Family
Setting Limits and Changing Generations
There was a time when a certain young boy spent hours listening to "Sky King", "Sgt. Preston", "Green Arrow", and "The Lone Ranger". Every Saturday morning his ears were glued to the large console radio in the living room, listening to these exciting adventure shows. Of course they were filled with violence, at least compared to what used to be listened to by the boy's parents. "Why don't you go outside and play?" was a frequent urging but it fell on deaf ears. Even more so as a new phenomenon, TV, brought "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet" as well as visual forms of some of the favorite radio shows. No longer did I have to imagine what was happening. Now I could see it "for real"! Of course, that meant I didn't have to use my imagination anymore, and for decades we've heard how that has stagnated the minds of the younger generation.
The mediums change, in quality or form, but the issues remain the same. Where generations ago, children played more, interacted more, now they isolate themselves in front of some electronic device, supposedly engaged in watching programs or playing games that are increasingly violent in nature. The latest wave of concern is about computers. As more homes have them, children from preschool years on are spending increasing hours with these incredible machines. CD-ROM. Internet. A world beyond the comprehension of most adults is now literally at our children's fingertips. It is more seductive than ever before because there is true educational potential in this latest technology. Parents again are asking, just like mine did, where to draw the limits.
First, let's dispel a few myths. If we really go back a few generations, to my parents' childhood, children didn't have such innocent and simple lives. In the large working class, which constituted the majority of families, children spent a lot of time working, literally. America was more dichotomized into cities and farms. In either setting, children were put to work at young ages, in family shops, in factories, in the fields. Often to an extent that would now be considered abusive. But then, for many, a matter of survival. Schooling was limited and many dropped out early to go to work. College was an option for relatively few. On the other hand, there were strongly established apprentice systems for boys to learn trades at the side of men.
Children today are much more of a mixed lot. It depends on where you are growing up. Urban life is often more violent than the worst TV show and with less hopeful outcomes. At least on TV, the "good guys" would win. Farms keep disappearing and rural America has become increasingly impoverished. The gap between haves and have nots has widened. Still, the large suburban communities and upwardly mobile urban families comprise a very large segment of our society. And they are asking a simple and familiar question. "What is best for my child?"
The answer hasn't changed. Parents need to have values and use them to establish rules. There SHOULD be limits on the amount of time spent watching TV, using the computer, using the telephone, as well as limits on the violent nature of the content of what the child is watching or using. But the rules and expectations need to take into account the individual nature of each child. In general, parents should limit ANYTHING a child is involved with and strive for some reasonable balance between work and play, between isolation and socialization, between constructive and destructive play themes.
I think that the two key changes in current family life are that parents have become less confident about establishing rules (value systems) and are much more isolated from other parents which prevents the establishment of "community norms" by the parents. In this vacuum, children seize the opportunity and establish the norms, including all the "must have or I'm an outcast" commercial products. The result is that children keep pushing the envelope of when childhood ends and "adolescence" begins, to the point that elementary children are once again being drawn in over their heads in facing real life before they have the tools to do so. Somehow I think we've gone full circle in this century. This is what my parents had to face and we spent the last few generations trying to create more of a protected period of childhood. I think we're losing it again. And children pay the price with much greater stress and less healthy lives.
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