Implications. . .

A couple of generations or so ago, how a couple parented their children was not always an accurate indicator of how they saw things in the public square or how they voted alone in the polling booth.  Then there was much more in common between liberal and progressive thinkers and religious and conservative ones in terms of how they raised their children.  Of course, there were permissive parents and strict ones, those who were very involved in their kids lives and those who were less intimately involved in their kids everyday lives.  But that did not always equate to a clear indicator of their political or social or moral views.  Parenting was parenting and so parents had a lot in common despite other differences.  At least that was how it was in Nebraska and watching as a young parent in New York and a parent finally of teenagers in Tennessee.  Their were card-carrying liberals who were strict and card-carrying conservatives who were permissive.  But that has changed.

How parents view politics, religion, society, and morality has become a fairly accurate predictor of how they parent.  Those on the left are more likely to be permissive and those on the right more likely to be conservative.  Both sides can and are authoritarian about their views.  It is not quite a rule but it is an indicator no less of the more profound connection between the views of the parent and their parenting style.  The same is true of religion.  Those who claimed religious affiliation a couple of generations ago were probably split among the more liberal and progressive churches and the conservative ones but they were equally religious.  That is not quite the case today.  Those on the left are not simply more likely to be non-religious but to be actively secular in their views and in their parenting.  Those on the right are more likely to be religious and to seek out more doctrinal and doctrinaire religious communities and it shows in their parenting as well.

You see it in the schools.  Again, that was not always the case.  Sure, there were good schools and bad schools but they existed in neighborhoods and communities across the spectrum of liberal and conservative.  Within those schools there were good kids and not so good ones, compliant and defiant, responsible and not so responsible.  Today the distance between liberal and conservative in schools and in the teachers is more pronounced.  It is not hard to predict the political affiliation of the parents or of the teachers in most public and private schools.  Even the vocabulary is different as well as what it taught and how it is taught.  The left and right identities tend to spill over into more aspects of the people's lives and into the institutions in their communities.  That was not always the care or even ordinarily so but it surely is the case today.

The great divide between suburban and urban, between city and rural, and between married with children and not has become not simply more evident across the board but also seems to be incorporated into our kids and into the institutions where they are raised.  In short, we are attempting to raise clones of ourselves.  There was a time when we all assumed that it was better for our children to know both sides of the question or issue before them but we are more likely today to raise them to be unthinking and to respond instinctively, according to our own views on things before us.  And it is showing.  

Is this a good thing?  Some might think so.  Some might even suggest that this is the job of parents -- to incorporate into their children their own political, religious, cultural, and social viewpoints.  The problem, it seems to me, is that we have not raised them to know and hold our views but to not know the opposing views or sides.  In the end this will not help us raise children to be thinking adults capable of defending and reasoning their way into our points of view but just the opposite.  It leaves them vulnerable and unable to defend or reason why they hold to certain beliefs or values.  Insulating children from a real debate and putting them into cocoons in which they do not encounter challenges to their beliefs will not help them to retain these views and beliefs but just the opposite.  Unless our kids know why we think what we think or believe what we believe or value what we value, they will shed our clothes like yesterday's style and become adults without a real anchor to their faith, identities, values, and opinions.  I fear less those who disagree with me than those who hold no real and firm beliefs.  Chaos is the greater problem.  We just might be raising a generation of children who not only do not know why they hold to some view or belief, they are more likely to choose the tyranny of feelings over the concrete of facts and truth.  That is bad all the way around.