It's curious why Americans--with a proud revolutionary heritage--have become largely apathetic. We are supposedly the "beacon of democracy" and yet our voting rate is lower than that of any other developed country. Although we have experienced widespread fraud and unfairness in the last two presidential elections, we have been largely passive about the problem, unlike people in other countries, who revolt or topple the government when such things happen. Our healthcare system is hugely expensive and rather ineffective by international standards, and many people are not even covered by it, but where is the action to address the problem?

For an answer to why we Americans have become a passive people, it's tempting to look at the childrearing practices of the last couple generations.

One of the startling differences between the US and most other countries is the way in which small kids are conditioned for passivity here. When outside the house, babies and toddlers here are typically either strapped in car seats or fastened in strollers. Inside the house, babies are jailed in cribs and tethered in baby-swings.

In all cases they miss at least three key elements for development: human contact, exercise, and ability to pursue curiosity.

From crib to private room

It's been well researched how contact-deprived baby monkeys do not grow up as healthy as monkeys who have the constant warmth of a caregiver. But we sophisticated humans blandly lay our small infants in cribs, apart from everyone, for most of the day, because it makes it convenient for us to do other household chores. If we travel a lot by car, we are then legally required to keep the baby apart, tethered alone in a car seat.

Although infant car seats probably prevent injuries in many accidents, what is the developmental cost of all the hours not being held?

One day, my family was driving with a friend, a middle-aged Cambodian woman, who was riding in back next to my baby in the car seat. The baby was crying and wouldn't stop, but there was no way off the highway, and we were eager to get to our destination. Our Cambodian friend simply unbuckled the baby and held him. Flouting the law, she didn't even bother to ask us if it was OK to unbuckle the baby and risk a ticket or accident. She just thought, "of course the parents would want me to do this." And for this reason, I'd say she's a far better parent than I have been. She addressed the baby's real need, and I truly was just worried about getting a ticket.

When babies turn into toddlers, we Americans routinely move them into the next step up from the crib: their "own room." We think of the privacy of the own room as being a great favor to them. But I've never met a toddler who relished solitude. In fact, some of my fondest memories of toddlerhood are when my mom and dad occasionally let me nestle between them for a few minutes in their bed. Staying in my own room just made me scared at night.

I remember--before I had kids--hearing of a fundamentalist Christian family who practiced "the family bed," in which all members of the family slept together. I remember how I then thought that it sounded kinky to do such a thing. After having kids, though, I see that it isn't kinky in the slightest. It's a completely natural family thing to do, and is certainly similar to how our species has been sleeping for hundreds of thousands of years. We moderns are the odd ones.

Those fundamentalists co-sleepers are right. (But don't quote me on that out of context!)

Rather than privacy, kids need stimulation and society. They don't get that in a room alone. Too many kids are glued to their own TV in their own room, eating their own bag of chips and sipping their own soda, all awful substitutes for healthy stimulation. Even a book, read alone, is poor stimulation for a little kid. They need companionship.

When I was a teenager, after my parents' divorce I had the rare experience of being able to choose either to have my own bedroom in my dad's big house, or else to share a room--a not much bigger room--with three stepbrothers in my mom's modest house. Although it was difficult at first to share a room with stepbrothers, I quickly came to appreciate it. After trying the room alone at my dad's place for a half year, I moved back with the steps. We sometimes fought, and the water heater was always running out of hot water, but living there was just a lot more fun, and a lot better for me. After that, it was just vacation times at my dad's.

We all know the all-too-common stereotype of the generation gap. The sullen teenager with his own bedroom in a big house. Locked bedroom door. Loud music. A marijuana plant growing in the closet. No communication. Isn't this a scenario we should be doing our best to avoid? Teenagers such as this will more likely grow up to be undersocialized adults, who have a difficult time living in the same house with anyone. It's probably one reason why the divorce rate is so high and why more and more people just never even try getting married.

