Teach Your Children Well....

But we have done a damned poor job of it.

Take a look at this report in today's (3/26) NYTIMES on kids who are dumped into daycare so that mommy and daddy can get another Volvo.

We've made our kids a political football, or to be more accurate, a politically correct football, and no one has been willing to call off the game. Driven by a confluence of historical forces, including rampant inflation as a result of the Vietnam War which put unprecedented pressure on families to earn additional income in order to maintain a middle class lifestyle, the Women's Liberation movement, and the liberal 50s upbringing of the baby boomer generation, so many families have, in essence, abandoned their children to "professional" day care and "care givers".

Any opinion that deviates from the conventional wisdom, which states that any attention given to a child is good enough, is derided as either old fashioned, or worse yet, designed to keep women in their place. One of the country's foremost child development experts, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, feels that the development of our children should be of paramount importance, and that children should not be viewed as another middle class commodity.

I find it so odd that we, as a nation, place so much emphasis on children in so many respects (how often do you hear policies justified as, "it's for the children!"), but the reality is far different. We give them bad schools ( ever try to pass a school budget? When did football become more important than chemistry? Even better, when did it become the norm to call the smart guys "geeks"?), bad role models, garbage for food, thumb exercises for recreation, and we prematurely sexualize them.

Yeah, right, "we love children".

This is a youth culture and older people desperately try to cling to their youth. In a sense, "adults" haven't earned the right to be respected by our children. How many parents try to be their child's "friend"? How many "adults" try to desperately maintain their youth with unnecessary surgical procedures? How many "adults" try to dress in their children's clothes? How many " adults" are "Adults"?

Yes, no matter what we say, we hate our children.They need us to grow up and be adults. And we don't want to.