Parents Beg Companies To Free Them Of Responsibility

Vegan Stewart sent me this article wondering about my response. Because I could not survive my head exploding, I instead decided to try to capture my response.

First
The article discusses a movement initiated by The Campaign For A Commercial Free Childhood, in which companies are being asked to stop marketing products to children. Why? Because the economy is in bad shape, and if kids see things on television that they’ll want and inevitably ask for, their financially strapped parents are going to be forced to say, “No.”

Second
Got that? Companies should stop advertising products to children because it might force parents to be parents.

Third
Parents! Can you believe that? The notion that children would be forced to teach their children important life lessons like, “You can’t have everything you want,” and “Money’s tight right now, and that’s going to affect what you get Christmas,” and “You stupid little brat, stop asking for every damned thing you see on the television and grow up! Times are tough! We’re cutting back as a family!”

Fourth
Parenting isn’t that difficult, but parenting today become acting as a blank check for your horribly behaved children. I guess if you subscribe to the belief that you as a parent shouldn’t have to ever tell your children no, the CCFC’s movement makes a bit of sense, but if you’re one of the rest of us - a loving parent who understands that kids do not benefit from learning that everything wanted should be given instead of earned - this is outrageous.

Fifth
Lest this be mistakenly read as a defense of the aforementioned marketers, it isn’t. Those marketers are selling terrible toys that don’t teach anything useful to the children playing with them. Even Legos are coming preassembled.

Sixth
Children are not made of glass. They can deal with bad news. They can deal with disappointment. They can deal with reality. Shielding them from it by pretending that the economy isn’t in terrible shape is a horrible lesson to teach. Then, proceeding to blame the marketers teaches an even worse lesson. Children will respect a parent who sits them down and explains them that the reason they can’t have their every wished for product is a bad economy, even if they don’t understand the economy itself. Besides not being glass, they’re not dumb. They’ll understand that money is limited. They’ll understand that things aren’t the way they once were.

Seventh
Parents should be parents. It’s as simple as that.

Eighth
I’m done.

Technorati Tags: CCFC, Christmas, Parenting

My Daughter and Playing

My daughter has made a new friend at school. I asked her if she wanted her friend to come over and play. She said, “I’ve only had one playdate before.” My face scrunched up.

Whenever I read about stories like this one, in which eight-year-olds are throwing makeover parties, I have to wonder what in the hell is wrong with parents. Its the same thing that shows up when my daughter says playdate instead of just play.

Kids play. They get together to play. It isn’t a date. It isn’t an outing. It isn’t a meeting. It isn’t anything. It’s playing. Those other words are adult words from our worlds, and they need to stay there. Mr. Rogers said that the only job children should have is playing, which is exactly right. Children need to be children and stop having their lives adult-ized.

Needless to say, my daughter agreed that her friend should come over to play.

Kids Make You Happy/Miserable/Both

Maybe this article is really saying something about the world…or maybe we’re creating a false measure of satisfaction. The article argues that kids don’t increase the aggregate measures of their parents happiness and, in fact, decrease it. Remaining childless, an alleged cultural taboo (Editor: Really!?!?!), helps people to remain happy.

I’d argue that the world might possibly be vaguely more complex than simply wondering if having/not-having kids leads to more happiness. For instance, I am up at 3:30 AM right now listening to my newborn grunt and groan in his sleep. I’d rather be asleep. I don’t much like babies, in part because I’m not particularly good with them, and in part because they don’t really do anything. No talking, no observations, no nothing. I’ve said before that I like kids more when they’re two than when they’re newborn, because at least they’re up to something. Other parents have recoiled in horror, because the twos are terrible.

Still, I have two kids, and I’m not (yet) prepared to trade either of them in on a childless life, and while I know it is foolhardy to use myself as a disproof of these studies, it’s the best that I’ve got. Disproving these studies though isn’t my interest. Seeing them designed to better account for the world’s complexity is more my interest. Why, for example, isn’t it possible to be happy either having or not having kids? Perhaps those people who want to be 37 and sucking down martinis and still going to bars are in fact just as happy as those of us who have children. Maybe we’re happy for different reasons. Maybe scientifically trying to figure out the perfect life to lead is a complete waste of time.

Life, as we know, is a collection of things that happen whether we want them to or not. So you adjust. I had no plans at 20 to have any kids ever; I had no plans at 27 to have another one. But these things happen; what can you do but embrace the challenge and move forward? Needless to say, studies can be done until the cows come home about what is, and isn’t, the right way to maximize personal happiness, but I’d still prefer a less planned out approach to things.

(Incidentally, amongst the comments I have received on the photo used above were two that exclaimed, “Are you smiling?” which seems to suggest that it isn’t something I often do. So for me, the baby has to count for something. Again, that’s not a disproof of the studies. It’s just an attempt to argue for a more complex worldview.)

Somebody’s Seriously Calling Britney Fat?

 Let me get this straight: Britney Spears is fat? Seriously? Is this actually a conversation that we’re having in the pages of our newspapers?

I don’t even like Britney Spears and I think that this is outrageously unfair. Let’s start with the picture used to illustrate the story linked above; you’re telling me that she’s looking overweight in that? What on Earth is going on in this country when that woman is considered overweight?

