Re:The Problem with 'Boys Will Be Boys'
by btilly on Monday July 01, 2013 @11:53PM
(#5975724)
It is simple cognitive dissonance.
Parents work hard at being parents, and then naturally take pride in being good parents. Once you take pride in it, you naturally tend to reject any information out of hand which could cause you to question your certainty that you're a good parent. This in turn means that any evidence that your child's behavior is in any way out of line is rejected, excuses are made, and you quickly convince yourself that your child's behavior is normal and does not indicate that any intervention is required from his or her wonderful parents.
Humans go through the same phenomena with anything that we become proud of ourselves about. For example a developer can conclude that a bug must lie with the operating system, the compiler, the test environment, the stupid QA person not testing right, etc until the bug is found. At which point said developer will quickly conclude it was a minor typo, forget about it, and keep the evidence from indicating that there might be a problem with the developer's skills.
Parents work hard at being parents, and then naturally take pride in being good parents. Once you take pride in it, you naturally tend to reject any information out of hand which could cause you to question your certainty that you're a good parent. This in turn means that any evidence that your child's behavior is in any way out of line is rejected, excuses are made, and you quickly convince yourself that your child's behavior is normal and does not indicate that any intervention is required from his or her wonderful parents.
Humans go through the same phenomena with anything that we become proud of ourselves about. For example a developer can conclude that a bug must lie with the operating system, the compiler, the test environment, the stupid QA person not testing right, etc until the bug is found. At which point said developer will quickly conclude it was a minor typo, forget about it, and keep the evidence from indicating that there might be a problem with the developer's skills.