Parenting stuff

[celticdragonfly]

I'm going to share some links selenite gave me

Firstly, The Parent Trap:

We've taken a lot of the fun out of parenting. Or to echo Longman, the "social costs" of parenting continue to rise, and, more significantly, perhaps, the "social returns" continue to decline.

Parenting was always hard work, of course. But aside from the economic payoffs, parents used to get a lot of social benefits, too. But in recent decades, a collection of parenting "experts" and safety-fascist types have extinguished some of the benefits while raising the costs, to the point where what's amazing isn't that people are having fewer kids, but that people are having kids at all.
...
There's also the decline in parental prestige over generations. My mother reports that when she was a newlywed (she was married in 1959) you weren't seen as fully a member of the adult world until you had kids. Nowadays to have kids means something closer to an expulsion from the adult world.

This one makes me laugh. Anyone who knows us know that we're still sticking with the Then option. But the scary thing is not just the number of parents who want to use the Now answer - but how much pressure you get against you for being a parent sticking with the Then answer.

Comments

[castiron.livejournal.com]

I'm particularly struck by the comment about how parents are getting increasing responsibility but decreasing authority. (It's the Dilbertization of parenthood!) Like those cities that fine or even jail parents if their kids miss too much school -- I've always thought that some kids would probably take advantage of that to get their parents in trouble, and what recourse do the parents have at that point?

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Yeah, not like they're going to get away with spanking or otherwise punishing the kids.

Frankly, I only see one answer to this. And it's what I'm trying to do. Isolate the kids a lot from popular culture. Avoid the things that are teaching them to be little brats and ignore their parents. This is why we don't have cable or TV, and why I really restrict what I let the kids watch on video - and I have gotten flack for that. Monitor and restrict what company they keep as a small child. I'm hoping to get my positive socialization in there strongly enough that it's too well grounded for the negative stuff to wipe it out as they slowly get more exposure to it as they grow older. (yeah, "yet another reason to homeschool")

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

We're definitely giving serious thought to restricting of what the MV will be allowed to watch, eventually. Partly because of me not wanting my brain cells to desert in droves, and partly because of avoiding the negative.

Obviously, not going to worry for awhile.

DV