larc	Re: The Poor JW Children
	Waiting, I am sure that parents in all religions and all cultures vary widely as to their effectiveness. I was not referring to the individual cases of really bad parenting among the wintesses or elsewhere, or to the percent difference in bad parenting for them as compared to other groups. I was referring in my list to either organizational sanctions and/or congregation norms and values that have the adverse impact that have been described so frequently in this discussion forum. I know there are very good parents who have made exceptions to the strict parameters of the witness culture. When they did, e.g., promote college for their children, they were criticized. Resisting social pressure is not easy even when the official policy has changed, but the local norms have not. For a recent example of this, read Lurker's bio. under "hello, hello," and how he cried himself to sleep after being sanctioned for going to college. (I believe that you stated that you faced criticism yourself when your son went to college) There are also parents at the other extreme who use the Societies sanctions to grind their children down with an autocratic implementation of the rules. In between are the average parents who love their children, but impliment the Societies really bad rules. I do believe, however, that if the Society took steps to make the relatively easy eight changes in their methods of their treatment of children and adolesents that I desscribed, that the average parenting techniques among the Witnesses would improve as well, and the average JW child would grow up to be a lot healtier.
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