Tag: baby-god myth

  • Baby-god Myth: Part three

    Hey mom & dad. I don't want to be a god. I want you to be in charge.

    Children were not always worshipped as the gods of the American family.

    In part three of this series, lets examine the effects of the Baby-god myth on parents and teenagers. You can catch-up by reading part one & two.

    School vs. Work

    In fact, for most of our nations history we didn’t keep track of children very much. We didn’t have things like compulsory public education in every state, or child protection agencies, or children’s hospitals, child psychologists, or even pediatricians.

    It wasn’t until the mid-20th century that school became mandatory. And it wasn’t until the unions forced child labor laws through that high school became part of compulsory eduction. Unlike the European system of mandatory compulsory education, our public education system is built on the belief that:

    • Children under 18, ideally, shouldn’t work at all.
    • Everyone should go to college.
    • Everyone, given the proper education, would want to go to college.
    • Not going to college is somehow a failure of the American dream.
    • The American dream can only be achieved through education.

    The “all kids are meant for college” lie is very popular among educators. (Duh, maybe they have a vested interest?) Whereas, in Europe, students are given the choice to go on a college-prep course of study or a trades-oriented track, in the United States we don’t have such a system. While it exists, de facto, in almost every high school– it’s hardly celebrated.

    If children have become our gods, achievement is our offering.

    Labor laws amplified youth culture

    The Great Depression gave the labor unions the ammunition they needed to finally get child labor laws passed in America. Believe it or not, not everyone was in favor of removing children from the workforce. With kids out of the workforce adolescent culture, as we know it today, took root. When children of the Great Depression and post-World War II baby boom hit their teen years and didn’t head off to work they began to hang out together and a sub-culture exploded.

    The need for a college educated workforce

    If you think about jobs in America over the past century you can see why culture has dictated the “all kids must go to college” mantra. Technology created the office job. A move from an industrial/agricultural economy to an economy based on white collar jobs (administration) required workers who were more polished and more highly educated. (Of course, many now see this as a trap. The debt required to enter the workforce puts you, fiscally speaking, decades behind a peer who goes into the trades.)

    So society created the need for a college-bound student while those same students weren’t allowed to do much in their high school years. (Traditionally, people 14-18 worked!) Those post-puberty & pre-workforce years have really become a holding pattern. Too young to work but too old to be children. These kids, with all sorts of time on their hands, got creative with all that time. (Remember sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll) There wasn’t a massive youth culture prior to this because this age group was traditionally occupied with more adult endeavors. More on that for a different day.

    What does this have to do with deifying children?

    By the 1980s parents had come through youth culture and were appropriately afraid of it for their own children. In their boredom they smoked enough pot and had enough sex to realize that they probably didn’t benefit themselves in the long run. And with the college-lie now in full effect, and the further lie that if you went to the “right school” you could get ahead in life, parents just started to work backwards. It was a logical pendulum swing to protect kids from the damaging effects of youth culture by sheltering them and keeping them busy.

    • For Rex to go to the right college, Rex had to do well on the SATs.
    • For Rex to do well on the SATs, Rex had to go to the right school.
    • For Rex to fit in at the right school, Rex had to act, dress, and do activities with the right kids.
    • For Rex to fit in with the right kids, Rex’s parents both have to work, plus figure out how to get him to the right activities.
    • For Rex to do this, mom and dad were going to have to give every waking minute thinking about Rex and his future. (Or earning the money to afford his future)

    Through the 1980s this myth developed, it metastasized in the 1990s, and became parental law in the 2000s.

    All kids are not meant for college

    I know this is educational heresy but we all know it. Walk on any high school campus and you will see the vast majority of kids who are done with education and are stuck in a holding cell called high school. The college-prep kids segment themselves out while the vast majority ghost walk through the process and are culturally forced to head off to another holding cell– community college or state university.

    Those who are going to excel, do. Just as they always have. (Just like those who invented standardized tests intended to identify those kids, not as a tool for choosing the minimum, but to find those who could do the maximum) Those who aren’t going to excel, aren’t. But now that high school graduation is a basic requirement that we all must legally achieve– college has become the new high school. And grad school has become the new undergrad.

    Effects on the American family

    Deifying Rex has come at a high cost of the American family. With more than 40% of children in America now born to single mothers, single parents are under incredible pressure. Even in more traditional homes, the need to put Rex on a college-bound path leads to all sorts of sacrifices.

    • If Rex is going to go to Yale, he needs to be in the right pre-school. (Um, really?)
    • If Rex is going to go to Michigan, he needs to be in football by age four. (Um, really?)
    • If Rex is going to go to Penn State, we need to live in the right neighborhood because they have good schools. (Um, really?)
    • Part of Rex getting into Berkeley is being well-rounded, so Rex needs to go to music camp. (Um, really?)

