Today a friend and I were having a snack in the public market and we found ourselves commenting on the way children seem to be being raised these days. Now my friend and I are from different generations, we are both single and childless. We also grew up in different cultures, Latin American and Canadian, respectively. I grew up during the sixties, he in the eighties.
Neither of our parents tolerated bad behaviour, especially in public. If I were to run around screaming like a wild little savage like the children on the other end of the escalator I would have been sternly scolded and brought quickly into line and likely smacked upside the head. These little monsters continued running back and forth screaming like piglets on steroids, their indulgent mommies and daddies looking on or absorbed in their tech toys probably.
I wonder how these kids are going to grow up. They don't appear to be being raised. I don't know what their home lives are like, but it appears that they are growing up without boundaries, and this I find a little bit scary.
I am not suggesting that we go back to the good old days of publicly sanctioned child abuse. Like many of my generation I was hit and beaten by my parents, which did absolute squat to turn me into a good citizen and an awful lot to traumatize and mess me up. On the other hand, couldn't a lot of parents be taking things too far in another direction?
I know that child-centred parenting is all the rage and there is likely a lot of good that will come out of this. On the other hand, we seem to have what looks more like child-controlled parenting. Mommy and Daddy become junior's best friend for life. Like having big playmates, in Daddy's case, likely with body hair. And socially inappropriate behaviour goes ignored, or unaddressed.
How are these kids going to learn how to function in life without proper training, without reasonable limits being set by their equally badly parented parents? These screaming little beasts who do whatever the hell they want in public with complete abandon, and not one single look of parental disapproval: what kind of citizens are they going to become? Not only, what kind of world are they going to inherit, but with this lack of training, this default of being raised, what are they going to do since they likely won't even be able to wipe their little, soon to grow into rather large, bums?
I think that one of the scariest warnings of the possible outcome is US president Dump (His real name will never again appear on these pages!), who grew up wealthy, privileged, always got his own way, and now at the tender age of seventy, the worst president in American history, shows absolutely zero impulse control, and no sense of self-government. Can you imagine, Gentle Reader, an entire generation of little dumps wreaking havoc on our already imperilled social fabric?
I am by far no expert on child rearing. I only know this much: by not imposing limits on their overindulged little brats, contemporary parents are being every bit as abusive as my own mother was when she used to beat the crap out of me. I am not going to assume here that all parents are this brainless when it comes to raising kids. On the bus once about a year or so ago I was just about to offer my seat to a whining nine year old boy. His mother promptly intervened and told me, "please keep your seat, I'm not giving in to his drama."
If there are enough mothers and fathers around like her, then maybe, just maybe we are not going to be entering a new dark age; maybe, just maybe there is going to be hope for the next generation. I will be on the edge of my seat, Gentle Reader.
No comments:
Post a Comment