Is it okay? Most would say "no", especially when applied to the metaphor that the blog writer is going for. Is it how the larger world works in many cases? Sadly, yes.
If the little girl had smacked the little boy, she would have been punished. Also, you're advocating the lesson that boys should be afraid of reprisal, not that boys should be respectful of other people's stuff, which is the wrong lesson entirely.
The problem isn't "Boys Will Be Boys" it's "Parents Aren't Being Parents". It's not a gender issue. I've seen quite a few destructive tyrants, and I've seen quite a few screeching harpies. The common factor is a spineless parent.
> ...destructive tyrants, and ... screeching harpies. The common factor is a spineless parent.
... and typically they all seem to be seated in the row next to mine when I fly. The ability of some parents to calmly read a magazine and smile indulgently while their kid screams his head off and generally runs amok in a cramped and crowded space where nobody can leave is ... quite astonishing.... (13 hours left, only 13 hours...TT)
Are you aware that refusing to engage with children undergoing temper tantrums is a standard technique for avoiding having them become more intense? (The calm you're frustrated at could well have been a deliberate act.) Have you also considered that tantrums are a phase that can last some time? (Think months. If you're lucky.) And finally, being on an airplane is going to present a lot for a kid to get frustrated about, and therefore many opportunities for unexpected tantrums even in kids who might be beyond them in other contexts.
Having been on both sides of this equation (with kids who were, luckily for me, better behaved than most), I have far more sympathy for the plight of the parents than I once did. Yes, I know it is painful and frustrating. It is for the parents as well.
Is it better to let the kid do things that might annoy others for the purpose of trying to avoid a worse tantrum? Or try to control the kid at the risk of having an explosion. If the worst happens, you know you can't realistically try to explain the basics of tantrums to all of the non-parents trapped in the plane with your screaming child. Or, even worse, the parents who were lucky with the genetic draw and wrongly credit their child's good behavior to their wonderful parenting skills. (I have a sister who learned this one first hand. Her third was by a different father than her first two, and she quickly lost all of her inner smugness about how wonderfully behaved her kids were.) You are going to be as trapped as they are, with the knowledge that they blame you and have no clue.
I understand if you've not been there. But it is not as simple as you think. Really.
While I'm not flip-flopping my position at all, I totally respect that it's a difficult job. I've got 8 kids, and I can't guarantee that on any given day I won't encounter a tyrant or a harpy. :-)
I didn't respond to your original comment because I agree with your position. I've seen a lot of cases where parents are obviously not doing their job.
However I've had the "fun" experience of traveling with imperfectly behaved small children, and so the other person hit a button.
> Are you aware that refusing to engage with children undergoing temper tantrums is a standard technique for avoiding having them become more intense?
Yes, of course.
But I'm not talking about kids having temper tantrums, I'm talking about kids being obnoxious (i.e., the kid is clearly not in any distress, he's just being annoying), and where it's pretty clear the parent just thinks the kid is cute (when they're paying attention).
I certainly feel for parents that are trapped in that environment with a kid who's frightened, and when that happens I just grit my teeth and wish them luck.
Parents who simply don't feel the need to make even the slightest attempt to control their kid are an entirely differently story. There are tons of places where you can be indulgent with your kids and let them go wild—but a crowded trans-pacific flight is not one of them.
[At least in this context, it usually seems to be a certain "type" of parent in my experience: conspicuously image conscious, wearing lots of brand goods, an "upwardly mobile" vibe (though not rich, as they're back in coach with me), giving off a certain sense of affectation...]
This blog post is not about parenting or differences in upbringing between genders. It is a metaphor for rape, which is this feminist blogger's real topic.
I just can't understand how parents can think like that. My parents were never very disciplinarian, but one thing I got zero leeway with was being disrespectful to other people. Even when the other person was like "oh, it's okay, he's just a kid!" my parents would chew me the fuck out.
Parents work hard at being parents, and then naturally take pride in being good parents. Once you take pride in it, you naturally tend to reject any information out of hand which could cause you to question your certainty that you're a good parent. This in turn means that any evidence that your child's behavior is in any way out of line is rejected, excuses are made, and you quickly convince yourself that your child's behavior is normal and does not indicate that any intervention is required from his or her wonderful parents.
