Where I grew up, parents and children were inherently antagonistic. It resulted in the children trying to hide everything from their parents, because there was no upside to having them know. If you were lucky they wouldn't use it against you, but under normal conditions they absolutely would, sooner or later.
The adults would say they didn't like punishing their kids sometimes, but it was such an obvious lie it was downright dumbfounding. Nobody said anything due to epic levels of, "What the fuck are you trying now?" Everyone knew that kids misbehaved on purpose so as to play the [don't get punished] game. If the kids didn't have to do any chores and never got grounded, they "won," though of course I missed the part where it didn't count if you never broke the rules. Have to risk punishment to get points for evading punishment. If the children were polite and did all their homework the parents "won." Though of course doing your homework is bad for you so they were scuttling their own progeny.
You can easily see this on the street. If you notice a parent and child, you will also notice the interaction is never positive. If it's not quiet and apathetic, the adult is using violence on the child. "Maybe she deserved it," maybe she did, but there's no chance none of them deserve to be having fun, and yet none of them do. Look at the dog that isn't barking.
I never once observed a parent supporting a child in any way except financially, unless you count transportation. These parents felt that paying for the kid's food entitled them to all sorts of labour, as if the kid was the one who decided his mom got pregnant.
Like, ew.
Seems like the result of a rather transparent anti-family campaign. Highly Orwellian; have children rat out their parents. They didn't quite go that far, but it's clear none of these families would help each other bury the body. No trust earned, and none received. If the kids can't rely on the parent, they will become dependent on the black State. Bonus: the parents can functionally kick them out of the house at 5 years old and go back to their atomized hedonism. "Sure we've all noticed the schools are ruining our little darlings' character, but who cares about that? Thank god they're back at school! Whew!"
Note that this seems to be an English tradition that's at least 400 years old.
I was reading Ruth Goodman - How to be a Tudor, and I would say separation of parent and child is a natural reaction to how they used to treat children. A rational response. (Assuming you are very simple-minded and completely incapable of recursion.) If I was raised like that I would absolutely GTFO of my parent's orbit ASAP, and obviously anyone who remained subordinate would end up extraordinarily twisted and abrasive.
Under these conditions, spanking is obviously normal. If you're going to be abusive anyway, why bother with half-measures? Might as well make your kids absolutely terrified of you, like Machiavelli would advise.
Right? Right. Nothing weird here.
I met a guy in college. We went on a trip to his dad's cottage in his dad's nice new car. Hit some scrap on the way - no immediately obvious damage, as it struck the undercarriage. He definitely didn't want to tell his dad, and duh, why would he? (I gave him points for bravely owning up to it right away.) His dad wasn't going to say, "Oh yeah that happens sometimes, I guess I should have mentioned it, here's how you avoid that sort of thing." His dad was going to do what he was expected to do, and look some way or another to punish his kid. "Something bad happened, therefore he's at fault." Didn't even have the decency to take the 18+ "kid" aside and scold him privately - I had to proactively leave the room to supply privacy.
The parents of these kids are of course all terribly upset because they never call.
After my mother had a stroke, she wrote down in detail all the stuff school did to my character and left it somewhere I would find it. If the plausible deniability part sounds real weird it's because it was even weirder but I'm cutting for space. She had earlier told me she wanted to homeschool but felt she couldn't. Rather than dealing with any of this she simply went into denial and pretended it was a fraction as bad as she had observed.
The moral of this story is that the mothers don't not notice. They simply never form the MAPS version of MADD. Dying trips their Darwininan impulses but anything less than dying is peachy keen.
This is one of the reasons they get so violent about being pro-school. If you mention it out loud they hear you echoing the little voice inside them that they like to ignore or bully, and they cannot deal. Feels like a peasant revolt, like you have a guillotine in the back of your truck just for them.
Personally think their judgment can and should be trusted on this.
So uh anyway, don't declare war on your kids. WTF are you making me say. How did you screw up so bad that this is a remotely reasonable thing to write.
If someone can lose in this relationship, you're doing it wrong. If you can't even declare peace on your own children you're completely fucked as a social being.
No comments:
Post a Comment