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Children and Political Beliefs

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I will be more disturbed if she doesn’t go through this phase than if she does. In order to become her own person, she’ll have to reject my path in some fashion. It might manifest in her political positioning. Or in her becoming an online influencer. Or becoming a health fanatic. Or having six children in her twenties.

Going through the stage of “my parents are morons who did everything wrong” and doing so early is great. Being unhappy about it is like being upset that your child no longer needs a diaper because he learned to use the toilet.

It’s very curious that often what people think is a failure of parenting is evidence of success. They suffer and blame themselves when they should be celebrating.

Have you seen grown children who never dared to criticize mommy because “mom is my best friend”? They almost invariably fail to start their own families, their work life is miserable, and they have no friends. It’s very convenient to mommy until the “best friend” child hits 40 and mommy realizes that it will continue like this after she dies.

We have a lot of these situations in my community that has traditionally very pushy, controlling parents. Am I willing to bear some political disagreements to avoid all this? You bet.

11 responses to “Children and Political Beliefs”

  1. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    I know a family whose kids are just reaching adulthood, handsome, smart, put-together, and… getting married. Their mom is freaking out. She apparently put a lot of effort into teaching them the Middle Class Way: go to college and get a career first, then get married and have kids. Because what if you end up divorced or widowed? What’s your backup plan? It’s a script. I sometimes wonder where they all got it from? Was it a book everybody that age read? To me this looks like a really amazing success: the kids are religious, they think getting married and having a family are primary goals in life that shouldn’t be put off, and it turned out that even in high school they were actively looking for other people their age who were also serious about marriage and family. What more could you want as a parent?

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    1. ShadowsCollide Avatar
      ShadowsCollide

      I’m actually not surprised at all, to a lot of middle class normies, getting married young and having kids is a failure they associate with trashy poor people. It’s the idea that middle class people go to college and consort with other middle class people while getting a degree to get a middle class job and stay middle class, having kids young puts a spanner in the works. Our mom has that mindset, she thinks her nieces are trashy for having kids young and not going to college since they have minimum wage jobs and she’s the manager of a supermarket with an accounting degree

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        A colleague got snippy with me when I asked her if her 26-year-old daughter is planning to get married to her boyfriend of six years. What are you talking about? She’s too young to get married, she said. I personally couldn’t care less, but 26, especially after such a long relationship, doesn’t seem particularly young. I don’t understand what’s going on in people’s minds at this point. It’s definitely some sort of a weird class thing.

        Another weird class obsession is that you need to delay marriage until you can finance some ridiculously expensive wedding. One could have a great wedding celebration in the backyard, but now people have to pay for a $60,000 venue just because they convinced themselves that it’s the fashionable thing to do.

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        1. bluebird of bitterness Avatar
          bluebird of bitterness

          The notion that you need to have a wedding that costs more than people a generation ago paid for their first house is one of my pet peeves. It’s even worse when the parties involved are still paying off student loans.

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            This insanity is fueled by the need to post on social media. What’s the point of even getting married if you can’t flood social media for a month with the pictures?

            I remember N and I were once on vacation and we observed a newlywed couple getting their pictures taken. We went back to the room, had lots of married fun, went out…. and the poor couple was still getting their pictures taken. We wept with laughter. Like, guys, the pictures aren’t what makes marriage worth it. We had gotten married in a courthouse with no fuss whatsoever. It’s what happened since that moment that is the worthwhile part.

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      2. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        A colleague got snippy with me when I asked her if her 26-year-old daughter is planning to get married to her boyfriend of six years. What are you talking about? She’s too young to get married, she said. I personally couldn’t care less, but 26, especially after such a long relationship, doesn’t seem particularly young. I don’t understand what’s going on in people’s minds at this point. It’s definitely some sort of a weird class thing.

        Another weird class obsession is that you need to delay marriage until you can finance some ridiculously expensive wedding. One could have a great wedding celebration in the backyard, but now people have to pay for a $60,000 venue just because they convinced themselves that it’s the fashionable thing to do.

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Dude, looking at the truly scary numbers of people who are failing to get married and start families, this mother should be in paradise. You can get a college degree at any age. Marriage and children, not so much.

      Some people don’t know how good they have it, really.

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      1. ShadowsCollide Avatar
        ShadowsCollide

        Mom will never be a grandmother since all of us are single, my older brother and I are lifelong celibates and our younger brother has autism. It’s funny that my older brother and I satisfy our nurturing instinct in different ways, he volunteers at an animal shelter and dotes on his dogs while fostering others.

        I work as a substitute teacher and teach a Sunday school class, I like kids but all that negativity growing up made us not want kids. I guess you could say I satisfy my maternal streak by teaching and taking care of my brother, I love to watch old TV shows and movies with him and answer his questions about stuff

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      2. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        IKR? Like YOU DID GREAT! Your kids, who grew up with you, think that marriage and family life are something they want to have, as soon as possible: this reflects amazingly well on your marriage and parenting so just take it for the amazing compliment that it is! These kids were remarkably civilized and responsible teenagers, and they are gonna be completely fine. And anxious mom is gonna have grandkids while she’s still young enough to really enjoy them. For real: paradise, success, all the things. What did we do to her generation to make them neurotic about this?

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  2. ShadowsCollide Avatar
    ShadowsCollide

    Madam, you are a lot more open-minded than my family. Being the child of right wing Cuban exiles, my parents let us know that if we ever became very liberal and did Antifa, BLM type stuff back in the day, they’d throw us out of the house and disown us. So neither my brother and I ever went through a liberal phase, we’re both libertarian-leaning conservatives and I’m probably more conservative than him. We rebelled by listening to heavy rock and wearing lots of black t-shirts, since we couldn’t rebel politically even if we wanted to.

    The phrase about how my parents are morons would have never been publicly uttered in front of our parents unless we wanted the belt, we heard all the time how our grandma worked as a barmaid to support her kids and that we as Americans had it easy. To this day, when I see kids be rude to their parents, I wonder if the kids are going to get a whooping or if the parents are pushovers, we weren’t allowed to behave like that at all

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    1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
      oldcowboy3

      When I was young, physical punishment was generally more of a threat/warning than a reality, and largely restricted to more egregious poor behavior. But it certainly caught your attention, especially if the threat was “just wait until your father gets home” ;-D

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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