A PAL OR A PARENT? (FROM 2012)

A PAL OR A PARENT?

The Family as portrayed by North American media, would appear to have been downgraded in esteem and value.

Descriptions of the Family in the Media use the word 'dysfunctional' so often that, I personally can't imagine what a 'functional' family might be.

The Father, especially in Commercials, is often portrayed a fool, who everyone in the family appear to think and opine they are smarter than. This enables the Father to be dismissed, or at the very least, to be treated as inconsequential.

Meanwhile, although there are various depictions of Mothers in the media today, two models predominate: The Mother as a Single Parent or The Mother as Career Professional:

The Mother as a Single Parent, includes the never married, the divorced and (strangely) also the widowed; The Mother as a Career Woman is someone who is both a wonderful mother and a perfect example to young women that a Woman can 'Have It All'. Unfortunately, this Woman who 'has it all', usually has a Nanny for the Children but not a Husband or Father, living with them. 

I think that the way Parents are portrayed by the Media provide unrealistic role models for growing children today. When coupled with the admiration of the 'youth culture' and what seems to be a dread of being considered old, too many parents have perhaps tried to be considered 'pals' rather than 'parents' to their children. In consequence they have inadvertently, in a most unexpected way, created dependent Adult Children in many parts of the developed world.

One would think therefore, that the Family is no longer the most important influence of growing children. Despite this, Danesi* says that 79% of 12-14 year olds identified parents as people they looked up to in 1999. The next category after this was 13% for athletes.

I would normally applaud this kind of a statistic, however, what I am seeing and hearing about are not confident, self sufficient, mature Adults getting a good education, moving out and building homes and families of their own, but rather dependent Adult Children either unable or unwilling to live independently from their parent(s).

In 2000, the U.S. census found that 4 million people between twenty-five and thirty-four were living with their parents. Danesi also said that the average age of marriage is twenty-six up from 22 years old in 1970 and that child-bearing has been postponed into the mid-thirties.

Historically, you were treated as a grown up Adult at a much younger age. Shorter lifespans may perhaps have necessitated earlier Marriages and Adult responsibilities. Throughout history, people were considered by be grown up once they had experienced Puberty or certainly not long after.

Postponing adult independence, in many cases today, long after adult children have completed their education, allowing them to return to their parental homes after school, after they are divorced (often with the grandchildren) and generally enabling them to continue living in their childhood homes and/or financially dependent upon their parents, sometimes well into middle age, has created an unbalanced society, in which no one acts their age in a way that we might historically have expected to do.

Well meaning, overprotective adults may have, with the best intentions in the world have inadvertently created a world-wide group of Adult 'Children' who became such great Pals to their children that they neglected to be Parents and teach them the rewards and responsibilities of Adulthood.**



*Forever Young - the 'Teen-aging' of Modern Culture by Marcel Danesi

**See also another 2012 blog: I DON'T WANT TO/CAN'T GROW UP