Humans go through the same phenomena with anything that we become proud of ourselves about. For example a developer can conclude that a bug must lie with the operating system, the compiler, the test environment, the stupid QA person not testing right, etc until the bug is found. At which point said developer will quickly conclude it was a minor typo, forget about it, and keep the evidence from indicating that there might be a problem with the developer's skills.
This whole "all men are rapists" or "all men are potential rapists" message that is constantly being shoved down our throats must surely be hugely damaging to our society. This accusing video[1] stands out amongst my early exposure to something along these lines. I remember feeling angry that such scorn was directed towards me just because of my gender.
I am a very gentle person, I would never hurt anyone, I rescue insects from the swimming pool but yet I am being told that I am a potential monster. I don't like that.
I found this documentary[2] very interesting.
I get what she is doing. I know it must be hard, as a mom, to watch your little girl work hard to build her castles (little kids get so attached to things) only to have "some boy" repeatedly knock it down.
However, I have a real problem with this statement on the last paragraph;
"Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when he’s older, say, at college, drunk at a party, mad at an ex-girlfriend who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respecte, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”
Really?
That's not fair. Just because he is a little boy who likes knocking down some girls castle, why is he all the sudden destined to be a rapist come the time he is in college? The thing that gets me the most is it is totally OK for a woman to say that about a guys.
This gem too;
"The “overarching attitudinal characteristic” of abusive men is entitlement."
I have no problem against feminism (I assume she is), but my only gripe about it, is it does not promote woman as equals; feminism inevitably turns into "man bashing". If men were to say the same thing, but reversed, we would be labeled as "sexist" or a "misogynist". Women, on the other hand, are applauded as "independent" or "free thinkers".
I don't think the issue is inherently about gender, and as such the invocation of rape analogies seems a bit of a stretch. On the other hand, dismissing these actions on account of the children's age seems overly naive.
I remember when I was little, I liked to build things (hey, I still do!). Sand castles, cardboard contraptions, anything out of anything really. I would say I was a builder. Most of the other kids seemed apathetic to anything that didn't involve chasing each other around while screaming at the top of their lungs, but I remember a small minority of the other kids were of a different category still: they were the opposite of me. They were destroyers, and they'd come over to annihilate pretty much anything my friends or I had built. This was a pattern that lasted with variations from Kindergarten to Junior High.
I'm not sure what makes a lot of kids so destructive, but they sure seem to derive joy from tormenting others. This behavior can probably fixed with parental intervention, but I agree with the author here that's generally not happening. I know this defense as "kids will be kids", and it does ring as hollow today as it did when I was little. If some kids have no morality of their own, they sure should be conditioned to at least act as if they did.
Following this line of thought I would like to de-emphasize the rape aspect, though I cede that being aggressive, destructive, and domineering is certainly something that is actually expected of boys. I know, because I had a hard time being accepted as a real male by my peers throughout puberty. However, the core consequence I think is not necessarily an increased incidence of sexual assaults, but more fundamentally a toxic acceptance of destructive behavior throughout society in general.
23 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 61.9 ms ] threadWait, isn't it a parent's job to teach their kid how to "help himself"...?
... and typically they all seem to be seated in the row next to mine when I fly. The ability of some parents to calmly read a magazine and smile indulgently while their kid screams his head off and generally runs amok in a cramped and crowded space where nobody can leave is ... quite astonishing.... (13 hours left, only 13 hours...TT)
Having been on both sides of this equation (with kids who were, luckily for me, better behaved than most), I have far more sympathy for the plight of the parents than I once did. Yes, I know it is painful and frustrating. It is for the parents as well.
Is it better to let the kid do things that might annoy others for the purpose of trying to avoid a worse tantrum? Or try to control the kid at the risk of having an explosion. If the worst happens, you know you can't realistically try to explain the basics of tantrums to all of the non-parents trapped in the plane with your screaming child. Or, even worse, the parents who were lucky with the genetic draw and wrongly credit their child's good behavior to their wonderful parenting skills. (I have a sister who learned this one first hand. Her third was by a different father than her first two, and she quickly lost all of her inner smugness about how wonderfully behaved her kids were.) You are going to be as trapped as they are, with the knowledge that they blame you and have no clue.
