When Jesus said: “Suffer the little children…to come unto me.” (Matthew 19:14), he (or rather the 17C authors of the King James Version of the Bible) was using a now archaic meaning for “suffer.” In our modern diction, we would say “allow.” However, what we do as a 21C society is make them suffer (in the modern sense of the term). It is horrible and hypocritical and not historically unusual.
I have noted elsewhere the anomie and resentment that is deeply embedded in young people today: the sense of not only being dealt a tough hand (e.g. Covid), but facing considerable disappointment in terms of career and housing opportunities, as well as a looming climate catastrophe. On top of this they recognize the profound dysfunction of our political culture which makes efforts to address these substantive challenges seem unsolvable.
There is considerable evidence that parents allowing (“suffering”) their children to immerse themselves in smartphones and, especially, social media is a principal cause of the current wave of disaffection/alienation and broader psychological distress with which many young people contend. Indirect peer pressure (children insisting on access cuz all their friends have it) seems to overwhelm whatever prudent and “common sense” response parents might have. Our society seems to have no problem in saying that certain brain-altering agents (tobacco/alcohol/cannabis) are off-limits for those who (as a class) have an insufficient capability of managing themselves. We have been slow to catch up to technology and add screens/social media to this list. It is not clear whether those whose youth has been smartphone-dominated (i.e. born since 2000) can recover, nor how many more will be allowed to harm themselves in this way.
Juxtaposed against these woes is a cultural mythology (hardly unique to the modern US) of cherishing our progeny. It’s built on a profound genetically-rooted set of practices. Pretty much every parent makes sacrifices (often heroic) to support and protect their children who are especially vulnerable to the vicissitudes of life. Limited knowledge prior to the 20C often made childhood a minefield of illness and death. For millennia, financial necessity meant marshaling all family resources to such a degree that the sharp limitation of child labor is a marker of social and economic progress. When we look at the health, education (formal and practical), and life choices which the modern world provides to our youth, there is no doubt that they are, as a group, better off than those of a century or more ago (even if a sharp family-wealth gradient remains).
What, then, are we to make of a society which sends those children to schools where “active shooter” drills are commonplace? What, then, are we to make of a society where schools have given up their standards and allow (suffer?) their children to pass classes and graduate high school without basic educational capabilities? Some of these are peculiarly US issues, but the increase in climate-related illness/hunger/risks is world-wide. There the dangers are less immediate, but pretty much universal in impact; and mitigation/reduction efforts founder on the short-term economic claims of the generations who have already profited by modern capitalism’s exploitation of the globe. What are we to make of an immensely wealthy America which allows a set of break-through Covid-driven child support programs to founder? One where schools in general and child-support systems of many kinds are chronically under-funded?
There are valid points (e.g., liberty, limited government) underlying all the arguments which lead to the demise of these practical improvements in the lives of children. No one is—on the face of it—against children, health, and opportunity; it’s just that the cost of providing them is (apparently) too high and something has to give. Such arguments around the need for compromise and trade-offs are normal in political discourse. When they are made, for example, by competing industries around the need to regulate or benefit one such group to the detriment of the other, we may have one policy preference or another. But children have few lobbyists and lawyers and the resulting economic benefit flows to embedded/voting/older generations.
If it weren’t so predictable, we could look at those who want the State to intervene in support of the “rights of the unborn” but are unwilling to support such intervention to the health and education of the “recently-born.” We could look at the champions of “family values,” a phrase which has become a euphemism for parental protection/insulation from the valuing of or evolving beliefs of children. We could look at those who demand the liberty to carry dangerous weapons to such a degree that the liberty of those to be free from the fear of dangerous weapons is shoved into a closet.
Globally, issue of health and hunger are much more dire than in the rich “West.” Children there suffer from the shadowed lives of both children in general and poorer countries (and “of color”) that, combined, make them nigh invisible to most with wealth. Pretty much every crisis we read about, be it political, economic, or cultural, is a more dire crisis for children.
