I recently asked a few of my friends and family members “who are the most important people in your family?” a mirror to how Rosemond’s article begins. Of course, Rosemond sarcastically eleborates how the millennial parents he’s speaking with are “good moms and dads of this brave new millennium” because they suggested that their children are the most central aspects of their home. Rosemond argues that the status of most important should belong to the parents for providing to the potential children in question. To that, I’d like to start by telling a story about my family.

My brother and I are roughly six years apart and as such I would regularly be at the end of a fad just as he would be picking it up. This wasn’t necessarily a bad aspect of our family dynamics, and I’d guess that my parents appreciated the well received hand-me-downs our age gap allowed for. Of course, this also led to regular battles between the two of us. A way that my mother devised a “fix” to these fights was once to proclaim, “The special one gets X and the important one gets Y. Figure out what one you are.” I’m fairly confident in saying that my therapist would find this to be a very interesting gem in my childhood, but I think it held merit. We then began to fight over who would be more important or special based on the day and wants of each of us. Occasionally it would be a draw leaving one of us to admit to just being “special” or just “important” and ending the battle almost instantly, each of us taking the spoils we got. So, my mother would be the actual winner about once every other fight between us. Fighting became so short lived that we still occasionally refrence this joke during family gatherings and dinners. It became that much easier to live with each others differences once we admitted to ourselves that we could be either important or special, but usually both.

So as I’m asking my family and friends about their “most important family members”, I keep that history of my childhood alive in the back of my head. One of the first things to strike me in Rosemond’s article was this line, “I went on to point out that many if not most of the problems they’re having with their kids — typical stuff, these days — are the result of treating their children as if they, their marriage, and their family exist because of the kids when it is, in fact, the other way around.”

Whats funny about that to me is the overwhelming support my small poll of friends and family show against that idea. My frend Jocelyn said her daughter came before her soon-to-be wife. My aunt, Andi, said the same for her newborn daughter, before listing her boyfriend, mother and sisters. An old room mate said it was her siblings and then her “dumbass dog” (my words, not hers.) as a runner up. To suggest that “There is no reasonable thing that gives your children that [important] status.” Seems to me his logic is flawed in it’s reason and I’ll note to the Masters Degree holder that my sample size is roughly four times as large.

I will give him this, his statements on parents providing for their children and allowing them warm homes, meals and schooling are definitely something that rings true. However, what do you tell the orphan, the child of a single parent, the children raised by their extended families or friends because their “most important” family members were unavailable to be there for them? Do they not deserve the same meals, clothing and schooling options? Do they not deserve the housing so generously offered to them? “And that, right there, is why we respected our parents, and that, right there is why we looked up to adults in general.” He says, trying desprately to cling to his own moral standards, showing us that he feels as if children could never respect or look up to adults without their parents being the “most important” family members. Let this line here sink in a moment, “Yes, Virginia, once upon a time in the United States of America, children were second-class citizens, to their advantage.” Their advantage. Rosemond, what advantage do second-class citizens have, regardless of their age? In what United States of America would you prefer there to be a class of citizen below you? Our country was founded not on, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that a few men are created equal,” but rather “all men are created equal”. If your parenting style relies on the fact that you treat others as beneath you, then you should be left questioning the moral ambiguity that you are instilling into your children.

My grandmother remarked that she felt her children and grand children were the most important because “without them, where would I be?”. If the millenial generation is the issue here, then how could it be that someone from the Baby Boomers would have the same parenting thought process? As far as, “Mom and Dad talked more — a lot more — with one another than they talked with you,” is concerned, my grandfather has thought of few other things then that train of thought, and he regrets so much of it that it keeps him up some nights. If you want to teach your children to be independent and self sufficient, thats one thing. To actively ignore and disrespect them is an entirely different affair.

“The most important thing about children is the need to prepare them properly for responsible citizenship,” is probably the thing I agree with the most in his rambling speech describing the horrors of entitlement while having his same nose upturned. To prepare children for responsible citizenship, we should be prepared to field hard questions, calculate risks, and enjoy our time together as human beings. Rosemond, for all that it might be worth, I am deeply sorry that your parents apparently treated you no better then livestock. I know the lessons my family has taught me, I know that my parents will answer the phone if I call, I know that my grandparents could always use an extra hand whether its on the farm or in a game of spades.

I know that the moms and dads I’ve met are trying their best with what they have, usually their kids don’t even know how hard or good they have it. To even think of raising a child as an object to be seen but never heard should be the first indication that you are not ready to be a parent, and perhaps, not ready to be an adult.

For the post sparking this response: https://www.facebook.com/mike.harms.752/posts/1259999247422587

Originally posted Mar 13 2017