The Parent Trap
We've clearly run off the rails on the issue of parenting. What used to be a hugely satisfying and beneficial practice has now, for many, become a burden- to the point that many societies, such as Russia and Italy, are subsidizing the raising of children in an effort to avoid societal collapse. Then there's this-
Meanwhile, in the United States, commentator John Gibson is calling for "procreation, not recreation." But I think that attitude is part of the problem. (Procreation not recreation? As an old-timer once reportedly said in response to the Make Love, Not War, slogan: "Hell, in my time we did both.")
But Gibson's slogan unwittingly captures an important aspect of the problem, in the United States and other industrial societies, at least: We've taken a lot of the fun out of parenting. Or to echo Longman, the "social costs" of parenting continue to rise, and, more significantly, perhaps, the "social returns" continue to decline.
Parenting was always hard work, of course. But aside from the economic payoffs, parents used to get a lot of social benefits, too. But in recent decades, a collection of parenting "experts" and safety-fascist types have extinguished some of the benefits while raising the costs, to the point where what's amazing isn't that people are having fewer kids, but that people are having kids at all.
This occurred to me recently while reading Caitlin Flanagan's new book, To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife. Flanagan's book is mostly a comparison of her own housewifely and maternal life with that of her mother, and one thing that struck me is how much of what counted as acceptable -- or even exemplary -- parenting a generation ago would now be considered abuse and neglect. Here's an example:
"My mother was by no means indifferent about me: I was her pet, the baby of the family. But back then children were not under constant adult supervision, even if their mothers were housewives. By the time I was five, I was allowed to wander away from the house as long as I didn't cross any big streets. I had the run of the neighborhood at six. . . . A nine-year-old could be trusted with a key; a nine-year-old knew how to work a telephone if anything went wrong. Moreover, anxiety as a precondition of the maternal experience had not yet been invented."
I can vouch for all of that from personal experience- as a child I "ran around the neighborhood" with little or no supervision, and no danger other than that I put myself into (and that is a story best left untold). How we got to the present state is a mystery, but when my grandson disappears for a couple of hours I'm troubled, whereas my parents would have probably not even noticed.
UPDATE: oh sweet Jesus
All via some guy in Knoxville