Foreword to Robin Grille’s Parenting for a Peaceful World

by

Mitch Hall

Parenting for a Peaceful World is a brilliant and original synthesis of leading-edge research from several fields in the social and biological sciences. At the same time, it is a bold and innovative contribution to the literature on the changes needed for building the cultural foundations for peace, human rights, and environmental sustainability. In Robin Grille’s view, such transformations depend ultimately upon how well children are nurtured. Children who are emotionally healthy, due to the quality of care with which they are raised, will grow up to become adults who are likely to treat one another and the earth with care. Conversely, children who are abused, neglected, or deprived of secure attachment to at least one caring adult in their early years will probably suffer from traumas that, unless healed, they will unconsciously restage by destroying, to varying degrees, themselves, one another, and the earth. On the basis of compelling evidence and logic, the author traces the origins of war, injustice, and environmental destructiveness to emotional injuries sustained in childhood. Childrearing, in other words, is not just kids’ stuff. It is the source, both personally and collectively, of either human fulfillment or tragedy.

I have read Parenting for a Peaceful World more than once, and with each reading I have been amazed by how much important and detailed information it contains, how broad its scope is, and how deeply it probes into some of humanity’s most urgent questions. The grace and lucidity of the writing make it a pleasure to read. The author tells a good, engaging story. He has a gift for making complex, sophisticated ideas accessible for the general, literate reader.

Robin Grille’s training and work as a psychotherapist are evident throughout the book. He has expressed awareness of subtle nuances and has integrated empathic attunement to feelings with intellectual virtuosity, excellent scholarship, and a compassionate vision of how to achieve a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world. His voice is at once wise, gentle, and courageous. In narrating the disturbingly violent and tragic cultural history of childrearing that pioneering scholars such as Lloyd deMause have painstakingly researched, he has told a tale that is difficult yet essential to face. In reading his work, I have been repeatedly impressed by the care he took to shed light on the multiple dimensions of the problems he discussed and by his avoidance of simplistic arguments. Parenting for a Peaceful World can give readers an excellent orientation to meaningful research in psychohistory, neurobiology, developmental psychology, attachment theory, democratic education, and more.

Robin Grille’s ability to present such a wide range of theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence in a cohesive, well organized book has inspired in me feelings of awe, respect, and gratitude. I hope that this wonderful work will be widely read, deeply understood, and strongly influential among all the categories of people for whom it is written—parents, teachers, caregivers, and policy makers. In fact, in my own work as an educator, I would like to use and to advocate the use of Parenting for a Peaceful World as a text for study and discussion in college classes for students interested in contributing to a better world. I cannot think of a more important or urgently needed book to recommend. 

Grille, R. (2005). Parenting for a Peaceful World. Sydney, Australia: Longueville Media, pp. xv-xvi.