Mar 10 2008
Raising Infantiles
Children are insignificant, despite the parental instincts that tell us otherwise. Children are also and weak and incompetent, so they need protection. Except for their potential to become adults, a child has little significance. But if a child never matures, even their potential significance is never realized, and the result is something we call an Infantile.
The Infantile offers little contribution to others. Nobody really likes an Infantile for very long. An adult who acts like a child is a most loathsome and boring creature. Like leeches or children in a schoolyard, Infantiles seize and take and demand from others.
Emotionally, Infantiles offer very little love. Yes, they feel love, but like children they don’t understand what love really is, and they certainly have no idea how it works. Parents get confused about this as well, believing their child is loving when actually the child only reflects the parent’s love.
One of the most heartbreaking experiences of parenthood is to love a child who later does not love in return. Parents with young children can hardly conceive that one day this child may in fact hate them, and it’s a mystery how that could possibly happen, but it’s simple: it happens because the child never understood love in the first place!
Infantiles can be Punks and Sissies who come from loving Tribes (tribal homes), full of idealistic zeal and high expectations in life. Not surprisingly, they soon run afoul of the opposition and disappointment in the real world. First they try to demand the love and respect they want from their brave, new world away from home, but eventually they run back to their Tribe where their Love Demands have a more sympathetic audience.
Parental Concerns
Parents are broken-hearted by the suffering of their poor, abused Punks and Sissies, so they surrender to those Love Demands at home. Is it weakness on the parent’s part, or a God-given, natural desire?
As loving parents our hearts ache to provide shelter and placate our distressed children. We’ve been doing that since birth, after all, and how painful it is to give up those tender mercies, especially watching the child suffer…
But until we teach those kids thankfulness, their Love Demands are perpetuated. As caring parents we inadvertently set them up for more painful defeats. Punks and Sissies walk out of the house thinking what hot stuff they are. Without thankfulness, they learn to get love feelings by demanding them.
Instead, parents should stop their kids from demanding love. In a sense,
“Children should be afraid of their parents, to an extent - this is a sane view of the world. It is a scary world, where stronger people exist.” Ankenman-Interview
Parents can always rebuild their kid’s shattered lives, but only in a superficial and temporary way. What parents can’t do forever is build significance into their kid’s lives.
Christians know the secular culture is a threat for children. Earlier we studied how Tribal Christian homes become castles of retreat. While the Christian Tribe furiously builds and expands its small domain through career-paths, house-building, car-care, the kids’ education — and fighting a mountain of bills — sadly, the kids are fleeing the Christian Tribe in unprecedented numbers.
Tribal Christians are actually retreating straight into the enemy’s arms! Christian parents may denounce secular values but still miss the actual menace thriving in their living rooms: materialism. The unadvertised side-effect of a plush and materialistic culture is an emerging generation that never understands how to “act like men.” Maturity should bring competency, strength, and a welcome contribution to the family’s future, but the Millennial Generation emerging from prosperity is so immature that social scientists are pushing “the age of adulthood” into the mid-20′s and even older.1
Baby Boomer Infantiles
Consider the drift of modern history: Baby Boomers marked the first generation in America which could afford to cast aside the fear of poverty and the horrible wars known by their parents and ancestors. The Great Depression Generation knew poverty. The World War II Generation knew wartime sacrifice. The Baby Boomers knew neither, and they passed neither on to their progeny.
Boomers could afford the luxury to “Turn on, tune in, and drop out,” as Dr. Leery once declared. The mud-wrestling scenes from Woodstock depict an ocean of Infantiles wallowing in self-indulgence? Contrast the rich kids at Woodstock against the sacrificial character prevalent in the WWII generation:
“Each week I took my paycheck, bought the food I needed, and bought War Bonds with the rest. It was my duty. Everyone knew it and did the same.”
As a historian, Ken Burns produced his WWII documentary precisely because he knew the maturity and sacrifice so prevalent in that age was fading from memory.2
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Just a few of the many ways the WWII generation practiced unhesitating sacrifice. Would these posters work on the Millennial Generation? Pictures from the Library of Congress and PBS.org. |
|||
Naive Yuppie Parenting
Boomers fell prey to the poison of revolving the household around their kids. The American family is dominated by the fast-paced hustle and bustle of clubs, sports, arts and other lessons. All of these activities are splendid endeavors, but something is dreadfully wrong: where do the children learn sacrificial love for others? More to the point, how do children develop the character to love? Parents measure their kids’ progress by focusing on academics, but such achievements alone only teach kids they are the great princes and princesses they know themselves to be. 
The family faces greater threats than ever in history. The modern family is severed from its historical roots with its single-parent homes, multiple-marriage homes, same-sex-parent homes and other radical upheavals.
But most confusing is the change in roles for children in the family. Children once assumed a helpful role and were vital contributors with chores and the family welfare. Fights erupted and jealousies flared, but still the older kids by necessity cared for the younger ones. They cooked and fed and led someone other than themselves, and they expected the same from their siblings. Of course, families were larger and required greater cooperation. The 2.5 kids of the modern family pursue more personal priorities with little use for each other. Siblings are obstacles in the Yuppie household.
The child-centered Yuppie home is a novelty. Parents believe that enough loving attention and investment will launch children into adulthood, but the opposite is true. All the coddling and fussing produces Insignificant Infantiles who make unrealistic demands on the world around them:
Zaslow says that the coddling virus continues to eat away even when junior goes off to college. “I heard from several professors who said, a student will come up after class and say, ‘I don’t like my grade, and my mom wants to talk to you, here’s the phone,’” he says. “And the students think it’s like a service. ‘I deserve an A because I’m paying for it. What are you giving me a C for?’”
- Safer-Millennials
Infantiles are incapable of building their own significance, so they demand it from others. They learned this pattern at home. Without significant roles in the family, where do kids fit? All the income is generated somewhere outside the home. Kids are left idle and bored and turn to Gameboys or television. Some families keep the children busy with self-improvement activities in sports, arts, hobbies and academic achievement.
What emerges is the Millennials, and they are a pampered royalty in search of a kingdom to rule.
- From bibtex:Safer-Millenials: “Sociologists tell us most Americans believe adulthood begins at 26 or older and that having witnessed so many sacrifices by their parents to achieve middle class security has had a huge impact. [⇑]
- Burns-Civic Center speech in Cleveland. [⇑]
