The short version: As soon as you start whining about how coddled Kids These Days are and how overprotecting [other] parents are, you have officially become a blathering old fart, and you might as well have a disclaimer slung around your neck: “Please disregard the above as fatally tainted with half-assed nostalgia. Also, my memory isn’t what it used to be.”
The SF Chron’s kid blog posted a couple of articles by a gentleman who, being the father of a one-year-old, is clearly an expert on parenting (no, really; you are a perfect parent before you have children and it’s downhill from there). Let’s set aside a discussion of the sexist implications of “wussification” for the moment; the article is one big, long whine about how Parents Today aren’t as stupid and careless as our parents were, and as a result of this most untoward concern for children not being maimed, killed, etc., Kids Today just aren’t having any fun at all and are coddled.
I’m not very good at nostalgia, so in addition to remembering the fun of bouncing around in a car with no seatbelts, I also remember friends who didn’t “do all right”. Kids who really did lose an eye, or a life, because somebody thought a stern warning and the threat of a whuppin’ was enough to keep the children out of the gun cabinet. There was a guy nicknamed “Shrapnel Face” because he was playing around with gunpowder and coffee cans–the doctors said his sunglasses were the only reason he still had eyes. I remember a friend of mine having to be towed around in a wagon while we played, because he’d been playing in the street and hit by a car–kind of tough to run around and play when you’ve got a shattered pelvis.
So if Hartlaub wants to live out his fantasies of being a manly, indulgent parent–and why not, he’s got a wife to dump all that “sensible and responsible” shit on–he can do it with his own kid, and I’ll expect that he won’t be flapping his lips when, say a parent buys guns for a kid who uses them unwisely. But he shouldn’t expect everyone to be dumb enough to think that the judgment of a child about what’s fun and appropriate ought to override the judgment of an adult.
mythago
4 Responses to “GenX dons the mantle of parental dumbassery”
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Did I read that correctly – he wants more parents to be like the dad who let 12-year-old kids ride on the roof of the family car? Well… Who am I to argue against evolution.
Yes, you read it correctly.
Yeah, I remember hanging on grimly-one hand grabbing the front seat, the other hand on the door handle, as my ass skidded across the asphalt when the passenger door opened as a friend’s father pulled into a parking lot across 3 lanes of traffic – I had no seatbelt and only my upper arm strength kept me from rolling out completely. I’d like to see this guy pick chunks of asphalt out of kid’s butt (I was wearing short shorts) while she shrieks in pain. Not fun. And that was minor. As you said, mythago, a lot of bad shit happened back then.
Myth…I’m so sorry to go OT, but I really need to talk to you back alley…on my behalf and that of a trans young ‘un who, for whatever reasons, feels safe in my company…despite my gaffes …and who forgives me for being one of the 3% of people who assumed the “her” immediately, and not the “him” that he is.
I’ve been taking in the unwashed and unloved adolescent rural boys for a long time…but this is new and wildly different, and I could use guidance.
Please talk to me. You have my email.