From stroller to car

Another odd parenting practice in America is that many toddlers are strapped and wheeled around in strollers for a very long time. I've made special effort to avoid becoming dependent on the stroller, and I think my kids are way better off because of it. They get exercise. My two-year-old can walk for miles at a time, uphill and with steep stair climbs as well. And he loves it.

The other day, my two-year-old started to stare at a stroller coming past us on the sidewalk. I asked him, "Do you like to look at the baby?" It turned out it was a girl much bigger than him in the stroller, three or maybe four years old. When I see such large kids in strollers, I think to myself: aren't they being conditioned to always ride instead of walk or bike? It's almost as if car-dependency is being promoted at an early age. When kids get used to being carted around in strollers like that, they start to insist on it, and will refuse to walk. I've heard this lament more than once from other parents.

My wife, from Japan, notes that--although most parents there do use strollers for babies--Japanese parents generally would be ashamed to cart around their toddlers in the same way. The belief is that toddlers should exercise their legs as much as possible.

And certainly the fact that many toddlers are constantly wheeled around in the US could have something to do with the frequently reported epidemic of childhood obesity.

I think many parents use the stroller into toddlerhood because they are worried about the danger of their kid running into the street. I've found that this is not a big problem. My kids, who have walked on the sidewalk with us as soon as they were able to walk, have simply emulated what we do. Almost immediately, they began stopping at the curb and waiting to hold hands with us to cross the street, just as we would wait for them. We did not even have to teach them this.

Other actions, like being careful around driveways, require practice and watchfulness, but that is not difficult.

On the extremely rare occasions that my toddlers stepped into the street themselves, it was because of something interesting that they wanted to grab, like a fallen plum from a plum tree. We gave them a quick spank and set them on the sidewalk again.

Friends of ours--who have opted to fasten their toddlers in strollers when walking in the city--have the difficult experience of dealing with an older toddler who is both unaccustomed to walking and also yearning to run free. That is the truly dangerous potential: the kid who finally gets the chance to run free, but hasn't developed any routines for how to handle that freedom safely.

Many parents, when they do let their kids walk, get into the habit of chasing after the kid if the kid goes too far away. Though sometimes I've done this as well, in most cases I've found it helps first to try reverse psychology. Perhaps the best way to get the kid to run back to you is for you to run AWAY from the kid.

I'm not joking.

It really helps to keep in mind that the kid needs you, and the kid knows that. The kid wants to be near you. By chasing after your kid, you're just letting the kid decide the terms of that nearness. You're putting the kid in charge. That's probably not a good parenting routine to get into. By chasing the kid, you might even unwittingly drive them into a dangerous situation--such as a driveway with a moving car--when, if you had played it cool, the kid would not have run any farther.

If a toddler lags behind you or ambles away from you on the sidewalk, another option--within reason--is just to wait for the kid to come back. Actually this has a big advantage for the kid's development. When a toddler is ambling in a free manner down the sidewalk, the toddler notices all sorts of interesting things to look at, touch, and smell. The state of mind of a free-roaming toddler seems to be something like the feeling of smoking marijuana as an adult: everything seems fascinating.

When the child is able to browse the world, curiosity is satisfied and knowledge develop. I think it's probably much better for the toddler's intelligence to give time--when possible--to stop and look at the things he/she likes. You can imagine the difference when you compare the other toddler, whizzed by in a stroller, not even given an opportunity to satisfy his/her curiosity for things.

Jean Liedloff, in her book The Continuum Concept, speculates that the prevalence of mind-altering drug use in American society is precisely rooted in the fact that most American parents do not allow this free-roaming curiosity during toddlerhood. Many Americans never got enough of that curious, fascinated, wandering feeling as toddlers, and thus yearn for a chemically-induced replica of it.

Liedloff is right that the way we raise children can affect their future. But often the ways of childrearing are so culture-bound that people can't easily understand the consequences. Parents might do all the standard, normal things for their babies, and years later be puzzled when they can no longer communicate with their teenagers.