gathering experiences that would gradually be synthesized into ever-deepening wisdom as they matured.

The Law of One portrays earthly life as an intensive and often bewildering course of learning. From birth, we are immersed in an “ocean of experience,” and our spiritual childhood may therefore extend far beyond biological childhood. As the mind and body gradually acquire greater discipline and clarity, we become increasingly able to refine the understanding gained from our experiences and synthesize it into wisdom.

This is echoed in Conversations With God: Book 3, which says we are effectively children for 40 or 50 years before we begin really settling down with our own truth about life and about ourselves. Until that time we are still searching and experimenting, largely living by—and passing on—truths inherited from others rather than those which are most authentic to ourselves. And still we could use another decade before raising children most effectively.

When young people are tasked with raising children before they have acquired much wisdom or come to understand the deeper purposes embodied in cultural traditions, those traditions and their underlying principles are not fully transmitted to the next generation. As the resulting erosion compounds across generations, the culture becomes less grounded and more vulnerable to influence from reckless forces like mass marketing campaigns, soulless popular media and philosophies divorced from reality.

Young parents themselves, under the burden of financial responsibility for their offspring, often tax society and planet by working primarily for the sake of money, while feeling unable to take full responsibility for the true systemic effects of their work activity. A large house and yard for each nuclear family that can afford one is also a heavy draw on resources.

As you could probably see by now, the chain of destruction stemming from this root confusion about who should be raising the children is effectively endless. Humanity will definitely need to solve this confusion in order to survive in any worthwhile way. 

However, the impulse to react against our current culture or skip out on a genuine desire to have children just because it is not done in the ideal way is not an appropriate response to this understanding. The ideas here can help inform our lifestyle decisions to the extent that more communal options are available to us upon searching and seem appropriate, without trying to force communal scenarios that are not ready to exist. A decision to live near extended family is one example of a small change that many can make.

By sensibly incorporating the idea in our own lifestyles and sharing it with others we will be moving humanity toward its more natural way of raising young, which is a pathway to liberation for all people. Those of us who are not called to have children of our own may also contribute if we choose, by living more communally and potentially helping to raise children born to other people. 

More on this topic and its solution can be found in Conversations With God: Book 3 by Neale Donald Walsch, beginning in the first chapter, and expanded upon throughout the book.