Too Much Freedom?
Johnny Jones, March 1997
Who do you think of as "contemporary parents?" I think of a family in a restaurant on Father's Day with a two-year old daughter. Dressed in a pale blue frilly dress, the little girl has lace on her sox and bows in her hair. Both parents dote on her every word.
But there are some words not coming forth from this little one - words the Dad wants desperately to hear. Despite the "Father's Day Special" menu and banners announcing "Happy Father's Day!" to one and all, despite the sermon they've just heard on how God is like a Father, the little girl is not saying those special words - "Happy Father's Day, Daddy. I love you."
She hasn't said them all morning. I took the mother aside - "Why don't you suggest to Sara that she say something to her Dad," I ventured. "It wouldn't cost a thing, and it would make him happy."
"She will when she wants to," the young mother replied airily. She thought I was suggesting a terrible infringement on little Sara's freedom.
Freedom is seen as more important than teaching, above kindness, and superior to discipline - and is at the heart of the contemporary attitude towards parenting It is, despite great advances in other attitudes, a tragic flaw.
This method of upbringing is well intentioned. But, as journalist Marie Winn documents in Children Without Childhood, "...`new-era child-rearing' - in which the child is enlisted as an equal partner in his own upbringing - has turned out to be a disaster. Children do not prosper when treated as adults. Instead, what they require to accomplish their important tasks of learning and exploration and play is the security of dependency of their inherent inequality."
In other words, we need to treat children as children, not as little teenagers (very popular these days), or as miniature adults. In reviewing Winn's book for Newsweek, Jean Seligmann came up with these observations about the probable cause for the change in attitudes.
"Perhaps the most interesting explanation here for the altered nature of childhood is the sweeping change that occurred during the 1970's in the economic and social status of women. As hordes of them left home for the workplace...the effect on child rearing was cataclysmic. In practical terms, kids were left with far less supervision. But something much more basic happened. Newly emancipated women began to feel that it was not longer fair to demand submission and deference from their off-spring - or to deny them full access to information about life's confusing realities." That's what it's about - freedom of information, freedom from supervision, freedom from discipline.
Jean Seligmann also said, "...when journalist Marie Winn began to study today's youngsters, she discovered....many middle-class American children - not high schoolers, but kids between the ages of about 6 and 12 - have been robbed of their most precious birthright - childhood itself."
Fortunately I'm seeing the issue addressed in magazines more often, as parents see the negative effects of too much freedom and too little discipline in their children's lives.
J. Kent Hollingsworth, psychologist for the Bogota, NJ, public schools, put it this way: "The main points made here are simple: Children need love, respect, and consistent guidance. Discipline is not a dirty word--it is part of the foundation upon which self-esteem, moral judgment, creativity and good work habits are built."
And that's the basis for real freedom.
2017 Note: This is unfortunately still true, don't you think?
