Very commonly, in discussions about parenting, there will be a sentiment to the effect of, “You cannot understand what it is like to be a parent, or are not qualified to speak about the subject of parenting, unless you have been a parent yourself.”
I recall reading an anecdote (in a book?) a few years ago about how there was a speaker at a conference of some sort, and he was giving a very informative, thoughtful presentation on some parenting topic, and was a very polished, well-spoken guy. And there were many parents in the audience. (This guy might have had several degrees or a long scientific or psychology-related background in academia; something of that sort.) And the parents seemed to take his talk pretty well…until a member of the audience asked him, “So…how many kids do *you *have?” And then the speaker replied, none - he didn’t have any kids - and then it was as if all the parents suddenly became dismissive and almost contemptible-laughing of the lecture he had just given about parenting.
So this thread is about two questions…(1) Are there things you have to have first-hand experience about to fully understand, and cannot fully understand without having experienced it? Parenting, teaching, marriage, being a nurse, being a police officer, being a minority American, being a crime victim, being POTUS?
(2) Can someone be qualified to speak about one of those topics if they have no firsthand experience but have a lot of academic or scientific knowledge about it, more so than the parent/teacher/soldier/nurse/spouse/etc. in question?
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living with chronic pain
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for the above, no academic or scientific knowledge can really provide empathy which is needed for complete understanding.
Of course one can be qualified to speak about something based on research and such. I’m pretty sure there’s no one alive today who lived in ancient Greece, but I’m equally sure there are many who are qualified to present the topic.
The key is research. Experience is great, but it’s one data point. I’m a parent, but I am not at all qualified to lecture anyone on parenting. I’m also an Aero Engineer, but I’m not qualified to discuss what’s going on at NASA right now, since I don’t work there or follow all the space news.
Even the best researcher can’t know everything, but you let the audience know your qualifications and your limits. If they can’t accept that, they can leave.
Dying. We can observe it, we can be told what someone who died and was resuscitated felt/saw but we don’t really know what happens next.
Agree with FCM. The challenge is in the OP’s term “fully understand”.
We commonly use the word “understand” in two very different senses: comprehend and empathize. One is mostly intellectual, the other is mostly emotional.
Also, many people interpret “understand” to mean “approve of”. This last is the source of many failures to communicate across the Left / Right political divide. To a stereotypical Leftist, “understanding” a murderer means comprehending the process that got him/her there. To a stereotypical Rightist, “understanding” a murderer means condoning the act or shielding them from blame.
So I’d ask the OP: What does “fully understand” mean to you? Is the main point as an observer to [understand = empathize] with a participant, or to [understand = comprehend] the forces acting on the participant and decide, e.g. what should be the best technique to apply, the best outcome to aim for, etc.?
Said another way and using parenting as an example, is the observer’s goal to be a cheerleader for parents, or a coach?
Understandably, lots of people say they want a coach but in practice much prefer to listen to cheerleaders whose message is mostly “You’re doing great! Keep it up!” rather than “You’re flunking! You’ve gotta change this, this, and *that *to have some hope of not being an utter loser at this!”
That’d sure cut down on the number of people speaking about suicide.
Alcoholism/Addiction.
I firmly believe that unless you are an addict/alcoholic, you cannot really understand the disease. I think a lot of psychological problems will fall into this category. For example, clinical depression, schizophrenia etc.
However, there are certainly people who aren’t alkies/addicts who understand the best ways to handle the problem.
Slee
I don’t think you have to fully understand something to be an expert in it. In fact, I don’t think anyone fully understands anything, because everyone’s experience with a thing is going to be unique to each individual. A parent of one kid isn’t going to “fully understand” how it feels to be a parent of five kids. A parent of healthy children isn’t going to “fully understand” the struggles of a parent of unhealthy kids. But just about any parent will likely have a bunch of tips and strategies that will be useful to parenting in general.
I also think some experiences provide “sufficient” expertise. For instance, most of us have been in a formal educational environment as a student. We all know how to recognize good teaching from poor teaching. So I don’t think a teacher should only welcome feedback from other teachers. They should also think about what students or former students have to say.