    On and on. We never stop preparing our kids for something we don’t know if our kids will even want.

    Even crazier, parents have convinced themselves that this is 100% their responsibility. Particularly in Christian circles– parents don’t even trust their own parents to invest in the lives of Rex. Parents are so insanely crazed by worshipping Rex that parents won’t hire a babysitter, won’t go on vacation, and won’t allow their child to socialize or do ANYTHING that won’t further a perceived resume.

    In my opinion, today’s parenting norms would be considered a psychosis just a generation ago. Parents are addicted to parenting.

    Pressure

    Parents feel this pressure. There are men and women in my life who don’t want to get married or have children because they feel the pressure. Just the thought of a marriage which has to perform to this level is not worth it– or at the very least, hard to imagine. Marriages crumble by the thousand under the pressure. Marriages struggle through unnecessary debt under the pressure to provide the “right kind” of lifestyle for their children. Parents, raised in a feminist society that tells them they are equals with men, are now making themselves subservient to their children. These “mommy-managers” are now an entire sub-culture to themselves!

    Kids feel this pressure, too.

    Have you been to a six-year-olds soccer game? The pressure is ridiculous. Parents don’t want the kids to have fun. They want them to learn skills and score goals. Why? So that they can get good and make it on the travel squad. Then what? Well, if they are good on the travel squad, they will play high school soccer. Then what? If they score a lot of goals in high school, maybe they will earn an athletic scholarship. Then what?

    This is the pressure/expectations you hear on the sidelines of six-year old kids soccer games.

    Have you ever been in a high school cafeteria? The pressure there is ridiculous. Besides all of the social pressure. Besides the horrible food offerings. There are kids studying. There are kids cramming. And then there are the little Rex’s who have given up. OK, that’s the majority of the kids.

    With all the pressure to achieve (coupled by all the freedoms we’ve removed from teenagers over the last 40 years) there is little wonder you see so much deviant behavior. And depression. And drug abuse. And self-injury. And risky sexual behavior.

    Teenagers disrespect adult authority, largely, because adults disrespect teenagers right to autonomy. And something within us says that when an adult is disrespected by someone we need to clamp down even tighter– having higher expectations and putting them higher on a pedestal they don’t want to be on.

    By deifying our children we have put them on an pedestal they cannot stay on. No one can. We expect too much and we don’t give them enough space to grow.

    Little Rex, worshipped since conception, will not become a god because he is not God.

    Deifying Rex has trapped him. He is miserable. He is fighting for independence. While he is worshipped and deified he has no power.

    We have the whole thing backwards.


    Postscript: This New York Times article appeared after I published this piece, but does a good job explaining the ramifications of the myth that you have to go to the right school to get ahead in life.
    Another Debt Crisis is Brewing, This One in Student Loans

  • The Baby-god Myth, Part Two

    Hi! I'm Rex. I'll be running your life the next 25 years. Cool?

    This is Rex. He’s the king of kings and the lord of lords for most families.

    Like all babies the moment he popped out changed his parents lives forever.

    Born shortly before his physical birth are the high expectations for Rex. Not unlike generations past, Rex’s parents have ideals. They’d like to see him grow up to be a lawyer and maybe play some college football. Either way, Rex will get into a prestigious university with a full ride.

    Before Rex was born, Rex’s mom (as her license plate proudly declares) was a manager at a health insurance company. But her family is her top priority so now she’s a stay-at-home mom. Her new job is to pour everything into baby Rex. And right from the moment Rex’s mom found out she was pregnant she has done everything right. She has moved from the manager of 15 employees to the manager of Rex’s life.

    We all know this story. We all see it every day.

    Parents who think their kid is special. Parents who push their kids into activities and “learning opportunities.” Parents whose lives completely revolve around providing the perfect incubator for their kids.

    It’s an ivory tower. By the time most of us in youth ministry see Rex, he’s either living up to the expectations, faking it, or the ivory tower has collapsed.

    All hell breaks loose when Rex, at 13, already hates football and just doesn’t have the aptitude to be a lawyer. He likes to work on engines. And that’s not going to cut it for parents who want him to go to law school and be the star wide receiver.

    The first two years of high school will be painful until his parents finally relent and allow Rex to be who he wants him to be. Begrudgingly.

    Reality

    Middle-class American ideals have built an ivory tower which simply cannot bear the weight of the cultural expectations for middle-class children.

    There are simply too many gods. Everyone cannot be special. Everyone cannot become a millionaire. Everyone cannot earn an athletic or academic scholarship.

