Within my life time the family has gone from conservative and insular to global and transient. Not mine, but families around me were centred on the close family units of the parents, the Aunts and Uncles and the Grandparents. This closed circle set the norm for what you could or could not do, what interests were possible and how you expressed yourself. They provide the reference point and were quick to correct any deviation. From within their safe haven and encircled by their safety shield the children grew and were invited to discover, explore and gain experience in the surrounding world of shops, church, amusements, sports and the evening out and the occasional film. They set the norms of dress and speech and expected conformity. They set the bar and were the only role model to follow. The radio, the newspaper and magazines or the annual trip might give insights into other possible lifestyle. But just brief glimpses, nothing substantive to base a breakaway lifestyle on. Even your school fellows were social clones. You were the product of your immediate society.
Then came television, breaking apart the insular family time together, introducing appreciable insights in to the how others live, offering tangible alternatives. Television plus of course social mobility. The freedom to roam and spread, dispersing the family core, breaking forever the close bonds that tied families together. Lots of other social factors were also playing, but mobility and television were the key factors that finally broke the former almost total reliance on the family unit, to get by.
Nowadays the core family unit, of parent and children, cannot compete against the rival attractions of television, personal computer, online social media, live streaming of news or entertainment, virtual avatars. The family unit is dysfunctional, it can no longer sit together at best spending quality time relaxing in each others company at worst just updating each other on events. Even the core unit of parents is challenged with a single parent, with possibly serial partners, becoming the norm. So what role models do our children of today encounter that will give substance to their perception of who they are and the society they inhabit? Not the schools with their imposed roles to mentor our new citizens and assume quasi-parental duties. The contacts are too fleeting, too transient, too impersonal to really count. We are just left with the the fictions they are now surrounded by, of cardboard caricature soap stars, media celebrity fantasy lives or even worse some ephemeral virtual being lacking any substance beyond a spotty teenagers imagination.
In this global connected world the old role models are totally irrelevant. Right? Wrong, when even the language we speak modifies our thinking and logic structures what chance have we of assimilating other cultures. I defy any English born native speaking person dropped into the middle of say China, or India, or South America, to feel at ease and be able to comprehend the reactions and intentions of the people now surrounding them, let alone elicit favourable reactions to their aspirations. No, we are of our society. As I explored in Know Yourself, who we are as individual depends on the society we are born into. We have to have relevant role models to inflate and guide our sense of being, as that person within that society. Without it lies insecurity, anxiety, misplacement, that feeling of never belonging never being understood. We have to rethink our societies evolution. As a start we have to restructure the family unit as I explored in A baby is for life.
Showing posts with label parents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parents. Show all posts
Friday, 15 June 2012
Monday, 20 February 2012
Sexism
This has been sparked by an article of no consequence, bemoaning the lack of Catholic woman priests. That is just the entry point and otherwise not significant. It is just that it bought my mind around to considering sexism. A few years back, starting with and as a celebration of my Mothers ninetieth birthday, I began charting my family history. Knowing nothing of my father, who left home when I was around 8years, naturally I explored my mothers side. Got engrossed and, with bit now fully between the teeth, explored all provable connections on my mothers line, proud of the links and lineage discovered. In reaching back to the tenuously discernible 1730's I began to consider and explore the social history that led to some key changes in my families histories. Farmers do not become labourers nor end up in a workshop to die of 'insanity', ( as alcoholism was known), without due cause. Cutting a long introduction short I eventually after a couple of serendipity moments, stumbled on an entry point and began to unravel my fathers family. Only to discover I was repeating the steps he too had taken some twenty years earlier. Nothing new under the sun.
I was pulled up short on more than one occasion by relatives who dismissed the maternal line as not having any significance. To them, it was only the male line of inheritance that had any relevance. With my background this puzzled me but slowly other pieces of jigsaw have begun to fall into place.
