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If society has changed, then it is possible for parenting to change. One way society has changed is that the mother no longer models submissiveness to her children. I think this is very important in teaching the roles of the sexes. The son grows up seeing his father be the boss over children and women and he expects to raise his family the same way. The female grows up seeing her mother submit to the father and expects to treat her husband the same way.
<g> The women in my family haven't modeled submissiveness since before the Gods invented dirt. We're matriarchal back to at least the 19th century (as far back as living memory goes). That comparison would honestly have never crossed my mind. Though I suppose it might be a valid observation somewhere.
[quote=NoExcuses;15019048In addition, children are not being raised to be men and women. They are being raised to be all the same with no definition between the sexes except the sex organs themselves.[/quote]
Crisan, because you don't like them doesn't make them untrue. Sayings stand the test of time BECAUSE THEY ARE TRUE. Think about that. Sometimes people have a hard time seeing the truth.
How do you account for the oft-repeated phrase "saying it doesn't make it so", NE? In that context-- it being an oft-repeated phrase or saying-- you have created a paradox..
Quote:
Originally Posted by NoExcuses
Parenting HAS CHANGED. It went from bringing children into the parents' world to bringing the parents into the children's world. It's the population that creates change in society, so it IS people that have changed.
You fail to differentiate between society/people as a collective, and parents/people as a group of individuals. With collective nouns can come infinite diversity in infinite combinations, which therefore makes sweeping statements improbable. People, in the collective, tend to act and react differently than people in small individual units.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NoExcuses
The way I read that quote was that it's up to the mother to raise the children to stand for themselves when they become adults. There are numerous threads with young adults still living with parents and not being very productive, and in those threads there are numerous posts that state that parents should be very happy to have their adult offspring live at home for as long as they wish. Those people have not, or do not intend to raise their children to stand on their own.
I'd hesitate to extrapolate to collective society from posts on a message board. Particularly since at least a few of the most prolific posters in the threads you mention are the non-productive children in question. We can only guess at the rest of the household equation.
I also see that children are staying in the family home well into their twenties, and while the old grumpy part of me wants to point out that I was on my own, working my way through college at age 19, I understand that times have changed. For example, I was able to purchase student health insurance at a reasonable group rate, and that's not the case anymore. College students must maintain a full-time status to stay on their parents' insurance, which is usually the only insurance option available to them. In addition, with cuts in federal financial aid, fewer and fewer people qualify for it, and there are more hoops to jump through (ex: the age of independence for f.a. is now 24).
That's a long-winded way of saying that kids are staying at home because it's not financially feasible for most of them to strike out on their own and earn a college degree at the same time.
That said, I also see that many of my students' parents provide them with many luxuries like iphones, higher end cars, and wardrobes from trendy stores. Most of these kids aren't driving beaters and shopping at thrift stores like we were in our college days.
"A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary." (Dorothy Canfield Fisher)
Why has this changed? All the mothers who think their children should stay home forever, or at least well into adulthood have forgotten that it's our responsibility to prepare our children as they are growing to become responsible.
What has changed?
A young relative of mine is raising a child. Her stated goal is to make him happy.
Has that become the goal of parents? In previous generations, parents wanted to raise their children to be self-sufficient, or successful, or responsible, or even good. Now parents want to make their children happy.
You quoted BOTH maciesmom's post and my post. I knew what maciesmom meant because she left a rep comment for me previously in this thread.
By our definition of unconditional love, it doesn't appear that you are agreeing, even though you say so.
The reason is because you still continue to insist that there are limits on love.
We are saying that we can hold conditions on behavior and still have no conditions for our love.
Yep - you beat me to it....Hopes wasn't "assuming" my meaning. She had valid reason to say what she did. I do believe that unconditional love is the love we have for our children - even if they are struggling or wrong or making poor decisions, we still love them. We may not LIKE them all the time or AGREE with their path but we love them and want the best for them. Some of the toughest and heart wrenching decisions we make are because we love them.
A young relative of mine is raising a child. Her stated goal is to make him happy.
Has that become the goal of parents? In previous generations, parents wanted to raise their children to be self-sufficient, or successful, or responsible, or even good. Now parents want to make their children happy.
I think you just expressed what I was looking for.
Nothing wrong with being happy or wanting your kids to be happy. The problem lies in believing/raising them to believe that their personal happiness is of paramount importance and supercedes all else.
I believe happiness is a byproduct of how you live not the goal. Kind of like John Lennon's famous quote that "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans"....such is happiness. It's what happens when you are busy in other ways - learning, loving, giving, working....happiness kind of sneaks up on you when you stop looking for it. As a parent, I hope I am providing my children with the tools to be happy.
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