While catching up on some reading and encountered a discussion of voting which included a rather radical proposal to weight the votes of young people over and against middle age and older people (me). It was a stupid exchange that flowed normally and naturally out of a culture which values youth over age and experience. Hidden in this discussion, however, was a statement made to justify shifting the burden away from some for the sake of youth -- a statement which actually had a lot more to do with the value and purpose of the family itself. That is the statement above.
"Parents generally confuse the interests of their family with the interest of their children..." That is a very reasoned statement probably from someone who has no children and it comes at a time in which I have heard the complaint that old people like me have too much money and too much political power. While that is probably the premise of this statement above, it is about much more than money and political power. It is an argument for the individual over and against family, neighborhood, and community. It is the cause of self-interest over and against the interests of others -- even those of our nearest kin. It is the purposeful devaluation of the family as an institution and of the parental role as guardian and advocate for the child. As if this were not enough, the author of the paragraph also suggested that a college graduate age 24 with neither marriage nor children to boast probably has a better idea of what is in the best interest of the child. That says it all.
"...to make sure children aren't the hostages of their parents..." There is again the profound animus against the parent and the family. Because marriage and family are not a democracy in which the votes of the children count as much as the parents, the right course of democracy is to pit the family and the child against each other. Wow. That is the state of things. Of course, we all know that there are bad families and problem children. Neither of those is typical. In fact, the normal state of things is just the opposite. Parents who sacrifice and give their children at a cost to themselves and families who juggle the needs and wants of their children in order to give them all more rather than less. Neither the child nor young adulthood has much comprehension of either the sacrifices or the juggling of interests that goes on routinely in the home. Children are not hostages of their parents but run the increasing risk of becoming hostages to an educational, social, and values system that presumes to know better than mom or dad or Scripture or God.
Most of us learn what family and parenting are from our families and our parents. We are not instructed by books or "professionals" but by the common experience of growing up in a home where mom and dad love us and do what is best for us and we learn to trust that they know what they are doing. Do they screw up? Sure, I have made a ton of mistakes raising my children and I expect most of us would be happy to admit the same. But few of those mistakes have anything to do with holding our kids hostage to our interests and most of them had to do with acquiescing to theirs when my instinct told me to say "no".
God designed the family and we did not invent it. He endowed the family with influence far beyond what happened within the home. Indeed, He made Himself known to us as our heavenly Father and thus gave the dignity of fatherhood and motherhood a higher place than mere biology or ancestry. Because of sin we surely fail to live up to the promise of His gift but it would be a sad betrayal of that gift and trust to cede the decisions for the children to those outside the family. Yes, in extreme circumstance the family proves to be unworthy of that trust and sins against the responsibility as well as the child. But what is being spoken of here is nothing less than institutionalizing the state or others within the state and giving to them the responsibility that belongs to the family alone. Surely the sad state of affairs today and the increasing rarity of children among us ought to suggest that culture, society, and trendy thinking are even less reliable than plain, old-fashioned sinful moms and dads.
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To understand the relationship between adults and children, each of us can tap into our own personal history. If we are honest with ourselves, we can see how our puerile behavior growing up required the guidance, wisdom, discipline and correction of our parents and teachers, and wise elders. Otherwise, we would be like the wild ones in the song made famous by Wayland Jennings, the country singer of the 1950-1970’s era. The “wild ones”, as he sang out, “ had the town up a tree” and they came “straight out of nowhere.” But in reality, misbehavior starts early and in the home. A police lieutenant once told our class in a college elective course on criminology that most of the hardened and violent men he had met over his career were shaped by their environment, not necessarily by poverty, but by cruel or indifferent parenting. Lacking rules, they developed their own. If a child is not corrected and is overindulged by well meaning parents, they can become spoiled. A spoiled child grows into a selfish and narcissistic adult. They enter adulthood with poor manners and disrespect, and surround themselves with like minded friends. If millions of children are raised by a culture in which there are lax or no standards, the entire society can become dysfunctional. I think this is what happened in America, and part of the reason there is so much violence, criminality, permissiveness, and suicide. It is the “best interests of children” that they be raised in a Christian home, taught the things of the Lord, be appropriately corrected for misbehavior, never spoiled, and inculcated with Godly values and a sense of responsibility. It might be too late for American society, but for the Christian family, it is a blessing and in the their best interests. Soli Deo Gloria
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