We are now, here , this is where it is at, but we are only a continuum of our past. We have to keep our past in view to understand where our future lies. The way forward has to be shaped and based on the path taken to reach this point. All very laboured but let us not forget, male inheritance has been the dominate consideration. Up until this point, the now. Inheritance is simply the passing on of the title to land. Land equates to wealth, privileged, influence and power. Your position utterly depended on what land you inherited and the wheels and deals you could use it for to expand it or prevent others from taking it from you. The by far greatest wheeling deal in town was who you could get to marry you, bringing in privileges, connections or simply more land, not for love or romance but plain pragmatics. Hopefully a woman who could bear strong sons, strong enough to survive childhood. That she was compliant, frugal or even attractive were very secondary considerations. Lets us roll back the years even further. To get land and hold on to it, you had to be a strong fighter able to attract other men to fight by your side and defer to your authority. As top dog, women you could take and have a plenty but you needed one who would bear you a son and nurture it whilst you were away defending you claim to land against all others. Nurture it and stay loyal to you and you alone. A son that you could pass your battle won respect (titles) and land to to survive after your death and making your fights, battles and inevitable death in battle worth while. It does not justify it, but with so much emphasis on the brute force of the macho man, it is understandable that women were regulated. Regulated to a secondary role even to the point that they were legally chattels to be placed, controlled and futures decided at the whim of their lord and master.
Fast forward to today's now. Gender equality rules. The girl, should she choose to marry, may or may not take the male name. Maybe the continental practise of hyphenating the two families lines names into one surname, one from the father and one from the mother, would make good sense. But then which name is to come first, not as on the continent, the fathers name first, that would be sexist. Alphabetical order? And then are both lines to be given equal weight and standing in the family tree? I can avow that the family tree very quickly becomes very diffuse and difficult to read. Starting with four parents, with eight grandparents, sixteen great grandparents and so on. This does probably reflect our genetic inheritance. Very clearly we, as an individual, are a meld of our two parents and through them it is possible to discern genetic characteristics passed from the grandparents. There are some genetic features that are so dominate and survive through several generations even stretching back into the mists of time. We should not be too dismissive of genetic traits. Science has yet to declare whether one sex or other inherits more from one parent or the other, probably not.
My desire to know where I have come from, whose dominate trait do I have that gives me the flair or flaw I struggle to cope with does not justify selecting a male or a female line as my line. To select both is too unwieldy, too diffuse, too many branches that could or could not be significant or worse arbitrary. To make sense you have to follow back along one line of parents but unless we all follow the same rules chaos ensues. Is the need to know and acknowledge our direct line of inheritance more important than this, probably, transitory fashion of gender indeterminacy? It matters to me. I have to know whether I am my fathers son. It matters to those few where the chance of inheriting the stately pile or crown depends on it. To the rest of the world? Just a blip in our ever evolving story of personkinds development and ultimate extinction.
I was pulled up short on more than one occasion by relatives who dismissed the maternal line as not having any significance. To them, it was only the male line of inheritance that had any relevance. With my background this puzzled me but slowly other pieces of jigsaw have begun to fall into place.
We are now, here , this is where it is at, but we are only a continuum of our past. We have to keep our past in view to understand where our future lies. The way forward has to be shaped and based on the path taken to reach this point. All very laboured but let us not forget, male inheritance has been the dominate consideration. Up until this point, the now. Inheritance is simply the passing on of the title to land. Land equates to wealth, privileged, influence and power. Your position utterly depended on what land you inherited and the wheels and deals you could use it for to expand it or prevent others from taking it from you. The by far greatest wheeling deal in town was who you could get to marry you, bringing in privileges, connections or simply more land, not for love or romance but plain pragmatics. Hopefully a woman who could bear strong sons, strong enough to survive childhood. That she was compliant, frugal or even attractive were very secondary considerations. Lets us roll back the years even further. To get land and hold on to it, you had to be a strong fighter able to attract other men to fight by your side and defer to your authority. As top dog, women you could take and have a plenty but you needed one who would bear you a son and nurture it whilst you were away defending you claim to land against all others. Nurture it and stay loyal to you and you alone. A son that you could pass your battle won respect (titles) and land to to survive after your death and making your fights, battles and inevitable death in battle worth while. It does not justify it, but with so much emphasis on the brute force of the macho man, it is understandable that women were regulated. Regulated to a secondary role even to the point that they were legally chattels to be placed, controlled and futures decided at the whim of their lord and master.
