Stop Loving Children

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Something I was terribly tired of this song. And as a parent, and as a former child, and as a future grandfather. Maybe it's enough to love children already? Maybe it's time to deal with them in a human way?

Personally, I would not like to be born in our time. Too much love. As soon as you get your date of birth, you immediately become a doll. Mom, dad, grandmothers, grandfathers immediately begin to work out their instincts and complexes on you. They feed you three throats. A child masseur is called for you. For everyone's affection, they dress you in jeans and jackets, although you have not even learned to sit yet. And if you are a girl, then already in the second year of your life your ears are pierced in order to hang gold earrings, which your loving aunt Dasha wants to present by all means.

By the third birthday, all the toys no longer fit in the nursery, and by the sixth - in the barn. From day to day, you are first driven, and then taken to children's clothing stores, taxiing to restaurants and slot machine halls along the way. Especially gifted in terms of love, mothers and grandmothers sleep with you in the same bed for up to ten years, until it already starts to smell like pedophilia. Oh yes - I almost forgot! Tablet PC! The child must have a tablet. And an iPhone is also desirable. Right from the age of three. Because Seryozha has him, his mother bought him, and she doesn't seem to earn much, much less than us. And even Tanya is from the neighboring group, although she generally lives with her grandmother.

Before school, the "puppet period" usually ends, and the "corrective labor" begins right there. Loving parents finally realize that they have done something wrong. The child is overweight, has a bad temper and attention deficit disorder. All this gives rise to the transition to a new level of an exciting game of parental love. This level is called “find a specialist”. Now, with the same enthusiasm, you are dragged around by nutritionists, teachers, neuropsychiatric specialists, just neurologists and simply psychologists. Relatives are frantically looking for some miracle that will allow them to achieve magical healing results without changing their own approach to raising a child. A lot of money, nerves and a lot of time are spent on these essentially esoteric practices. The result is zero point, just a little tenths.

This period was also characterized by a desperate attempt to apply the norms of iron discipline and work ethics to the child. Instead of sincerely captivating the little man with some interest, instead of giving him more freedom and responsibility, relatives line up with a belt and shouting. As a result, the child learns to live out of the stick, losing the ability to be interested in at least something.

When the futility of the spent efforts becomes obvious, the stage of broken parental passionarity begins. Here, almost all loving parents suddenly suddenly begin to hate their children: "We are for you, and you!" The only difference is that for some this hatred is expressed in complete surrender with the further direction of the adolescent to an educational institution of a closed type (Suvorov School, an elite British school), while others cut a plate in their heads with the inscription "you are my cross!" Resigned to the fact that nothing good has come of a person, parents with Tymoykrest on their necks continue to finish off the personality in their almost adult child. They get rid of the army, arrange a paid department at a university, give money for bribes to teachers and just running expenses, buy an apartment, a car, select a sinecure to the best of their ability. If by nature Tymoykrest is not too talented, then this strategy even brings some more or less edible fruits - a mentally crippled, but quite respectable citizen grows up. But much more often children pay for healing wounds inflicted by excessive parental love in a completely different way - with health, lives, souls.

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The cult of children emerged in our civilization not so long ago - just some 50-60 years ago. And in many ways this is the same artificial phenomenon as the Coca-Cola Santa Claus that jumps out of the marketing snuffbox every year. Children are a powerful tool for promoting the consumption race. Every square centimeter of a child's body, not to mention cubic millimeters of the soul, has long been divided between manufacturers of goods and services. To make a person love himself with such a manic love is still a rather difficult moral and ethical task. And love for a child starts with a half turn. Further - just turn on the counter.

Of course, this does not mean at all that children were not loved before. And how they loved. It's just that there was no child-centered family before. Adults did not play free animators, they lived their natural life and, as they matured, involved their offspring in this life. Children were loved, but they understood from the first glimpses of consciousness that they were only a part of a large universe called “our family”. That there are elders who must be respected, there are younger ones who must be taken care of, there is our business, in which we must join, there is our faith, which must be adhered to.

Today the market imposes on society the recipe for a family built around a child. This is a notoriously losing strategy that exists only to siphon money out of households. The market does not want the family to be built correctly, because then it will satisfy most of its needs on its own, within itself. And the unhappy family loves to outsource the solution of their problems. And this habit has long been the foundation for entire billion-dollar industries. Ideal from the point of view of the market, the father is not the one who spends the weekend with the child, goes to the park, or goes for a bike ride. The ideal dad is the one who will work overtime this weekend to earn a two-hour visit to the water park.

And you know what? Let's replace the verb “love” with something else in this column. Ignore, spit, be indifferent. Because, of course, such parental love is just one form of selfishness. A mad mother, a workaholic father - all this is nothing more than a game of instincts. Whatever we say to ourselves about parental duty and sacrifice, this kind of paternity-motherhood is a gross pleasure, something like love pleasures, one continuous biology.

There is such a beautiful Indian proverb: "A child is a guest in your house: feed, bring up and let go."

To feed - and a fool will be able to, to educate - this is already more difficult, but to be able to let a child from the first minutes of his life on the sly from himself - this is love. You are right as always, Chingachgook.

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