I find this interesting on two levels: - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 06/01/2011 11:38:12 PM
(Splitting my own impressions off for the sake of Short Attention Span Theater. 
)
1) As yuppies began bearing what a friend used to call "yuppie larvae", the children they once insisted they'd forego for the sake of career became as much a status symbol as the latest Sharper Image catalogue. Healthy, intelligent and SUCCESSFUL people should bear and raise healthy, intelligent and SUCCESSFUL children, right? It thus becomes vital that, by all objective standards, ones children be not merely adequate, or even above average, but exceptional. Wealth, erudition, culture, influence and, of course, luxury are all important accessories to achievement, but the vital centerpiece to ones crowning glory is still the basic eugenic dream born with the first child of the first man to make fire. Ironically, a son who wants to win now represents parents who have "lost".
The result is parents who move the remaining legitimate goalposts each time their children fail to reach them: Children CANNOT be permitted to fail, not because of how it affects them, but because of how it affects PARENTS who regard it as their own failure. This unthinkable outcome can be neatly and routinely sidestepped by using all that wealth and influence to ensure that, whatever ones child does or doesn't do, it will always be labeled exceptional. The unintended consequence is young adults who never have to face failure and hence don't know how when leaving the nest forces them to do so. One can "gift" ones child with a decade of team sports where they need never fear losing, but adults must know how to cope with losing a promotion, a girl, a bid on a house, and calling themselves "the boy who does not win" will not make it any less a loss. At the risk of oversimplifying, the "mommas boy" phenomenon that was once a stigma is becoming the norm because of parents who not only indulge but actively encourage it, but the stark reality is that even were that acceptable the resultant manchildren will sooner or later be forced to fend for themselves by mortality if nothing else.
2) Perhaps the biggest area where children ARE a reflection on their parents is the one in which parents have little active control: Behavior. A child hopeless at long division might still receive an A in math if his mother is President of the PTA and holds the math teachers job hostage, but mom can't get him a date for prom, and attempts to do so only worsen his chance of doing so. Likewise, if he spends every recess starting playground bonfires she might be able to get a disapproving principal fired but has little sway with the local fire department and police. The truly bizarre thing is that this is the arena in which many parents seem most inclined to allow children to "find their own way", despite the fact that inability to control the situation makes the need for parental guidance of the CHILD (rather than his environment) more important than ever.
Faculties might be induced to lower standards for a child who doesn't meet them, if only to end parental hectoring, but the childs peer group doesn't care, and has equally assertive parents to back them: In social interactions the child must stand or fall on his own, and much of the difference lies in the values instilled by parents. Unfortunately, too many parents, recognizing their inability to move the social goalposts, tell the child the playing field is slanted against them, that manifestly anti-social behavior is perfectly fine and society wrong for saying otherwise. Thus, amid all the parents arranging playdates with other parents, applying for pre-schools and running soccer teams where no one is allowed to win (or lose), perhaps the seminal moment of American child development in the '90s was the Columbine Massacre that quickly spawned many copycats. Rural HS kids who had trucks had come to school with rifles in gunracks for decades without incident, but didn't use them on other students because their parents didn't teach them that they were blameless in any disagreement with their peers, even if the "disagreement" took the form of playing Rambo with the rest of the student body. A child lazy at math risks later theft by his CPA if his parents force the math teacher to pass him, but if a child responds to all disagreement with physical attacks and his parents convince him that all those who say it's wrong are themselves wrong, that's little more than teaching the child to be an amoral sociopath. As American parents began to regard spanking as abuse, American children began to regard killing sprees as noble, which might not be coincidental.
The bottomline, it seems to this non-parent, is that parenting is about guiding the child, not altering his environment to make guidance unnecessary. Choosing the latter does the child no favors; it produces, at best, physically adult emotional children who regard failure as so unthinkable that they collapse when finally forced to confront it, and, at worst, amoral adults who vengefully and violently hold the entire world responsible for their failures. Rather than be insulated and isolated from risk and failure children need to learn how to prevent as well as face and overcome it and, though I say it as should not, teaching them that rather than how to game the system seems the parents proper purpose.