I think empathy is overrated when it comes to knowledge. I don’t need to empathize with a bad-behaving parent to identify their bad behavior. It may help with coming up with solutions, but not necessarily. Because for a lot of parenting issues, the problem is that there is a failure to understand the child’s perspective. One can argue that parenting discussions are fair game for everyone, since everyone knows and remembers how it was to be a kid.
What’s that old chestnut about a judge who’d never driven a car and got asked about how he could rule on motor accidents without first-hand experience? “It’s really no handicap,” he replied; “I also try rape cases.”
Being in the military…you can do a ton of research and learn all of the language, but you still won’t really get it.
In my experience there is an ocean of difference between intellectually understanding the concept of being a visible minority, and the actual experience itself. I knew what it was, but when I first felt the real weight of it via experience, I DID understand it profoundly differently.
I disagree with the principle. There are writers out there who can describe such things as chronic pain or alcoholism, clearly enough for the rest of us to comprehend it. The power of the pen can transcend the solipsism of personal experience.
This is what I was thinking. Every person’s experience is unique. Someone with an alcohol addiction who went to rehab once and got better isn’t going to “fully understand” someone who has problems with drugs and alcohol and who has more trouble getting clean. And really someone who has no drug or alcohol problems might actually understand better or at least empathize more, from listening to the person who’s going through the problems, and listening to experts who say what it’s like. Compared to the person who had an easy time getting sober and thinks about their experience and how they didn’t have a hard time and doesn’t understand why this other person is having such a hard time getting clean and sober.
I have this problem at work. They seem to think it’s okay to hire managers who have no background in tech to supervise engineers.
So, whenever a tech or an engineer has a problem that they have to discuss with their supervisor, they have to explain the problem to them like they are talking to a five year old.
I’m not sure I agree, it can help us comprehend it certainly, but thats still not the same as actually experiencing it. Take for example a soldier under fire, a person can certainly write their memoirs and give us an idea what it is like, but that’s still different from actually experiencing it, its still just words on a page or screen and the reader is in no actual danger of being shot and killed or having a limb blown off no matter how skilled the writer is.
In addition different people experience the same event in different ways, its subjective, what may be absolutely awful for one person another may shrug off with little further thought. You can’t have a generic ‘soldier’ experience as every single person who has ever been a soldier has experienced it differently and individually even if there are over-arching themes.
So I do think there are some, or even many, things you can’t really understand properly unless you have personally experienced it.
From reading and talking with non-alcoholics and their take on alcoholism, I really don’t think you can. I think you can get an idea of what is going on but to actually understand the *absolute *need? Don’t think so. Same thing when I hear folks who have never gone through depression talk about it.
I suspect there are lots of things that most people can understand on an intellectual level while never understanding it fully on an emotional level. For example, I can understand on an intellectual level what is going on with transgendered people. However, that understanding cannot be anywhere close to what is to *actually *feel transgendered.
Slee
In my opinion, sure, we can understand the absolute need. Ever been held underwater and started to run short of air? That’s a pretty universal experience of an absolute need.
We are all really very much like each other. No one has a key insight or wisdom; no one knows the deep secret of truth. We’ve all been in pain, and we’ve all had desperate needs.
I may never have been under fire in combat…but I had a dog attack me once, so I have an experience that’s pretty close in some ways. It might even be more direct and personal than weapons fire: the other guys with rifles are a dozen yards away, but the dog was right there in my face.
My oversimplified take: It depends on whether you want to learn *about *a thing, or how to *do *a thing.
Learning about children and parenting? A child psychologist, or Phd in childhood development is a good source.
Learning how to be a parent and raise children? Then I want to hear from the aging grandmother who raised 5 kids.
If I want to learn how airplanes work, I’ll talk to an Aerospace engineer. But if my goal is to fly them, I want an experienced pilot.
I’d begin by wanting to hear if her 5 kids are ok, both as human beings and with the way their mother raised them.
I’d trust the opinion of almost any of my relatives on my father’s side over those of half my mother’s side, not on account of having had more kids, but of having done a better job. And I don’t need to be a parent or have a degree in education to evaluate which ones did the better jobs.
Everyone has had first-hand experience with parenting. Even those of us who have never had children have been children. Yes, it’s experience from a different perspective, but that perspective is important, too.