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I've learned so many things from this thread! Conservatives are evil and violent! Adam Lanza had logical reasons for what he did! We overvalue the lives of babies and young children! Paying attention to children is unfair to childless people!
Did I miss anything?
Folks, go spend some time in China or Japan and you will see how people dote on their children because to their culture, children are the most important thing. They represent the future. In the west, especially in the U.S., children are downgraded in importance, to our future peril as a society. If you don't like a baby screaming in a restaurant, granted it's annoying, but you were once that baby, your friends were all once that baby, and if you have a child, he/she will be that baby as well. It's part of life; if we become thin skinned about children as some kind of annoyance or inconvenience, then we have missed the point of what life is all about! Just my opinions.
The article is exactly right, and I've felt the sentiments it expressed even before we had children. It has lead to various things we've done over the years to keep up from becoming too child-centered:
(!) The children were sleeping in their own room FROM DAY ONE--yes, even when they were days out of the hospital. They have never been allowed to sleep in our room, not even when they're sick (not that they've ever been violently ill overnight anyway)
(2) We don't go to McDonald's all the time, even though we go on occasion. One day I had told them we'd probably go when mommy came home, then my wife came home from work saying she wasn't in the mood and was really craving Italian. We ate Italian, because the mother is more important, and besides she's worked all day. Why should children get their way when they're not working and she is, and she's an adult and she's my wife?
(3) When we had vacation time available in 2012, I pressed for us to go to a scenic spot where I could take a lot of landscape shots, as I am into photography as a hobby, but hadn't gotten any landscape shots lately and was starting to tire of taking photos of our children all the time. During the trip, when photo opportunities of the children arose, I told my wife "not interested, you take one if you want."
I also was not interested in going somewhere "child-centered" like, say, Disneyland. No way was I going to spend an entire week doing something that the kids like but that I hated. What do they need a vacation from, anyway?
(4) We haven't overscheduled them into every after school activity known to mankind, because we don't want to be running around all the time due to their interests.
(5) I always back my wife, also their mother, on discipline. We almost always show ourselves as being a "united front."
(6) We don't spend tons of money on clothes for them while getting garage sale clothes for us. We wear clothes from a garage sale, so can they. As long as they look nice, what does it matter anyway?
Pretty much how we were raised. And how my sisters raised their kids -- with the exception of the sleeping in their own rooms right off the bat. Easier to breastfeed at night with the little one in the bassinet in their room.
We were taught FAMILY comes first. Daddy and Mom were the head of the family. They ran the show in a united front -- there was none of this go ask your mother/go ask your father thing. We children were very important to them...but we weren't little demigods to be revered, we were children meant to be reared.
I have an acquaintance who is on her third marriage and three male children with three different fathers. The reason for the divorces have been that she doesn't like the way the husband treats the boys. Calls it emotional abuse.
I've always been supportive but now I'm starting to wonder if she doesn't form her primary relationship with her sons to the exclusion of her husbands. I'm starting to see a pattern.
If so, I think she's got it backwards and that her excessively planning her life around her children may not also be damaging to them.
Used to be that parents had kids, and the kids were treated like children.. not the center of the universe. Parents used to actually go out and visit adult friends, go to dinner and the movies, with the kids at a babysitter. The parents took the side of the teacher when there was an issue, rather than running to the media when something didn't go their precious snowflake's way. Seriously.. kids were WAY more emotionally healthy and ready to be adults when parents focused on their marriage, and the kids, rather than thinking the child is an extension of themselves. I've known way too many couples who sleep separately, because one of them has to sleep in the child's room. Kids who grew up in the era of real parents, were not "cutting" themselves, and were not all on prozac.
I found this article really interesting because I relate to it a lot. I experienced a lot of existential angst during my teen years because I came to realize that our society worships children and views adults as being dispensable and not worthy of being trusted or cared about. Like the article says, you don't see "Middle Aged Woman On Board signs". A car accident is only a tragedy if it's a bay-bee. For a while this angst actually caused me to fear and resent children, though I've gotten over that for the most part.