)1) As yuppies began bearing what a friend used to call "yuppie larvae", the children they once insisted they'd forego for the sake of career became as much a status symbol as the latest Sharper Image catalogue. Healthy, intelligent and SUCCESSFUL people should bear and raise healthy, intelligent and SUCCESSFUL children, right? It thus becomes vital that, by all objective standards, ones children be not merely adequate, or even above average, but exceptional. Wealth, erudition, culture, influence and, of course, luxury are all important accessories to achievement, but the vital centerpiece to ones crowning glory is still the basic eugenic dream born with the first child of the first man to make fire. Ironically, a son who wants to win now represents parents who have "lost".
The result is parents who move the remaining legitimate goalposts each time their children fail to reach them: Children CANNOT be permitted to fail, not because of how it affects them, but because of how it affects PARENTS who regard it as their own failure. This unthinkable outcome can be neatly and routinely sidestepped by using all that wealth and influence to ensure that, whatever ones child does or doesn't do, it will always be labeled exceptional. The unintended consequence is young adults who never have to face failure and hence don't know how when leaving the nest forces them to do so. One can "gift" ones child with a decade of team sports where they need never fear losing, but adults must know how to cope with losing a promotion, a girl, a bid on a house, and calling themselves "the boy who does not win" will not make it any less a loss. At the risk of oversimplifying, the "mommas boy" phenomenon that was once a stigma is becoming the norm because of parents who not only indulge but actively encourage it, but the stark reality is that even were that acceptable the resultant manchildren will sooner or later be forced to fend for themselves by mortality if nothing else.
2) Perhaps the biggest area where children ARE a reflection on their parents is the one in which parents have little active control: Behavior. A child hopeless at long division might still receive an A in math if his mother is President of the PTA and holds the math teachers job hostage, but mom can't get him a date for prom, and attempts to do so only worsen his chance of doing so. Likewise, if he spends every recess starting playground bonfires she might be able to get a disapproving principal fired but has little sway with the local fire department and police. The truly bizarre thing is that this is the arena in which many parents seem most inclined to allow children to "find their own way", despite the fact that inability to control the situation makes the need for parental guidance of the CHILD (rather than his environment) more important than ever.
Faculties might be induced to lower standards for a child who doesn't meet them, if only to end parental hectoring, but the childs peer group doesn't care, and has equally assertive parents to back them: In social interactions the child must stand or fall on his own, and much of the difference lies in the values instilled by parents. Unfortunately, too many parents, recognizing their inability to move the social goalposts, tell the child the playing field is slanted against them, that manifestly anti-social behavior is perfectly fine and society wrong for saying otherwise. Thus, amid all the parents arranging playdates with other parents, applying for pre-schools and running soccer teams where no one is allowed to win (or lose), perhaps the seminal moment of American child development in the '90s was the Columbine Massacre that quickly spawned many copycats. Rural HS kids who had trucks had come to school with rifles in gunracks for decades without incident, but didn't use them on other students because their parents didn't teach them that they were blameless in any disagreement with their peers, even if the "disagreement" took the form of playing Rambo with the rest of the student body. A child lazy at math risks later theft by his CPA if his parents force the math teacher to pass him, but if a child responds to all disagreement with physical attacks and his parents convince him that all those who say it's wrong are themselves wrong, that's little more than teaching the child to be an amoral sociopath. As American parents began to regard spanking as abuse, American children began to regard killing sprees as noble, which might not be coincidental.
The bottomline, it seems to this non-parent, is that parenting is about guiding the child, not altering his environment to make guidance unnecessary. Choosing the latter does the child no favors; it produces, at best, physically adult emotional children who regard failure as so unthinkable that they collapse when finally forced to confront it, and, at worst, amoral adults who vengefully and violently hold the entire world responsible for their failures. Rather than be insulated and isolated from risk and failure children need to learn how to prevent as well as face and overcome it and, though I say it as should not, teaching them that rather than how to game the system seems the parents proper purpose.