May 2nd, 2006
I was reading some articles by Lydia Lovric last night. Though she is decidedly "conservative" in her opinions—and self-defined as such, too—I mostly like what she has to say. Certainly, her articles are slightly more refined, somewhat shorter and more compact than my sometimes-rambling rants, but essentially she writes about the same sorts of things that I like to rant about here. Remember friends and fellow Romans: I am not left-wing, not right-wing ... not really anything. Oh, but I make my opinions -er- felt, so I am not a liberal, either.
In Lovric's articles on her website, three times I came across these words (paraphrased here) quoted by Lovric and uttered by experts such as doctors or child psychologists:
Ultimately, it's up to parents' best judgement to decide what's best for their children.
And in each of the articles it was Lovric ranting about the moronic, lazy, poorly-thought-out but bunny-headed things people do with (and to) their children ... or inadvertently teach their children (e.g., bringing their children to the very late movies ... or bringing them to horror and shock movies any time).
Well, I had to wonder about what the experts really mean when they say such things about the parents' best judgement. It smacks of an expectation of responsibility, and it indicates that people can still be trusted—though they demonstrate such little common sense that their children are going to grow up to be 30-year-old sucklings, still attached to their pre-verbal impulses and incapable of exercising moral restraint because Mom and Dad ... well, grew up still attached to their pre-verbal impulses and incapable of exercising moral restraint.
People all over the world know what the right thing to do is, most of the time, but they are so emotionally screwed up, that they can't always see it as more than a sort of faint abstraction. And they can't feel the reality of moral rectitude well enough to exercise it as second nature. So when they aren't paying lip service in some fingers-crossed-behind-their-back childish rebel-without-a-clue giggling fit, they are doing just as they please (or think pleases them). And though they can tell their children just about anything they like, their kids are going to learn the behaviour that they are teaching them entirely non-verbally. Talk a good game but play dirty, and your kids will play even dirtier than you.
I'm sure doctors and child psychologists know this. But they can't recommend the next obvious solution to people who can't school their children: institute more and invasive rules. They know that, no matter how stupid and reckless these people are with their children, there is a danger zone of over-control that they must shy away from, even when others cite it as a necessary evil. Because the encroachment of The State on parenting is the last thing we need to create a strong pliable society.
So out come the usual well-worn words that they probably cringe to speak yet again, but know there is no better solution: It is up to the parents' best judgement to decide what is best for their own children. That expectation of responsibility that the professionals hope will somehow sink in to peoples' twisted (or just plain stupid) minds is the best that they can do in the end.
I dunno, maybe if enough respected authorities repeat it loudly the right number of times, it will eventually sink in so that Bad Parents everywhere will start to learn it, live it, love it.
But let's not hold our breath.
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