Selling Sno-Cones at the Beach

Hey kid: you want some chips and soda with that?

Jeff Opdyke writes for the Wall Street Journal, and our local Sunday paper carries his column on "Love and Money," in which he talks about negotiating financial values within the family. How to decide which is better: a higher-paying job with longer hours or a lesser job allowing more time with the family? What's it worth to structure your kid's education with lots of (costly) enriching activities, versus letting them have more free time to explore their own creativity? And so forth.

Two Sundays ago (yeah, sometimes it takes me awhile to get to these) he did a roundup of the nastygrams he'd gotten on recent columns, including one on the costs and benefits of being the house on the block where everyone's kids congregate. In short, the financial costs of providing snacks for all the kids on a daily basis really add up over time. But on the other hand, you know where your kids are and you can feel good about providing a safe environment for them and for their n'hood friends.

Well, Opdyke got beaten up pretty well for the snacks part, because someone wrote in and ripped him for providing semi-junk food to the neighborhood kids without ever checking with their parents to make sure that particular kind of food was "acceptable."

Now, in the case of food allergies, maybe she has a point. BUT even so: kids with food allergies have to be taught to be proactive about their own food intake, because mom and dad won't be around every minute to watch out for them. And in the other cases - well, it's not like you're running a neighborhood restaurant and should have to stock the particular things that are acceptable to other families. And it's really not fair to the kids to single them out and say, well, go call your mom so we can figure out if you can have this snack bar (while all your friends are sucking it down).

To me this sort of expectation that you should be able to have proxy control over your kids at all times seems symptomatic of a new emerging divide in this country: the overprotected kids, for whom everything is provided, everything is scheduled, and everything is done; and the underprotected kids, who get not enough guidance and help to learn to make good choices throughout childhood. (Although, when you think about it, the first group might not be getting a lot of help in progressively more scope of decision-making, since a lot of decisions get made for them.)

We've long worried about the second group. But the first group is gonna have some issues - say, when they get to be 17 and get a car, and have virtually unlimited freedom for the first time. The long parental arm continues to extend though - everyone I know (myself included) has had to hear from the parents of their (college) students at one point. I'm sure my parents never dreamed of "interfering" in my college life - and thankfully colleges have rules to prevent such interference.

To me this need for control at all costs seems to be a weird and disturbing meld of hyperconsumerism (I want what I want, exactly how and when I want it) and notions of collective responsibility (it takes a village) for raising the next generation. Disturbing, because, while there IS a belief in sharing responsibility (look for example at all the social work schools have to do now), there's also a belief that those to whom one delegates temporary responsibility for one's children must care for them EXACTLY as one would have done, had one been caring for them.

Posted by otto0114 at January 28, 2006 11:24 AM