Parents behaving badly
November 30th, 2007You need a license to drive. You need a license to fish, hunt or own a gun. You even need a license to get married.
Sometimes I wonder if we should require a license for procreation, because a lot of people have no clue when it comes to parenting. Examples of parents behaving badly are never hard to find, but a couple in recent weeks have caught my attention.
Very good observations Tim. The second example is I think a good follow up to the first. If you indulge your children’s every whim when they are 4, you can end up with young women (not ladies) who feel they are ill used if they can’t bump and grind like a stripper at their prom.
The fact that the parent in the second case was more concerned about having bought the girl an expensive dress than with her daughter’s propensity towards exhibitionism speaks volumes.
The fact that the parent in the second case was more concerned about having bought the girl an expensive dress than with her daughter’s propensity towards exhibitionism speaks volumes.
Doesn’t it though?
j razz
Great column, Tim. I can’t tell you how many parents I’ve met that have failed to discipline their children when they are younger and end up paying for it as they get older. Indulging your child’s every whim is never a good thing as your article rightly points out.
Unfortunately, some parents in Argyle also pitched a fit to the school administrators who were trying to stand up for decency and decorum. One mother complained that she had spent $400 on her daughter’s homecoming dress, only to have her daughter leave the dance after a few minutes.
This mom is a shining example of Britain’s Favorite Word - nincompoop.
One thing that struck me about the Argyle incident is that it points out that we have simply lost any sort of a common idea of what is decent and acceptable and what is not. When you take religion out of the public dialog, it leaves us without any context in which we can have a discussion of morality. Without a common idea of morality, whose to say that one form of dancing is better than another? It’s very sad.