Spare the responsibilities and spoil the child
15 December, 2004
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Spare the responsibilities and spoil the child
The Australian
15 December 2004
Only in America would parents strike because their children don’t do the dishes. But, many parents are sympathising with the cause. If this is the new global movement rising to rival protests against the World Trade Organisation, then parents only have themselves to blame.
Cat and Harlen Barnard of Florida claim they have tried everything: charts with smiley faces, withholding pocket money and even a psychologist. But, try as they might their kids won’t lift a finger to help around the house. Their 17 year-old daughter and 12 year-old son are living on TV dinners, but dying of embarrassment as the media converges on them as they come home from school.
The children’s parents have been scrutinised by police and protective services to make sure they are not harming their children in anyway that may be deemed unlawful. So far, they have escaped prosecution. But, I’d argue any damage that could be done occurred well before the Barnard’s started picketing their own house.
Parents are the most important people in a child’s life. It is through your parents, especially during the early years, that you develop your social and family skills. The Barnard children obviously had it far too easy for too long, and a parental strike isn’t going to change a childhood of pandering and no responsibility.
We need to spend time with our children. When they are toddlers, adolescents and as they make the transition to adulthood. Camping out on the front lawn is just another case of not accepting your parental responsibility. It is not the children who need to improve here.
Any parent knows that raising children is a challenge and a half. It is in meeting those challenges that the rewards come. Only by playing the conflicting roles of comforter and disciplinarian can we raise well-rounded and capable adults. The ability to put ones clothes in the wash or cook a meal is not a genetic trait. It is something that is learned. Something parents need to teach.
There are a growing number of reports that my generation, as parents, are soft on their children. That we are not imparting important skills and behaviours because we have children later and fewer of them so they get more time and more attention, and less self-reliance. Our children are getting their homework, housework, everything done for them. We are robbing them of their ability to forge independence and develop a self-sufficient skill set.
Our expectations of children have changed dramatically. Historically, childhood wasn’t a time of innocence. Play is only a new concept. Children only a couple of centuries ago were not seen as an economic burden, but an economic necessity. The more children you had, the more work they could do: down mines, cleaning streets, polishing shoes – ‘hey governor’.
Today, childhood has become a Peter Pan affair. It is a lifestyle choice. Some of us never grow up. People are leaving the family home later in life, middle aged men engage in risk-taking, adolescent behaviour. Childhood is idolised and parents have lost the ability to put their foot down and say – ‘No, this is the way it is.’
So, if you don’t instil in your children the work ethic and family responsibilities that you expect of them don’t turn around when they are teenagers and wonder what happened. Going on strike may seem like a good idea, but the best alternative is to be a responsible parent from the word go.
Only in America. Now we can wait for the follow up story, where the children sue the parents for neglect and the psychological impact of event that will surely cost them in their adult lives. It is a great news story. But, it is a family tragedy.
Daniel Donahoo is a Fellow at OzProspect, a non-partisan, public policy think tank.