Fast forward to today's now. Gender equality rules. The girl, should she choose to marry, may or may not take the male name. Maybe the continental practise of hyphenating the two families lines names into one surname, one from the father and one from the mother, would make good sense. But then which name is to come first, not as on the continent, the fathers name first, that would be sexist. Alphabetical order? And then are both lines to be given equal weight and standing in the family tree? I can avow that the family tree very quickly becomes very diffuse and difficult to read. Starting with four parents, with eight grandparents, sixteen great grandparents and so on. This does probably reflect our genetic inheritance. Very clearly we, as an individual, are a meld of our two parents and through them it is possible to discern genetic characteristics passed from the grandparents. There are some genetic features that are so dominate and survive through several generations even stretching back into the mists of time. We should not be too dismissive of genetic traits. Science has yet to declare whether one sex or other inherits more from one parent or the other, probably not.
My desire to know where I have come from, whose dominate trait do I have that gives me the flair or flaw I struggle to cope with does not justify selecting a male or a female line as my line. To select both is too unwieldy, too diffuse, too many branches that could or could not be significant or worse arbitrary. To make sense you have to follow back along one line of parents but unless we all follow the same rules chaos ensues. Is the need to know and acknowledge our direct line of inheritance more important than this, probably, transitory fashion of gender indeterminacy? It matters to me. I have to know whether I am my fathers son. It matters to those few where the chance of inheriting the stately pile or crown depends on it. To the rest of the world? Just a blip in our ever evolving story of personkinds development and ultimate extinction.
Monday, 15 August 2011
Youth
No of course it is not because I having nothing to say, lots as always, it is just that I have not had the time! Lets get some strands together. No, our youth are not rioting, a riot has a purpose an intent and wish to get to some goal, pun intended. These youth are just rampaging. What we are witnessing is a new phenomena of our age, 'FlashMobbing' seems to be the parlance. Youth, with all their lack of doom, whipped up by the excitement of being part of something kicking off and with one2one messaging sucking them into the maelstrom.
So let us lay down the blame. Us. You and me are to blame. We have framed and allowed our society to drift down this path. We have watched indifferently as the political parties have corrupted our democratic processes, so we all end up dis-engaged. Look after number one and to hell with the rest of them is our culture. Even as we double talk about what a good idea the 'Big Society' is whilst inwardly shrugging that there is nothing you intend to do to make it work. That double speak, though silent is picked up by our youth and taken as gospel, not the mealy words of spoken agreement but the true unexpressed silent reaction of disdain and disinterest. They take that silence as the route map. So dont blame the youth for taking at face value the society you see, even if you double speak of another world you dont believe in.
Secondly we must blame the parents, for accepting too readily the easy option that single parents are an equal and okay alternative. For not insisting that the children forgo their own space and do join in and take part in family events from mealtimes to get togethers. For not requiring some account of their movements and friends. For allowing their children to develop in a culture where to want is to have without consequences and where authority can be safely ignored as it has no teeth. Where the sense of separateness of youth from the adult world they inhabit is endorsed and promulgated without challenge but actually cheered on as a sign of creative independence.
Thirdly we must blame ourselves for accepting as a norm the divisiveness of a rich get richer society. The quick abandonment of any social values in the hope that you too can get to inherit the riches not realising the chasm has grown enormously over the last decades. With us, the poor on one side gazing in wonderment at a life beyond grasp whilst the rich plunder the the poor, using their energies and desires to build the very barriers to keep the rich enclave for only the rich. All the while promoting the self-evident lie that all can partake of the riches is only you make sufficient effort. Little wonder if those without prospect of progress, yet daily buffeted with tangible emblems of rewards beyond their reach, despair or worse take what they cannot rightfully get. A divided nation is a grossly unfair nation. A divided nation ruled and controlled by the benefiters of that divide is obscene.
