(Click to enlarge)
On Modern Parenting
“The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children.” King Edward VIII (1894-1972).
One of the things that modern parenting has brought us, in addition to “time out” for unruly and out of control children, is the attitude that the parent is to be the “best friend” of his or her kids. In order to fill that newly created position, many parents have slipped into what can only be described as a second childhood – or worse – a second attempt at being a teenager. To hear (and see) some parents dressing and talking exactly like their teenage progeny is enough to make a mature adult want to paddle out to sea in a one-seat kayak. When I hear adults end every sentence with a question mark, or start every sentence with “like,” I want to send for help. The sight of middle aged women clad in low slung jeans and too short tops exposing inches of waistline flab walking on the beach with tattooed daughters dressed exactly the same way could easily bring on severe nausea. The lower exposed backs of such women often are decorated with “body art” (a new sophisticated term for tattoo) that can mirror the disfiguration on the same part of the daughter’s body. It’s all simply too much for an old man who grew up in a time when adults were adults and actually advised and supervised the children God had given them. Adults in my day did not talk like or dress like their children, and they certainly did not make any attempt to curry favor with them or tell them unceasingly that they loved them (their love for their children was manifested daily by their actions). They guided them and tried to keep them from going through life lemming-like, following every crazy fad that came along. Those days, though, are long gone it seems, and probably never will return
I‘m willing to bet that most of those mothers who act in the way just described work outside the home, that the children attend schools where discipline is nothing but an anachronistic concept that long ago was trumped by diversity, and a prioritization of self-esteem, and that there is a lot more TV watching than reading going on in their homes. I’ll bet further that those women are quick to disparage stay-at-home Moms, and that virtually none of those kids are home-schooled. There probably are no studies extant that would prove my contentions (such studies would be considered politically incorrect), but maybe as Casey Stengel used to say: “You could look it up.”
All this might seem not to fit in with my usual ruminations in my kayak, but it is something very close to my heart because I have grandkids, and even though they are lucky not to have such mothers I still think about how this new world of ours will affect their futures, and shape their values – and I get nervous.
(On such things does one ruminate while paddling a one-person kayak miles out in the ocean - closer to God.)
