I think this is a large contributing factor to the phenomena of the Teen Warehousing Industry. And boy, do they work it.
Very insightful. Anyone else relate to the author's description of childhood?
http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/bsmith/2004/03/12Friday, March 12, 2004PERMALINK:
The pressure to be perfect parents
Family Issues Friday - part 2
I've written frequently about stupid and destructive acts of government, but I don't know of any area in which they intrude so unnecessarily and harmfully as in those areas
directly related to our families.
Americans have been hounded on family issues to the point where we are defensive, especially about children. We're preached at by experts, politicians, and pompous organizations... all "concerned" about the children. Politically, it has become the most powerful appeal. Anyone "standing up for kids" is almost assured of panicky support. American parents have been hounded to the point where they're quite unsure whether they're good parents or not.
Parenting is the perfect means to make adults feel inadequate. Raising children is perhaps the most complex task humans ever take on, and the results are so unpredictable that many parents spend the rest of their lives blaming themselves for everything that goes wrong in their childrens' lives. Even worse, those parents who care the most are most affected... those parents most intelligent, most ambitious, and hardest working. The higher your personal standards are, the more unsure you're likely to be about your parenting skills.
Just over my lifetime, I've watched parents modify their behavior toward their children, based on what they read or were told. When I was a kid, adults didn't pay much attention to us. We were expected to go entertain ourselves, and most of us were quite glad to do that. We didn't want to be around our parents much... we wanted to be with other kids. We made up games, scrounged through interesting junk, and "played". Most of the time, we couldn't even describe, to adults, what we had been doing, but we had fun doing it.
Kids can be very creative when left to their own resorts. We built forts and clubhouses out of whatever was available, and created imaginative scenarios to go with them. We acted out a variety of good guy/bad guy scenarios... cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, white hats and black hats. We didn't take the roles any more seriously than the actors we saw plying them in the movies. We were just "playing". Our parents didn't buy us many toys... I can remember all of mine, because in the 40's, they were rare... and precious
because of their rarity. We didn't take any of our possessions for granted.
We created, from virtually nothing. Two tin cans and a string made a communication device. We learned to take apart clamp-on sidewalk roller skates and make scooters from them, or to scrounge up parts to make crude roller-derby-type downhill racecars. We imagined swords and guns out of almost anything that was roughly the right shape, and all of our hands could instantly transform into a handgun position. Each worked at making authentic gun sounds, especially ricochets. We played marbles, and each had a small cache of our favorites. Trading comic books was big. Building a little stand and selling possessions on the sidewalk was something most of us did at some time.
As I think back on those times... at all the freedom I had to come up with something interesting to do, with little or no interference from adults (they were too busy anyway), I really pity kids of today. By comparison, their lives are PROGRAMMED, almost from the time they're born. They're shuttled off to nursery school, pre-school, then school, enrolled in activities or expected to play within sight, with special toys or educational materials in such abundance that they may never really gain anything from any of them. How many times have we seen kids discard presents to play with the box or the packing material instead?
Parents today are "all over" their kids. It's expected... to the point that many feel guilty if their kids ever experience boredom, or aren't provided with the latest in facilities, educational toys, and entertainment. Modern parents have been taught that physical discipline is wrong, and that even verbal scolding is a no-no.
Government schools have had a lot to do with creating such attitudes. They've inflicted
"expert" methods on what can happen in school, and have instilled it to the point that parents feel forced to adopt the same nonsensical attitudes at home. Parents feel that pressure for good reason... because they know that old-fashioned parental attitudes will become apparent to school officials, who have the power to call upon governmental agencies who may judge those attitudes as "harmful" to the child's delicate psychology, and can, with no difficulty, remove the children from the "hurtful environment".
The unmentioned, unwritten threat of government action against a family is a terrible pressure. Just realizing that a "Child Protective Services" agency exists, and has the power to remove some children from their homes, has upset the whole dynamic of family life... to the point where may parents now concentrate extraordinary efforts toward the immediate welfare of their children... often to the exclusion of spouses, finances, and
the family as a unit.
That hovering hammer of government force, and the insidious effect it has on family life, is what these Friday columns will be about. Each government intrusion into family life was
initiated to right a few rare wrongs.... to protect a few children or parents, but, as with all government programs... with all programs that use force to solve problems... the cure has been far, far worse than the disease ever was. The end result of governmental interference in family issues will, if we don't stop it soon, result in the complete destruction of what we now think of as "family".
