Kids these days

I was talking on the phone yesterday with a conservative acquaintance who mentioned that he'd been listening to Laura Ingraham's radio show. I forget what the topic was, but he said that he likes her show in general, but she really doesn't know what she doesn't know. He explained that she doesn't have children, and that there's something ...not quite there when conservatives who don't have families give advice and commentary on family-related issues. To be fair, he said that Ingraham kept qualifying her remarks by saying she doesn't have kids.

The guy went on to tell me that one of his children suffers from autism and other serious disorders, and the struggles and heartbreaks he and his wife have raising this boy beggar belief. He explained that the experience of raising kids, especially the one who suffers so much, has made him far less willing to pass judgment on other parents.

Later in the day, I met with a friend who is also a conservative, and I recounted this conversation to him. He told me that we'd get a much different kind of conservatism if more conservative intellectuals had kids, or were more involved in family life. Conservatives whose intellections and contributions to public debate don't factor in family life are in general too narrowly focused for their own good, he said.

All this came to mind today as I left the office for a bit this afternoon to take care of a medical situation with one of my kids (not an emergency). As I so often have to do, I gave thanks that I work for a company that provides good health coverage for its employees, and I wondered about moms and dads who don't have what we do. Furthermore, I reflected on how having children changed me and my focus. It might sound paradoxical, but the experience of child-raising has made me both more conservative and more merciful.

How to explain? Well, when you have children, you suddenly become aware of the broader culture in ways that might have eluded your notice before. You realize, unless you're an idiot, that you are responsible for the protection and formation of human beings who did not ask to come into this world, but whom you have a duty to shield and instruct. And you necessarily have to quit living in the moment, and think hard about the future, and the kind of world you want to leave for your children. If you're responsible, you'll want it to be a world in which it's easier for them to be good. All this made me a lot less laissez-faire about public and private morality than I was earlier.

But it also made me less quick to judge others harshly. Having children is a joy, but it's also incredibly difficult. Children aren't robots. Working with our kids on this or that issue can be exhausting, emotionally and physically. If you have kids, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I know good families in which the parents did everything they reasonably could have to provide a strong, safe, loving home for their children ... and one of the kids went inexplicably bad. I've known people who came from rotten homes, and somehow got their lives together and thrive. It's impossible to know what kind of struggles go on inside families, and how parents pour themselves out for their children ... and for reasons outside of their control, fall short of the mark.

The older I get, and the further I get along into fatherhood, the more important I believe having strong moral standards and institutions to back those standards up are, and the more important I believe charity and mercy in family situations are. Go figure.

But you know, things like this really do stop you dead in your tracks, and make you wonder if we're not seeing some rough beast emerging. That link will take you to The Mighty Favog's blog, where he discusses the Omaha teenager who allegedly blew a stranger's brains out, just to watch her die. When Favog criticized the suspect, who has reportedly confessed to the murder, he was attacked by a teenager for passing judgment. In a private e-mail to me, Favog writes:

Rod, I believe we may have come to the point where we're entering into real "Love in the Ruins"-type stuff. I think we finally have reached the point where the young -- and this is a gross generalization, I realize -- are really, really pissed, utterly adrift and are starting to turn on society. There are no rules, and it's absolutely tribal. Yeah, there are lots of good kids . . . of course. But my gut feeling is that the trend lines for the sociopathically P.O.'d and violent are creeping steadily upward. Something is seriously wrong here.

A school teacher friend tells me that I would be shocked by how lost so many of the kids she deals with are. These kids -- and most of her students are middle-class -- are so lost, having been jerked around by parents who have had multiple marriages, etc. -- that, in my friend's words, "You learn to be proud of them when they manage to come to school with their shoes tied; it's too much to expect them to have their homework done." She explained that in most cases, she has nothing but pity on the kids; it's the self-centered, couldn't-give-a-s**t parents she can't abide.