I’m raising a young daughter dammit; I don’t need this. I don’t need my daughter thinking that Britney Spears, all 110 pounds of her, is overweight. I can barely get her to eat as it is. She looks like Chilly Billy. I don’t need her thinking she needs to be even skinnier than that. I don’t need her thinking that there’s something wrong with her because light doesn’t pass through her skin.

Incidentally, all of the people describing Britney Spears as fat probably aren’t themselves a bronzed Adonis. Somehow, it is acceptable for these people to describe the world as being fat without themselves being responsible enough to put down that donut already.

The world is stupid.

A Teenager To Be Circumcised, Maybe

There is a fight going on in Oregon between two parents over their 13-year-old’s penis. The father wants it circumcised; the mother does not. The details of the case are particularly distressing:

1. Dad recently converted, and decided that his son’s foreskin had to go as a result. Don’t ask me about the calculus involved in that decision, because I neither know it nor understand it.

2. Mom claims that the son is too afraid to say no to his father, even though he has privately explained that it is a procedure that he does not want.

3. Several religious organizations have stepped in on the behalf of the father to say that this is a circumcision that has to happen, because if it were prevented, the blow to individual religious liberty would be overwhelming.

4. These two parents have decided that the best place to have an argument over circumcision, and consequently, over their child’s penis, is in a courtroom in front of whoever walks in the court’s doors.

5. At no point in this case has the boy’s testimony been sought. Think about that.

Circumcision is bad enough when it is parents visiting the procedure upon their newborn infant. To insist that it occur to a 13-year-old boy in the throes of adolescence? The fact that the boy’s testimony hasn’t been sought is similarly mind-blowing. Is it being seriously suggested that his opinion simply doesn’t matter? That even if he does object to the procedure, his father’s desire to cut off his foreskin should win the day?

One of the stranger areas of individual liberty that rarely gets touched on are the rights of those under the age of 18. People tend to believe that children are the property of parents, and thus can be manipulated in almost any imaginable way. This is one of the reasons that so few abusive parents ever face anything bordering on legal retribution for their crimes. This case is another unfortunate illustration; some of the adults involved could obviously not care less about the child’s interest in this situation. This is a battle over “religious freedom” and not “individual liberty” in their eyes.

The problem of children is confusing in the extreme because there doesn’t seem to be an easy answer. We don’t want to allow children the right to run willy-nilly across the countryside, but at the same time, surely can’t believe that as parents we have the right to do almost whatever we want to them.

Obviously, I am against the father and his supporters on this case. He and they are so unbelievably wrong that it hurts the imagination. Yet, there is the very distinct possibility that he will win, and that his son’s penis will be circumcised without him ever getting a say-so in the procedure himself. And if that isn’t a blow to individual liberty, what in the hell is?

Update: This is exactly the sort of thing that I’m talking about. Although decades old, the assumption was that, because permission was given, the abuse of these children was acceptable. Children are not property.

Me, My Daughter, And Not Being A Stupid Parent

This is me and my daughter. We’d hiked down to a waterfall. We were being “cute.” I take her on these sorts of trips because we both like them and they’re memorable. And because they’re fun. There is a bit of danger involved - we have to walk down a steep hill, and then climb down some rocks. I wouldn’t take her if I thought the danger outweighed the potential for fun, but it never does. That’s how parenting works I think.

Meanwhile, Billy Ford isn’t so sure about the concept. He’s pissed because a flight he took showed scenes of graphic sex and naughty violence…or is it naughty sex and graphic violence? He objected to the scenes, ostensibly because kids might have been hurt by these images. He also is furious because individuals can actually order these “pornographic” shows for viewing on videoscreens. And oh the children! They might be exposed to sex, or violence, or worst, both.

Ignoring the fact that Billy Ford wasn’t actually with any children on the flight in question, why can’t these moral crusaders calm down and, y’know, actually let me do the parenting? She’s my daughter, and I’ll decide what I do or don’t want her to watch. That’s part of being a parent, part of being a person responsible for a child. I think that the Billy Fords of the world aren’t comfortable with those of us who have different calculus for our children than he has for his. And again, I’m not comfortable with parents raising their children Christian, but you don’t see me proposing laws to prevent it, or organizing boycotts to influence the decision makers.

It Rocks How Dumb Some Parents Are

It isn’t that I’m a great parent - I have no idea about the quality of my parenting. But I know what I don’t like when it comes to parenting, and that’s bribery. Unlike these parents, part of a growing trend of parents purchasing their children’s good behavior.

You know those kids throwing absolute fits in the store the aisle over? That happens often not because there is something genuinely wrong with the child, but because a parent has conditioned the child to expect something. When it isn’t given, the child’s predictable response is throwing a fit.

These parents are training their children to go ballistic when their needs aren’t met, a pattern which doesn’t stop unless it is corrected. This is how we end up with adult aged individuals acting like children - they simply don’t understand any other way to function in the world. Unfortunately, raising your children to believe that they’re owed the world isn’t a crime, but the parents who do this sort of thing need to understand the long term damage that they’re doing to their child’s ability to exist in the world.

The unbelievable thing is that children raised this way are going to soon start having their own children. And those kids, raised by parents who never themselves understood that the world wasn’t their personal oyster, are going to be hell on wheels, absolute little terrors.