http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050712/1a_cover12.art.htm
At the risk of, well quite a few things... I grew up on the edge of a small city, on the edge of the suburbs, of some rurality--woods and rivers and croaking fields. And that was one of the best things to have happened to me! 'To each their own', but the degree to which my childhood chums got out of the goddam house has come to reflect their relationship to the world. By that I mean their physical, mental and spiritual health. For all its security and comfort, the critical time when an adolescent makes forays into the wider world shapes them as much as the home did. Was it pool parties, parades, pilot snakes, gravel pits, girls on bikes, butterflies, flagpoles, fire engines, fire ants, art class, catamounts or cooties that got your goat?
Couldn't have these in the house. And as we Americans seal ourselves off inside a hermetic and paved existance, childhoods wonders would fade to black.
Or not...
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/050713_tvfrm.htm
3 comments:
jes and i each have 3 siblings over age 28, and of the 8 of us, there are 0 children. Of our close friends, only one couple has a child.
I think this is an expression of mourning for what children are these days.
Not so much mourning I think as a desire to continue that exploration unencumbered. There was, for me, a certain amount of selfishness for the lifestyle that I had created for myself. That lifestyle changed pretty drastically. I resisted what that change would mean to my self portrait.
That and fear of falling prey to raising a child without those experiences. The sub/urban environs of a major metro area lend themselves to isolation. It takes a (obviously lacking) concerted effort to teach an appreciation for engagment.
And as my sweet boy naps and I dream my dreams for him, I hope to provide him with an adventurous spirit, an unqenchable curiosity about the world around him, whatever that world may be. But I'm only guessing at what influences those qualitiies.
Gotta second Bet, once more at the risk of appearing un-chipper. While some say selfishness motivates many in putting off 'the inevitable' marriage and family, I believe Americans to prefer distraction and entertainment to just about any truth, including their own. Rather than mourning 'what children are', I'd elect mourning (or grasping desperately) for what may cease to be is our dis-ease.
Post a Comment