http://www.amazon.com/Taken-into-Custody-Fatherhood-Marriage/dp/1581825943

Make sure you read the reviews as well:

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/1581825943/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr/104-7234308-4541552?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

Let’s roughly define “high self-esteem” as, someone who is optimistic and positive about his/her own ability to have a positive influence on the world; who has internal locus of control versus external (that is, doesn’t blame others or ‘luck” for failure, and doesn’t take failure personally but sees it as learning). And finally, someone who sees that this attitude reflects the intrinsic worth of all people.

Now, how do you raise a child who has those characteristics? Next, how do you raise a child who recognizes that these characteristics have to be taught, and that it’s worth it to put in the time and effort teaching them to others?

Cultivating the characteristics in oneself is not easy. Teaching them to someone else is not easy. And then, teaching others to teach them is not easy. Nobody is perfect at it; some of us are really bad at it, in fact (I for example cannot claim to have ever taught anyone else to have high self-esteem). Since everyone is different, and because human attitudes can change (unlike mathematical principles), teaching is a very 1:1 activity. And unless we can do it with the relationships closest to us, it’s probably unwise to be setting up “processes” or “systems” to automate the process anyway. So my best advice for “procedure” is:

1) start with the definition above (or something like it)
2) start with the person next to you, and figure out how to get there
3) repeat

http://www.forbes.com/home/2006/08/23/Marriage-Careers-Divorce_cx_mn_land.html

I dunno, Noer’s arguments seem to make sense intuitively, and he backs them up with ’statistics’.

Of course, I am proof that relationships by statistics do not work. Heck, I’ve never even had a girlfriend. But, I’ve never had a girlfriend cheat on me or steal money either!

The secret is to have high self-esteem. Nobody can appreciate me as much as I appreciate myself. And, nobody deserves me, but me.

But seriously folks, men, women, and children have had to make big adjustments since the 1920’s, with the advent of women’s suffrage, women’s liberation, and birth control. Children have had to learn to cope with divorce, men have had to learn to cope with less control in a relationship, and women have had to learn to cope in a culture that reduces them to sex objects having no value after age 35. This is a pretty big change considering that European culture evolved for 2000 years organized in a model of feudalism and fidelity, such that men lorded over the family unit, and women had little choice but to support both children and husband.

But, family organization isn’t the only change in this brave new world. We also live with the changes of modern democracy, modern medicine, modern agriculture, and the modern ability to destroy the planet with nuclear or biological weapons. It is nice to be human when things are changing, because no animal can adapt to change as fast as the human. On the whole, I’d rather be a single human than a married cockroach.