The Cynical Optimist

This is something that has begun to bother me more and more over the years. I realize that at some point we decided to put our children up on pedestals, that we have done everything to craft a world in which no danger can possibly befall them, that they are exposed to nothing but safe imagery, that they have nothing on their agenda but a childhood full trips through Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

Now I have children, lots of them, more than whoever is reading this probably. So I am not writing this from the perspective of some curmudgeon whose life is inconvenienced by the need to make children safe and happy. I love my kids dearly and want nothing more than them to grow up to be happy well adjusted members of our society. I want them to have as much joy and happiness in their lives as possible, not just joy and happiness in the fleeting years before they graduate high school.

There is so much I could cover with this topic, it seems to me that every aspect of this issue has been skewed or just completely screwed up. I am tired of people using my kids to get every stupid morality law in the world passed. It is not the government’s job to decide what my kids should or should not be exposed to, it is my job. If a store sells objectionable material it is my job to keep my kids from going to that store, not the government to stop the store from selling the objectionable material. And the store if it wants this market will stop selling it, it is the choice of the store. This is a fundamental basis for a capitalistic society, and it works too, look at Wal-Mart, they don’t sell any games or movies with a NC-17 rating, they made this choice on their own, deciding that having the business of families was more important than the business of perverted adults. This is the way it works, and the way it should always work, I have long made the same argument over forcing all restaurants to be non-smoking, that is the right of the business owner to decide whose business they want, not the right of the government.

But what I really wanted to talk about it what we require from children. There was a time, not so long ago, when kids went to school, then they came home, did chores, ate supper, did homework, and whatever time was left before bed was theirs to do with as they pleased. As far as the chores went, it was basically anything that they could be taught to do. And these chores took quite a bit longer the further back you go, modern appliances have cut the time of chores down significantly. Because of this everyone’s life around the house should have gotten easier, it takes less time to do more. But somewhere around the 70′s or 80′s, we started to experience a cultural shift to where kids are not suppose to do anything around the house, to where they have no requirements to the home that feeds them, shelters them, and loves them. I can’t quite wrap my mind around how this happened.

Don’t get me wrong I understand the kids perspective, it is created by what they see. Watch any kids show on TV. In these shows, kids go to school not to learn, but to socialize and have lots of drama in their life, or wacky adventures. Kids are always wiser than adults, and smarter too because when they get out of school the only do homework for a minute and a half and that is with one of their clever friends talking to them. The after school time on kid’s show are reserved for the same thing as school time, socializing and wacky adventures. The only thing different about after school is that they sometimes have to talk to their parents, who are always either buffoons, cruel overlords who will not let their kids do anything, or sage-like(which means they let their kids do exactly what they want when they want to do it).

With this influencing their world view there is no wonder why kids think they are suppose to be living it up all the time. Yes, ask anyone and they know the difference between fiction and real life, but that is only consciously, deeper down there is a belief that all court rooms look like Law & Order, all jails look like Prison Break, all hospitals look like House. Think about anything you know very little about, if you have never been in a courtroom you immediately picture a courtroom you have seen in TV or a movie. Kids are very impressionable, they are going to think that many children live the life of a TV character, not the part with vampires, witches, or video podcasts, but they are going to be subtlety influenced by the indirect aspects of that characters life.  So those adults in their house aren’t the wise sage-like parents, they are the cruel overlords. And they are wondering why their clever one liners don’t get them out of trouble.

So yeah, I get why kids think this, what I don’t get is how parents who were obviously raised in a time and household where they had responsibilities are so easily suckered into believing that it is wrong to require your kid to do anything around the house. Parents of today seem to be willing to work themselves to death just to keep junior from having to cramp his social life in the least, and to get him that new Ipad. I really don’t get this “through the looking glass” logic. Everyone that lives in a house that is old enough to not shit them-self has a responsibility to that house. They don’t get a special pass because they are young and/or in school. That is crazy.

But it is worse than that, how is this logic actually doing kids any favors. No matter how much you try to shelter them, no matter how hard you work yourself to ensure they have the coolest gadgets and don’t have to break a sweat for it either, they are going to grow up one day. One day they are going to leave the nest, well hopefully anyway. When they leave the nest, if you have let them cruise through everything in life, you have just set loose on the world an adult who is barely able to wipe their own ass and wouldn’t even know why the lights got turned off at their new house (did mom forget to change the bulbs or something and what the hell is wrong with the TV remote?).

Kids should have the time and opportunity to make their own lives outside of the home. They should have the chances to make and learn from all the mistakes we all did. They should have friends, good relationships, bad relationships. They should time that is nothing but their own to spend however they want to spend it. A time to explore the adult they are becoming and find their place in this world. But is it really a good thing to let a kid grow up not learning what goes into creating a functioning home? Isn’t that like letting a child grow up without letting them get an education and trying to get a job without even a high school diploma. And should we really be letting them coast through the first quarter of their lives solely on the backs of their parents? Isn’t it a much better lesson in life to teach them that if everyone chips in and does their parts everyone’s life is improved. But maybe I am wrong, and just a cruel overlord.

On a similar topic check out the post on Examining the Apparatus – Lowbrow Puppetry. A perspective on school work and parents responsibility, also which is far better thought out and written than my post which was done in about 30 minutes in the middle of the night.