I understand if you've not been there. But it is not as simple as you think. Really.
However I've had the "fun" experience of traveling with imperfectly behaved small children, and so the other person hit a button.
Yes, of course.
But I'm not talking about kids having temper tantrums, I'm talking about kids being obnoxious (i.e., the kid is clearly not in any distress, he's just being annoying), and where it's pretty clear the parent just thinks the kid is cute (when they're paying attention).
I certainly feel for parents that are trapped in that environment with a kid who's frightened, and when that happens I just grit my teeth and wish them luck.
Parents who simply don't feel the need to make even the slightest attempt to control their kid are an entirely differently story. There are tons of places where you can be indulgent with your kids and let them go wild—but a crowded trans-pacific flight is not one of them.
[At least in this context, it usually seems to be a certain "type" of parent in my experience: conspicuously image conscious, wearing lots of brand goods, an "upwardly mobile" vibe (though not rich, as they're back in coach with me), giving off a certain sense of affectation...]
Parents work hard at being parents, and then naturally take pride in being good parents. Once you take pride in it, you naturally tend to reject any information out of hand which could cause you to question your certainty that you're a good parent. This in turn means that any evidence that your child's behavior is in any way out of line is rejected, excuses are made, and you quickly convince yourself that your child's behavior is normal and does not indicate that any intervention is required from his or her wonderful parents.
Humans go through the same phenomena with anything that we become proud of ourselves about. For example a developer can conclude that a bug must lie with the operating system, the compiler, the test environment, the stupid QA person not testing right, etc until the bug is found. At which point said developer will quickly conclude it was a minor typo, forget about it, and keep the evidence from indicating that there might be a problem with the developer's skills.
I am a very gentle person, I would never hurt anyone, I rescue insects from the swimming pool but yet I am being told that I am a potential monster. I don't like that. I found this documentary[2] very interesting.
[1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oZpuY97i_k [2] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5AOj6EhRuY
However, I have a real problem with this statement on the last paragraph;
"Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when he’s older, say, at college, drunk at a party, mad at an ex-girlfriend who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respecte, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”
Really?
That's not fair. Just because he is a little boy who likes knocking down some girls castle, why is he all the sudden destined to be a rapist come the time he is in college? The thing that gets me the most is it is totally OK for a woman to say that about a guys.
This gem too; "The “overarching attitudinal characteristic” of abusive men is entitlement."
I have no problem against feminism (I assume she is), but my only gripe about it, is it does not promote woman as equals; feminism inevitably turns into "man bashing". If men were to say the same thing, but reversed, we would be labeled as "sexist" or a "misogynist". Women, on the other hand, are applauded as "independent" or "free thinkers".
Sigh.
I remember when I was little, I liked to build things (hey, I still do!). Sand castles, cardboard contraptions, anything out of anything really. I would say I was a builder. Most of the other kids seemed apathetic to anything that didn't involve chasing each other around while screaming at the top of their lungs, but I remember a small minority of the other kids were of a different category still: they were the opposite of me. They were destroyers, and they'd come over to annihilate pretty much anything my friends or I had built. This was a pattern that lasted with variations from Kindergarten to Junior High.
I'm not sure what makes a lot of kids so destructive, but they sure seem to derive joy from tormenting others. This behavior can probably fixed with parental intervention, but I agree with the author here that's generally not happening. I know this defense as "kids will be kids", and it does ring as hollow today as it did when I was little. If some kids have no morality of their own, they sure should be conditioned to at least act as if they did.
Following this line of thought I would like to de-emphasize the rape aspect, though I cede that being aggressive, destructive, and domineering is certainly something that is actually expected of boys. I know, because I had a hard time being accepted as a real male by my peers throughout puberty. However, the core consequence I think is not necessarily an increased incidence of sexual assaults, but more fundamentally a toxic acceptance of destructive behavior throughout society in general.