    But sit in any stands for any level of athletic competition and eavesdrop on parents talking about their kids. All parents have bought the lie that their kid is special.

    They aren’t. Most kids are average. That’s why we call it average.

    Ignoring Reality

    And yet parents set themselves on a failure-bound path and build their identity through the accomplishments of their children.

    The Contrast

    For Kristen and I, it took leaving middle-class white suburban America and moving into a melting pot city to have our eyes opened to this.

    In Romeo, when we attended parent meetings, we were considered young. Really young. Most of the parents of elementary school children were in their late-30s to mid-50s. They drove massive SUVs, lived in big homes, went skiing in Vail and vacationed in Florida, proudly chased their children around from activity to activity, and couldn’t understand why we looked at them weird when they quoted Bon Jovi lyrics or referenced movies from before we were born.

    Kristen and I had Megan when we were 24 years old. Having chosen of life of poverty– I mean working at a church— we had what we needed and splurged on some things every once in a while. At school and church we were constantly reminded that we were too young to be parents. Parents of our contemporaries said to us all the time, “You married so young! My daughter just isn’t ready. It must have been so hard.”

    Living at home with an over-bearing mom sounds more stressful than getting married at 21. At least to me.

    We lived in a nice house, drove a nice car, and had to budget which activities we could afford to put Megan and Paul in. But we made roughly half what other parents in the school made and were passively reminded of it all the time.

    Rex, the Golden Calf

    Many families in Romeo worshipped their children. It was a little scary. Little Rex went from school, [where mom volunteered 3 times per week) to a math tutor, [He was only in the percentile on math] to soccer practice, [dad’s the travel coach, so lets work on skills] to the house, [gotta do some homework and grab a quick dinner] to hockey practice. [ice time always has kids up late] It wasn’t unusual to see parents do this routine with each child, 4-5 days per week.

    Parents were exhausted. Kids were exhausted. Yet no one questioned if all of this craziness really worked.

    Kids love it, right?

    And the kids were far worse off for it. No time to dream. No imagination allowed. No unorganized play. No time without adult supervision. Even in high school. On and on. Kids were tired and programed to death. And while these children marched through high school achieving a resume-building life, they couldn’t get into great colleges because they lacked the one thing it seemed the big schools valued more than a resume– independence.

    Parents were far worse off for it, as well. It put way too much pressure on the marriage to race the kids around all over the place and blow countless thousands of dollar on travel hockey and travel soccer. We’d tell parents about our date nights while watching the kids play soccer and hear things like, “Oh my gosh, you guys go on dates every week? Tom and I haven’t had a date in years.” No wonder Rex was an only child! They spent $20,000 a year on activities but couldn’t afford $50 for a sitter and a date.

    What’s up with that?

    Rex was the center of their universe.

    Simply put, there was no way Rex would live up to their expectations.

    By the time they reached our high school group it was clear to see which Rex’s were still garnishing the parents worship and which had been cast off. When little Rex failed to live up to the expectations, Rex was likely to get put on a maintenance budget and largely ignored. (Hence, Romeo is known as a drug town.)

    Here in San Diego we feel old when we go to the kids school! When we go to school activities we are clearly a few years older than the majority of parents. (There are a few parents our age.) And the earning power of the working poor is much different than the earning power of suburban middle class. Sure, kids are in activities, but they aren’t worshipped with the same ferocity. Typical kids in our school have a a parent who takes them to school, a grandparent who picks them up and watches them in the afternoon, and sees mom or dad when they get home late in the evening.

    There are no Rex’s in our kids school.

    The American dream for parents at Darnall in San Diego looks a lot different than the dream at Amanda Moore in Romeo. One dream is achievable/realistic while the other is a statistical impossibility.

    This is the lie: A child, put in the “perfect environment,” will succeed at a higher rate than his peers in less-than-perfect environments.

    This is the truth: Healthy, happy, well-adjusted children home will increase the likelihood of a happy, healthy, well-adjusted home.

    This is the lie: You can incubate a high-achieving child.

    This is the truth: Two of the last three Presidents of the United States came from pretty rough family backgrounds. Intrinsic work ethic overcame all other disadvantages.

    This is the lie: High activity, camps, travel teams increase your child’s potential of an athletic scholarship.

    This is the truth: Few college or professional prospects come out of those camps or travel squads in football, basketball, or baseball. Next level coaches are looking for qualities you can’t control like height, speed, instinct.

    This is the lie: A 4.0 in high school will guarantee entrance to a prestigious university.

    This is the truth: A well-rounded student will both get into good universities and graduate from good universities.