I'm actually glad my parents weren't super clingy to me. I think it made me more of a realist, and if they were the crash of realizing that society doesn't give a crap about adults who don't "Contribute" something (ie, make a lot of money) would have been a lot harder than it was. I wouldn't love my wife less than my kids if I got married I'd love them the same. I might even love my wife a bit more since I chose her and she would have been the one to give me my children in the first place. I'd still love her even if she was an abusive mother or spouse, just like I would forgive my children if they did bad things.
The article puts out a great point that people are considered worth most at birth and less the older they get. Which is an extremely shallow value system, isn't it? In a way people in the old days had the right idea -a person's value actually increases as they become older since they have more wisdom and knowledge and they have at least ostensibly contributed more to society and a lot of people depend on them.
Our society treats babies and small children like gods. Pre-teens are brats and can still be hated if they do something really terrible (ie the people who killed James Bulger) but are nearly exempt from being judged or despised outside of extreme scenarios. Teenagers are more or less just as worthless as adults, I might even argue that once a person reaches the age of 20 or 25 they might even gain a slight amount of value back.
Old people are given lip service honor but in reality nobody really cares if they suffer or die, unless they are a person's grandparents.
What do you think? Is the "parenthood religion" sick?
I've learned so many things from this thread! Conservatives are evil and violent! Adam Lanza had logical reasons for what he did! We overvalue the lives of babies and young children! Paying attention to children is unfair to childless people!
Did I miss anything?
Folks, go spend some time in China or Japan and you will see how people dote on their children because to their culture, children are the most important thing. They represent the future. In the west, especially in the U.S., children are downgraded in importance, to our future peril as a society. If you don't like a baby screaming in a restaurant, granted it's annoying, but you were once that baby, your friends were all once that baby, and if you have a child, he/she will be that baby as well. It's part of life; if we become thin skinned about children as some kind of annoyance or inconvenience, then we have missed the point of what life is all about! Just my opinions.
Yes, you missed the overall picture. While some people have specific qualms with a mainstream culture focused only on children, it is ultimately the children themselves and the rest of us who will ultimately be governed by a class of entitled foot stompers who end up the losers.
Your comparing our children to those in China and Japan is laughable. I would LOVE to be around generations of children who respect their elders and the boundaries they enforce. They have "Tiger Moms" and we have "Wimpy Moms." One child policy? I'm all for it.
I was never a screaming baby in a restaurant. For one thing, my mother would have removed me from that place so fast your head would spin. She would be embarrassed that she could not control her child and she would not subject others to my annoying behavior.
Like is not "all about" children. Life is about life. Adults and elders are also full of life.
Used to be that parents had kids, and the kids were treated like children.. not the center of the universe. Parents used to actually go out and visit adult friends, go to dinner and the movies, with the kids at a babysitter. The parents took the side of the teacher when there was an issue, rather than running to the media when something didn't go their precious snowflake's way. Seriously.. kids were WAY more emotionally healthy and ready to be adults when parents focused on their marriage, and the kids, rather than thinking the child is an extension of themselves. I've known way too many couples who sleep separately, because one of them has to sleep in the child's room. Kids who grew up in the era of real parents, were not "cutting" themselves, and were not all on prozac.
I think there is entirely too much emphasis on feelings in our current culture. In the late seventies and the eighties when they started to educate children about their feelings and provide emotional help at school by hiring school counselors I thought it was a good thing.
My generation was raised by people who wouldn't, couldn't discuss their feelings. But oddly enough we now call them the "Greatest Generation." They were very strong emotionally.
It seems we swung too far in the opposite direction and made young peoples' feelings too important.. We should never hurt anyone's feelings, make our voting decisions based on how other people would feel about it; if I'm offended I deserve apology. That sort of thing. That gives young people permission to give more power to their feelings than is healthy for them. And feeling will run your life if you let them.
And so, If I've got "bad" feelings, something, anything must be done to stop them. Allowing children to feel a measure of disappointment, loneliness, frustration actually helps inoculate them. Talk about them matter-of-factly. Everyone has them. They aren't going to hurt you if you learn to deal with them. We need to learn not to act upon them but rather make our decisions with our intellect. And so forth.
