http://www.nature.com/news/early-exposure-to-germs-has-lasting-benefits-1.10294
I am very troubled by the fact that kids raised in town by women who think that their ultimate jobs as mothers is to keep their children clean are giving us a generation of fragile children that can actually become sick by petting farm animals. This even a bigger threat to kids happiness than it is to their health.
In the future I expect medical science to focus on techniques that fire up our immune systems to prevent injury. "Clean" living impairs that immune system.
It is bad enough that little boys' mental health is being savaged by today's perfect parenting model that calls for the avoidance of risk, pain and fear at all costs. Now we are wrecking their physical health by not allowing their immune systems to develop naturally.
We are developing a culture that loves our kids to death the same way we are loving our horses to death.
So true. Damage caused by raising children in ultra "clean" environment is as much physical as it is spiritual. I once had a co-worker who was obsessive-compulsive about cleaning. Not only cleaned and vacuumed her apartment every day, but once per month she rented a professional carpet cleaning machine and did her entire apartment with the whole carpet-cleaning-chemical-cocktail. Her daughter developed severe asthma by an early age, and it only got worse with time. When I suggested a connection between cleaning chemicals and asthma, her mother went ballistic on me. Didn't make that mistake again. Destroying a good working relationship with a colleague was not going to restore the damage already done to the daughter's health. But... so sad.
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