Little of this is new, historically speaking. But the current situation seems more acute because of the combination of threats and lost-opportunities which stand in sharp contrast to the amassed wealth (both individual and societal) which could be deployed. We cannot blame the children when we seem to actually care so little about them.
I have noted elsewhere the anomie and resentment that is deeply embedded in young people today: the sense of not only being dealt a tough hand (e.g. Covid), but facing considerable disappointment in terms of career and housing opportunities, as well as a looming climate catastrophe. On top of this they recognize the profound dysfunction of our political culture which makes efforts to address these substantive challenges seem unsolvable.
There is considerable evidence that parents allowing (“suffering”) their children to immerse themselves in smartphones and, especially, social media is a principal cause of the current wave of disaffection/alienation and broader psychological distress with which many young people contend. Indirect peer pressure (children insisting on access cuz all their friends have it) seems to overwhelm whatever prudent and “common sense” response parents might have. Our society seems to have no problem in saying that certain brain-altering agents (tobacco/alcohol/cannabis) are off-limits for those who (as a class) have an insufficient capability of managing themselves. We have been slow to catch up to technology and add screens/social media to this list. It is not clear whether those whose youth has been smartphone-dominated (i.e. born since 2000) can recover, nor how many more will be allowed to harm themselves in this way.
Juxtaposed against these woes is a cultural mythology (hardly unique to the modern US) of cherishing our progeny. It’s built on a profound genetically-rooted set of practices. Pretty much every parent makes sacrifices (often heroic) to support and protect their children who are especially vulnerable to the vicissitudes of life. Limited knowledge prior to the 20C often made childhood a minefield of illness and death. For millennia, financial necessity meant marshaling all family resources to such a degree that the sharp limitation of child labor is a marker of social and economic progress. When we look at the health, education (formal and practical), and life choices which the modern world provides to our youth, there is no doubt that they are, as a group, better off than those of a century or more ago (even if a sharp family-wealth gradient remains).
What, then, are we to make of a society which sends those children to schools where “active shooter” drills are commonplace? What, then, are we to make of a society where schools have given up their standards and allow (suffer?) their children to pass classes and graduate high school without basic educational capabilities? Some of these are peculiarly US issues, but the increase in climate-related illness/hunger/risks is world-wide. There the dangers are less immediate, but pretty much universal in impact; and mitigation/reduction efforts founder on the short-term economic claims of the generations who have already profited by modern capitalism’s exploitation of the globe. What are we to make of an immensely wealthy America which allows a set of break-through Covid-driven child support programs to founder? One where schools in general and child-support systems of many kinds are chronically under-funded?
There are valid points (e.g., liberty, limited government) underlying all the arguments which lead to the demise of these practical improvements in the lives of children. No one is—on the face of it—against children, health, and opportunity; it’s just that the cost of providing them is (apparently) too high and something has to give. Such arguments around the need for compromise and trade-offs are normal in political discourse. When they are made, for example, by competing industries around the need to regulate or benefit one such group to the detriment of the other, we may have one policy preference or another. But children have few lobbyists and lawyers and the resulting economic benefit flows to embedded/voting/older generations.
If it weren’t so predictable, we could look at those who want the State to intervene in support of the “rights of the unborn” but are unwilling to support such intervention to the health and education of the “recently-born.” We could look at the champions of “family values,” a phrase which has become a euphemism for parental protection/insulation from the valuing of or evolving beliefs of children. We could look at those who demand the liberty to carry dangerous weapons to such a degree that the liberty of those to be free from the fear of dangerous weapons is shoved into a closet.
Globally, issue of health and hunger are much more dire than in the rich “West.” Children there suffer from the shadowed lives of both children in general and poorer countries (and “of color”) that, combined, make them nigh invisible to most with wealth. Pretty much every crisis we read about, be it political, economic, or cultural, is a more dire crisis for children.
Little of this is new, historically speaking. But the current situation seems more acute because of the combination of threats and lost-opportunities which stand in sharp contrast to the amassed wealth (both individual and societal) which could be deployed. We cannot blame the children when we seem to actually care so little about them.
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