Instead of creating a more gentle, empathetic generation, which was the intent, we seem to have created a generation of emotional lightweights.
Funny story:
My kids were pioneer guinea pigs of the movement. My son came home from nursery school one day singing, "Feelings are so filthy. And la-de-da-de-dah." Whatever.
What?
The next time I talked to his teacher I asked her what that was all about. "Oh, our 'Feelings are so Healthy' song?"
That attitude right there is the problem. A lot of men who appear to be "jealous" of the baby have every reason to be. They're tired of their wife suddenly giving every last bit of their time, energy, love and thoughts towards the children while ignoring them, the husband, whom she had pledged herself to FOR LIFE and without whom the children wouldn't even exist in the first place.
Sorry, but your needs as a man--or a woman--do not magically disappear because of a "bundle of joy." Your husband needs you just as much as he did before the baby came along, and doing like a lot of women do and scuffing "he's a grown a-man, he can take care of himself, this precious baby NEEDS me"--you are begging for him to have an extramarital affair. Sooner or later he's going to grow tired of the excuses, someone at the workplace is going to show how they care what HE thinks for a change, and he's going to fool around when that happens. When that does, you're just as much to blame as he is, because you neglected to take care of his needs--and yes, they are NEEDS.
I am sure there are some men who really are jerks and expect their wives to pay so much attention to them that they neglect their children, but most cases I've seen aren't like that. It's usually that the mother/wife now freaks out at the prospect of saying no to their children but can say no to their spouse as easily as they can comb their hair. They invalidate their husband's feelings, the one who is slated to be around for life, while catering to the every whim of their children who, by design, will grow up and leave. That is totally backwards and, I think, a leading cause of broken up marriages.
Now, in another post, I'll talk about how WE do things.
That's another attitude I don't like. I strongly disagree with the death penalty, and even if I did agree with it I would feel like a crime done to an adult would be just as worthy of it as a crime done to a child. After all aren't a lot of adults defenseless too? Not even grown person is able-bodied and minded, harming a mentally ill or physically handicapped adult is just as craven as hurting a child. But people just don't care as much because they aren't as cute.
I abhor conservative and fascist minded people using beautiful children as literal "poster children" for capital punishment and other totalitarian policies. An eye for an eye is a horrible way to honor a child's memory and I think parents who hurt their own children must hate themselves anyway and be hurting deeply since it goes right up against the grain of evolution.
This. Children are are future. But so are adults. All people are equal, in my eyes. I get angry when I read a story in the news about X tragedy in which 100 people died, including 25 children. As if the 75 adults don't count. These stories are recounted in this way all the time. When a person dies, it is sad, whether it is a 10 year old or a 100 year old. All humans have intrinsic worth, regardless of their age.
These comments are very interesting. I think our culture is very child hostile compared to when I was a child 65 years ago. The post-WWII generation was having children like mad. Parents swapped cribs, clothing, child care, and we all ran around like an undisciplined horde playing soldier, cowboys and Indians, or dozens of other games. TV hardly existed, so the boob tube baby sitter wasn't a problem. Somebody was always going camping, taking the kids swimming, teaching crafts or just spending time with the kids. We weren't ghettoized like children are nowadays. We lived in a world of adults doing adult things.
Nowadays kids live indoors or behind chain link fences and aren't allowed to do anything, because there is no room for them in the adult world. It's no wonder they can't form lasting marriages, because they never learned how to have adult relationships growing up. All they know is being shoved in with other kids their own age, which is no way to develop an adult personality. I feel sorry for them.
Time for his wife to "woman up" and stop making excuses about why she doesn't have any time for him, to accept her responsibility for her refusal to accept the realization that her husband has NEEDS and he married his wife expecting certain things on a regular basis, children or not.
Or--it's time for him to find another woman who will appreciate rather than making excuses for the lousy way she treats him and yet still expects him to tolerate it.
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