It seems to me that there are three kinds of parents. You have those who tell their children, "Don't go around thinking you're better than me." Then there are those who tell their children, "I'm working hard so that you can be better than me." And then there are those who don't seem to tell their children much of anything. I'm guessing the completely indifferent parents are rare, so I will deal instead with the first two.
We all know people who teach their children not to go around thinking that they (the children) are better than them (the parents). They may not verbalize it, but it is understood in body language, attitudes, etc. Oftentimes the local culture reinforces this attitude. You have Southerners accusing those who go off to get educated of trying to be a Yankee, you have Hispanics accusing their children of being "coconuts," etc. When groups do this to their children, we should not be surprised to find little social or educational progress within these groups.
Of course, sometimes you get someone to break out of the mold. That person may not themselves succeed, but they make it possible for their children to do so. My father is an excellent example of this. His father was one who had the attitude that you should not try to better yourself, but my father rebelled against this attitude. He only has an 8th grade education, and he has only been able to work in foundries and coal mines his entire life, but he did the best with what he had, and always encouraged my brother and me to get as much education as possible. Thus, I have a Ph.D. and my brother is working on his MFA.
It is when a child has parents who insist that they have a better life than their parents have had do you get advancement. Parents shouldn't envy their children and, thus, deprive them of a better life. Good parents want their children to do better, to have better, to be better. Thus it is a parent's obligation to find out what will actually result in this outcome, and do it. Parents need to find out how to get their children into the best schools -- or figure out how to help create good schools if there aren't any available (as there in fact are not in the U.S.). Parents need to make sure that their children are going to enter into a good and healthy society, a good and healthy economy, a good and healthy world. And that means, too, that they need to learn what will in fact help create all these things, no matter what they wish would do so.
Envy -- covetousness -- is the root of all evil. This is as true in society, economy, and the world as it is in the family.
7 comments:
What did you think of Spanglish, especially the ending?
Haven't seen it. Give me a synopsis.
A Mexican immigrant, Flor, and her daughter move to the U.S. The mother takes a job as a nanny/cleaning lady with a bourgeois anglo family in which the dad is really "emo" and the mother is an unfaithful narcissistic, inauthentic bully (essentially the foil for the protagonist). Flor and her daughter get more and more emotionally entangled with the family (she shares her loving, pragmatic earthiness with them, while her daughter gets more and more indoctrinated into upper middle class money culture) and in the end Flor falls in love with the husband and has to leave. She tells her daughter she won't be attending private school like she planned, asking her, "Do you really want to be someone so different from me?"
I didn't really do justice to the characters, but their personalities conveniently line up with their political roles anyway, so you can kind of get the idea.
In a way, the ending is in line with what you're talking about here. The woman makes her daughter stay true to her roots (which have the obvious moral high ground in the film) and reject the shallow, acquisitive bourgeois ethos. The problems that come with this choice (poverty, stagnation, lack of education) are glossed over, since she gets into Princeton (I think) with a scholarship anyway, striking a blow for both postmodern multiculturalism and the "caring institutions" it empowers.
I kind of made it sound like Crash, when it's really not so didactic and crypto-pomo. Give it a watch--it's probably Sandler's best after Punch Drunk Love, and I think it won the oscar that it was obviously written to compete for.
I'll have to check it out (I agree with you that Punch Drunk Love is an excellent movie). But it does sound exactly like what I am complaining about. It doesn't help when (Leftist) Hollywood romanticizes bad attitudes.
I think there is also the parent who nurtures his child to be the best he (the child) can be as an individual. Not better, worse or indifferent from the parent.
This has nothing to do with education, finances, status or employment, but the optimum state of self-fulfillment the child can obtain.
That may be different from or the same as what the parent wants. The worse thing in the world is for parents to impose their standard of self-worth on to a child. They should be nuturing and assisting the child to self-discovery.
Some children are quite happy not to have a "better" life than their parents because their definition of "better" may be different from the parents. And vice versa.
I, myself, nurtured my children to be true to themselves and wanted what would make them happy, not what I wanted for them. In the end, it has worked well because they are contented, well adjusted, competent, successful adults now.
Well, we are disagreeing about what "better" means -- you are assuming there is some sort of competition going on, and that's not necessarily true. A good parent is creating the conditions so that the child can have a better life, by that adult child's definition of "better." From a financial pov, neither my brother nor I are better off than our father. Also, there is an element of relativity here. What would it mean for Bill Gates' children to be better off than him? One of his children may think, "I'm sure glad I don't have to develop computer programs like my father did for a living!" Aren't the opportunities Gates has create for his children making them better off in that respect?
I know the kinds of parent you're thinking of -- the pushy kind, who insist that their children do all the things they missed out on. That's a subclass of the kind who want things better for their children. Your example is another subclass. Both mean well, but the one that creates a space for the child to grow well in is the one that also does well.
I thought you were implying competition when parents are saying better than, no better than, or complete indifference.
Actually I wasn't thinking of the "pushy" parent. I was thinking of a parent who doesn't offer multiple choices to a child during formative years. A parent exposing a child to choices without parental demand was not one of your "types."
A child can only come to full self-discovery by being offered a wide range of opportunities, to explore options in various fields of education, morals,careers, hobbies, etc. The child chooses what fits him the best and builds upon it. A parent can present the pros and cons of each choice and let the child decide for himself.
This type of parenting works much better than imposing the parents'demands on the child. The parent in this case doesn't fit into the 3 types: not saying I'm better, not saying child should be better, and they are not being indifferent.They are telling the child to be who they are.
I think we probably agree that "better" is defined by the adult child, but I still think my example does not fit within your three types.
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