Nothing of course condones or mitigates in any way from actions against the very society you live within. Nothing justifies the trashing and looting our your neighbours just because, there is no excuse. We each have to be accountable for our own actions, within a raging mob or not. Accountable, well to our fellow citizens of course. So finally, much as we honest upright citizens are outraged by the sheer mindless stupidity and violence and want to exact retribution. Stop and pause. What we have are youth that are dis-engaged from their society. We urgently need to re-engage them, together with us along the way. So how is locking them up in prison going to help? Meting out stiff punishment leaves a glow of righteous indignation but these are youth who have never had it their way and expect to be pushed and bullied, if not plain ignored. What merit in taking away benefit when they are scudding along on the very bottom rungs already, kick them further down to do what? Again not a good way to go about getting engagement. Yes oh yes there has to be retribution. The consequence of their thoughtless and mindless act has to come well and truly home. How to do it in an upbeat progressive way that ends up with them tying back into our society is a huge challenge. Reward and punishment for failing to work at towards the reward has to be a way. That and working to repair the damage of their upbringing and building back self-respect and hope. Real gettable hope that can be actually grasped. Community work is an option, if they want to make amends but not if enforced against their will. Take away their right to messaging until their have earned its return seems fit for purpose. Take away their right to gather in groups of more than three again seems fit for purpose. Take away their right to walk free amongst us until they have accepted our rules of conduct. Intensive parenting classes and support for parents in standing up to their children again seems fit for purpose. Maybe, just maybe a boot camp experience for those wayward's that refuse to help themselves and are determined to turn their backs on the society that nutures them. But everything aimed at encouragement to join in with us and engage. Maybe we can then learn lessons from them!
So let us lay down the blame. Us. You and me are to blame. We have framed and allowed our society to drift down this path. We have watched indifferently as the political parties have corrupted our democratic processes, so we all end up dis-engaged. Look after number one and to hell with the rest of them is our culture. Even as we double talk about what a good idea the 'Big Society' is whilst inwardly shrugging that there is nothing you intend to do to make it work. That double speak, though silent is picked up by our youth and taken as gospel, not the mealy words of spoken agreement but the true unexpressed silent reaction of disdain and disinterest. They take that silence as the route map. So dont blame the youth for taking at face value the society you see, even if you double speak of another world you dont believe in.
Secondly we must blame the parents, for accepting too readily the easy option that single parents are an equal and okay alternative. For not insisting that the children forgo their own space and do join in and take part in family events from mealtimes to get togethers. For not requiring some account of their movements and friends. For allowing their children to develop in a culture where to want is to have without consequences and where authority can be safely ignored as it has no teeth. Where the sense of separateness of youth from the adult world they inhabit is endorsed and promulgated without challenge but actually cheered on as a sign of creative independence.
Thirdly we must blame ourselves for accepting as a norm the divisiveness of a rich get richer society. The quick abandonment of any social values in the hope that you too can get to inherit the riches not realising the chasm has grown enormously over the last decades. With us, the poor on one side gazing in wonderment at a life beyond grasp whilst the rich plunder the the poor, using their energies and desires to build the very barriers to keep the rich enclave for only the rich. All the while promoting the self-evident lie that all can partake of the riches is only you make sufficient effort. Little wonder if those without prospect of progress, yet daily buffeted with tangible emblems of rewards beyond their reach, despair or worse take what they cannot rightfully get. A divided nation is a grossly unfair nation. A divided nation ruled and controlled by the benefiters of that divide is obscene.
Nothing of course condones or mitigates in any way from actions against the very society you live within. Nothing justifies the trashing and looting our your neighbours just because, there is no excuse. We each have to be accountable for our own actions, within a raging mob or not. Accountable, well to our fellow citizens of course. So finally, much as we honest upright citizens are outraged by the sheer mindless stupidity and violence and want to exact retribution. Stop and pause. What we have are youth that are dis-engaged from their society. We urgently need to re-engage them, together with us along the way. So how is locking them up in prison going to help? Meting out stiff punishment leaves a glow of righteous indignation but these are youth who have never had it their way and expect to be pushed and bullied, if not plain ignored. What merit in taking away benefit when they are scudding along on the very bottom rungs already, kick them further down to do what? Again not a good way to go about getting engagement. Yes oh yes there has to be retribution. The consequence of their thoughtless and mindless act has to come well and truly home. How to do it in an upbeat progressive way that ends up with them tying back into our society is a huge challenge. Reward and punishment for failing to work at towards the reward has to be a way. That and working to repair the damage of their upbringing and building back self-respect and hope. Real gettable hope that can be actually grasped. Community work is an option, if they want to make amends but not if enforced against their will. Take away their right to messaging until their have earned its return seems fit for purpose. Take away their right to gather in groups of more than three again seems fit for purpose. Take away their right to walk free amongst us until they have accepted our rules of conduct. Intensive parenting classes and support for parents in standing up to their children again seems fit for purpose. Maybe, just maybe a boot camp experience for those wayward's that refuse to help themselves and are determined to turn their backs on the society that nutures them. But everything aimed at encouragement to join in with us and engage. Maybe we can then learn lessons from them!
