If we try to engineer perfect children, will they grow up to be unbearable? - By Katie Roiphe - Slat

[autographedcat]

Not being a parent myself, I have no personal insights to add here, but have long wondered at the incredible amount of structure most kids seem to grow up in these days, compared to when I was growing up.

If we try to engineer perfect children, will they grow up to be unbearable? - By Katie Roiphe - Slate Magazine

Can we, for a moment, flash back to the benign neglect of the 1970s and '80s? I can remember my parents having parties, wild children running around until dark, catching fireflies. If these children helped themselves to three slices of cake, or ingested the second-hand smoke from cigarettes, or carried cocktails to adults who were ever so slightly slurring their words, they were not noticed; they were loved, just not monitored. And, as I remember it, those warm summer nights of not being focused on were liberating. In the long sticky hours of boredom, in the lonely, unsupervised, unstructured time, something blooms; it was in those margins that we became ourselves

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I've seen them. There are some children who thrive on that sort of intensive scheduling, if their parents work with them to determine what the child actually wants (or doesn't want) to do, but there are many more who never get a chance to be alone and be impulsive because everything is scheduled.

It's the same, as she mentioned, about the protection from dirt and bugs. We saw that back in the 60s and 70s, those children who were mollycoddled and never allowed to play in the mud or fall down and get scrapes were the ones who ended up taking lots of time off school because they were ill with things to which the rest of us had developed immunities as babies. They were ones who didn't know how to take teasing or falling out with a friend, because it had never been allowed. Ones who were never taught how to cope with a torn shirt because it had never happened to them before.

She mentions the recent study that a glass of wine during pregnancy might actually be good for the baby. I don't know how much weight to give that study (like all medical research they'll say one thing one week and the opposite the next), but I saw the reaction to it from the UK government bodies: "We still advise no alcohol at all during pregnancy" no matter what the study says, because there is the old puritan attitude of "alcohol is evil" (and drugs, and anything else which might be fun).

[umbran.livejournal.com]

No, it is, "...no matter what the study says, because a single study should not be the basis of public policy."

[aiela.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I'm sure they exist. I just don't come across them in my middle-class midwestern lifestyle.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I get that puritan vibe too, from medical sources warning against wine. (Hey, if it was a safe way to lower blood pressure and blood sugar, they couldn't sell so many prescription pills.)

But otoh, winemakers have a lot of money to fund studies finding 'positive links' to their products, so those should be taken with a grain of salt too.

Salted wine, hm. Maybe I need more caffeine.