by larry gilman » June 30th, 2007, 3:21 pm
Karen,
You’re right. Having children, or just taking the children of the world seriously, whether one is a parent or not, does a couple of things. First, it strips away (hopefully) the merely selfish or wishful or stupidly individualistic elements of our youthful idealism. One is less likely to mouth quasi-Stalinist slogans about breaking eggs to make omelettes---the indivisibility of means and ends becomes as concrete as the non-negotiably precious, specific, individual children who are counting on us. Like, whups, I can’t get drunk and play Risk tonight with my buds and rant obscenely about George Bush till 1 AM, there are little shirts to wash and a chicken carcass to boil. And a revolutionary Utopia that can only be reached by throwing a bunch of little kids into the hell of social breakdown is not one I'm going to support.
And one does realize (what I think you’re partly referring to) that children need protection from exploitative culture, sexual and otherwise. I don’t see this as a left-right divergence: I’m left, hard left, I sing Pete Seeger songs in the shower, my priest is as gay as a $3 bill, but it distresses me to see the sexualized magazine covers parked at kid level by the checkout line. But it’s the “free market”, more than the free speech, I think, that is how people get at kids, stuff their bodies full of junk food and their minds full of lies and their souls full of expensive discontents . . . So I don’t find my concern for children, which is intense, driving me rightward at all. Also, having kids can be a left-activating experience for many people. I see this too. They realize that their responsibilities may go beyond supplying their 8-yr-old with a cell phone and riding lessons: how about a clean world, a sustainable world, a just world, all those leftie dreams? As opposed to merely providing a well-appointed playroom on the Titanic.
Here’s a dark thought: having children gives the Establishment hostages. Once kids are on the scene, if we don’t prosper within the established system, our children will suffer insecurity or hardship. If we go to jail for protesting, say, or for war-tax resistance, if we lose our jobs for whistleblowing, if we get in any kind of trouble, our kids are in trouble too. And that threatens to rip our hearts in half. So: don’t get in trouble. Don’t rock the boat. We know this without being told by somebody in a dark suit with opaque shades and an earbud monitor. And as we do, so we tend to believe, eventually.
Not that any of this is against having kids. Kids make the world new. It’s just that, I think, this is one way oppressive systems maintain themselves. When we’re no longer heart-whole, we’re easier to manipulate because we’re easier to threaten---usually implicitly.
Thanks for good remarks,
Larry