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Parenting
Fashions come and go but the one irrefutable constant is that parents have to prepare their child for entry into their society. As communal animals, whilst other aspects may or may not be true, to be socially acceptable as a minima the child has to acquire the skills of knowing when and how to get what it needs and judging when to let others have their way and to fit into this society to be able to queue and wait for a turn.
How best to pass on those skills depends on circumstances and absence of economic necessity. A well provided for parent with boundless time, energy, patience and an overwhelming passion for mothering may well be able to devote 24/7 to explaining, educating and showing the child by example how to progress, to the career mother who may only be able to grab a five minute slot to cram in the maximum impact into the child's development. Neither is right or wrong, one just driven from pure necessity and the other from an obsessive maternalism, with others occupying every possible degree inbetween these extremes.
Whatever the approach the inescapable factor is the child mind is not a mature adult mind. I will have to leave it to better authorities to mark out the development phases of the developing mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_cognitive_development Suffice to say as the child grows so do the skills of recognising space limits, reasoning, understanding of the unseen, awareness of others and their objectives, to the explosion of emotional responses, through to the blossoming of planning and strategy to, I would argue the final unrecognised phase of contemplative experience. A child cannot respond to the adult world until it has developed adult mind skills. A child can and does from within the womb, to the trauma of birth, from the earliest cries to the eagle eyed teenage exploitation, experience the outer world and learn how to manipulate it to its singular benefit and advantage. Woe betide the starry-eyed mother besotted with visions of immaculate innocence!
The good parent will be responsive to the child's manipulations and divert it to support the parents own agenda. Though there haven't been blind controlled trials and therefore it isn't science, therefore not proven, therefore can be tossed aside, the one thing all experienced successful parents do agree on is that all children respond best to regularity, consistency, quality attention and affirmation.
Makes sense, from the child's perspective the world is huge, unfathomable and full of weird unexpected and often unpleasant experiences. What you need as a child to cling onto, as your solid rock, is certainty and security from which you venture out to explore and make sense of this world or retreat back to to recover. With luck getting encouragement and appreciation for the explorations safely negotiated and quite time to reflect and blend into to past adventures. The best sacrifice the parent can offer is to postpone their pleasures and indulgences so that their child can enjoy regularity and consistency.
Simple but effective.
How best to pass on those skills depends on circumstances and absence of economic necessity. A well provided for parent with boundless time, energy, patience and an overwhelming passion for mothering may well be able to devote 24/7 to explaining, educating and showing the child by example how to progress, to the career mother who may only be able to grab a five minute slot to cram in the maximum impact into the child's development. Neither is right or wrong, one just driven from pure necessity and the other from an obsessive maternalism, with others occupying every possible degree inbetween these extremes.
Whatever the approach the inescapable factor is the child mind is not a mature adult mind. I will have to leave it to better authorities to mark out the development phases of the developing mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_cognitive_development Suffice to say as the child grows so do the skills of recognising space limits, reasoning, understanding of the unseen, awareness of others and their objectives, to the explosion of emotional responses, through to the blossoming of planning and strategy to, I would argue the final unrecognised phase of contemplative experience. A child cannot respond to the adult world until it has developed adult mind skills. A child can and does from within the womb, to the trauma of birth, from the earliest cries to the eagle eyed teenage exploitation, experience the outer world and learn how to manipulate it to its singular benefit and advantage. Woe betide the starry-eyed mother besotted with visions of immaculate innocence!
The good parent will be responsive to the child's manipulations and divert it to support the parents own agenda. Though there haven't been blind controlled trials and therefore it isn't science, therefore not proven, therefore can be tossed aside, the one thing all experienced successful parents do agree on is that all children respond best to regularity, consistency, quality attention and affirmation.
Makes sense, from the child's perspective the world is huge, unfathomable and full of weird unexpected and often unpleasant experiences. What you need as a child to cling onto, as your solid rock, is certainty and security from which you venture out to explore and make sense of this world or retreat back to to recover. With luck getting encouragement and appreciation for the explorations safely negotiated and quite time to reflect and blend into to past adventures. The best sacrifice the parent can offer is to postpone their pleasures and indulgences so that their child can enjoy regularity and consistency.
Simple but effective.
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