Viva la Rebelution!

The questions put by the Rebelution folks to today's teens, closing Rod's post, sent me back to my email archives, to this essay from, yes, the "Children and Ourselves" department of the neo-Platonist, Perennialist weekly MANAS ["Well, there you go again" - The Peanut Gallery]. The city: Los Angeles. The date: February 9, 1955:

http://www.manasjournal.org/pdf_library/VolumeVIII_1955/VIII-06.pdf

"WHY don't parents let us make up our minds for ourselves — about religion, about what's good and what's bad, etc.?" This question, recently delivered by an adolescent, is as good a point as any to renew exploration of why it is that the parental desire to protect and constructively mold, and youth's desire to establish freedom of individuality, come into such frequent conflict. Further comment by this youthful questioner points the matter up more specifically. "Look," she said. "What parents do is, they treat you like an adult when they want you to be 'responsible' around the house, but when you want to do something, you're a child again. Pretty sneaky. They get you both ways."

Well, things are tough all over. From the parents' point of view, this "sneaky" form of behavior is quite rational: For how is one ever going to tell that a child has become "an adult" except when adult responsibilities have been satisfactorily assumed over a period of time? Why shouldn't responsibility come before freedom? Nobody ever gets into trouble trying to fulfill responsibilities, but a great many adolescents do get into trouble while trying out their notions of "freedom.” So, though this may simply be a sign of advancing age on the part of the writer, we take sides with the sneaky old parents on this particular point.

But there is another side to the question, involving something more than abstract argument about the importance of learning to perform practical responsibilities: an adolescent should not, we think, be talked to or treated in two different ways. He, or she, is the same person all the time—or about as much so as most adults, anyway—and the real need is for development of an atmosphere of family understanding which puts both "responsibilities" and "freedom" in a rational context. A measure of freedom should, we might think, always be integrated with the way in which any particular "responsibility" is supposed to be fulfilled, and a measure of responsibility should go hand in hand with corresponding freedom.

Going back to those nice, simple, old days for a moment, the youth who decided to take a long ride across country to squire a girl, or attend some other family's festivities, probably rode a horse he had helped raise from a colt. The care of the horse and the freedom to ride went hand in hand. But this is a horse of a different color from the aquamarine Oldsmobile in the family garage—about two hundred horses different, as a matter of fact—which serves to account for two powerful factors usually figuring in the "little freedom to roam" policies established by parents. Roaming in expensive cars is expensive, can be dangerous, and elevates a "child" suddenly to a world of power and money which he may accept with the most casual ignorance concerning the wherewithal which produced the mechanical intricacies and also the wherewithal making possible its purchase.

In other words, it is neither our children's fault nor our own that privilege should so far outrun responsibility; the world simply runs that way at the present time. But it may indeed be considered our fault, as parents, if the situation is not thoroughly grasped, and if no intensive and persistent efforts are made to restore as much of natural balance as is possible. The safest rule to follow — though it must be admitted that circumstances alter cases here as elsewhere — seems to be to allow adolescents to earn their own special belongings and expense money. You can't keep young people "out of trouble," but it is possible to see that their troubles are integral to their own productive capacities, and to the sophistication organic to their brief years of experience. Washing dishes and mowing the lawn at home do not logically qualify any youngster for a car on his birthday, nor for receipt of an "allowance" beyond his present capacity or inclination to earn by independent efforts. Parents, in our opinion, give children entirely too much for the good of either party concerned. We recall a passage from the Bhagavad-Gita wherein Krishna warns strenuously against "gifts given out of season.” Such gifts, he says, tend only to confuse the relationship between giver and recipient, and bring about unnatural consequences. The gift which is always natural is the gift— whether it be of time, money or whatever—which assists the recipient in a project already responsibly undertaken.

Our encouragement to adolescents should, on this view, begin with creation of a home atmosphere calculated to bring appropriate projects into being. A child is not a child when he initiates a long-term project — he is an adult, doing what all adults have to do if they are ever to reach psychological maturity. It is when the youngster falters, finding himself unable to keep his objectives clearly in mind, that he shows childishness. But we need think of him neither as "child" or "adult"—but simply as a person who is doing enough on his own responsibility to awaken our desire to help, or one who no longer manages to make us believe in his intent.

It occurs that the same psychology here outlined can be applied to worries about involvement between the sexes. Once again, in "the old days," the consequences of liaisons had to be met in large part by those who initiated them. Not so at the present time. An early marriage does not fall back on the land and upon hard work, but upon parents' pocketbooks—sometimes on their physicians. The young person who anticipates the vast responsibilities various forms of romance can entail is more surely checked in premature leanings than he can ever be by verbal admonitions in the home. But these responsibilities are remote — completely unreal — unless the value of money and the cost of a home are learned through participatory earning.

Sociology teaches us, if it teaches anything, that societies gravitate to extremes of behavior — sometimes, in a comparatively short span of time, even carry through a pendulum swing to opposites of attitude. Thus, while youths were once regarded as responsible because this was required of them, today our expectation is rather the opposite. The weird American idea of "college days" fits into the pattern here, with emphasis on the "best days of one's life" being during this time of comparative irresponsibility. Parents who themselves believe this nonsense indulge their young in the belief that they "shouldn't miss out.” Europeans have monotonously remarked that Americans worship the cult of adolescence, and this isn't far from the uncomfortable truth. Causes? Well, when money-earning began to be more and more a thankless chore rather than a kind of enjoyable fulfillment—assembly lines and all that—one's youngest days did seem the best of all possible times. Why? For one thing, youth itself is wonderful, and few have discovered how to maintain the level of physical exuberance and psychical magic in things heard, seen and felt. Second, youth has always been privileged to spend at least part of its time in receiving instruction. Going to school comes closer, we might say, to what a man ought to be doing, any time, than raising and lowering a drill press, or fighting other white-collar workers for raises and the bosses' commendations.

But high-school and college youths have a good time, not because they are so often allowed to be irresponsible — rather in spite of that fact. Those who spend part of their time earning their way may, indeed, have the best time of all—and frequently do. These few, at least, are thrice blest — they are learning, they are young, and they are proving their emerging adulthood by discharging an appropriate measure of responsibilities in the adult world. If they are serious enough, if they accomplish a sufficiency in academic work and later require more time for further intensive study, the prospects of receiving help from one of several quarters are good. So, parents, whatever you do, don't get rich. It's apt to foul everything up for your children. Only slightly less bad is pretending affluence when the loan company is really the one ahead of the game.

Zoetius' comment deserves a post of its own. Rob, promote that thing to the front page. Well said, Z.