Emasculating our children in the name of safety.

[Ponce]

I made the second pragraph in bold letters because that's the way that I remember my life back in Cuba where at eight years old I would get on the train to go all the way to the capital city and from the train station a bus to go to my private school........no one would think anything of it.
================================================== ======


Emasculating our children in the name of safety.

I have been thinking about children and how far we have come in recent years. Once upon a time, children were expected to become adults, and spent their childhood training for adulthood. Now, children are expected to be children and continue to be children well into what would traditionally be considered adulthood. What have we done to our children? Are we raising them to be children or productive, functioning members of adult society? I think the unfortunate answer is obvious. We are raising them to be full grown children, unable to make mature decisions, take adult responsibility or lead future generations into the great unknown. And society at large is helping us. "They" expect children to be helpless, incapable and defenseless. "They" think they know better how to raise our children than we do. "They" are emasculating their children and trying to do the same to mine.

When my mom was a little girl, she lived in West Seattle. By the time she was five, she was making breakfast for her family (mother, father, sister and two brothers) including making bacon in the broiler and frying eggs. She also rode the public bus downtown Seattle to meet her Grandmother at The Bon Marche for an afternoon lunch and nobody thought twice. My dad, having grown up in the then wild spaces of Vashon Island was hunting by himself by age ten (yes, he actually used a real gun!). When my husband was five, he walked himself to school about 1/2 a mile away after having gotten himself ready and out the door (his mother was a widow and worked - so she was away from home in the mornings). When he was seven he was riding the bus to the shopping mall where he would spend the day looking around and playing in the park. This was in Bellevue, Washington, - no small town, but rather a bustling metropolis. When I was a child, I rode my Honda Trail 50 two miles on dirt roads to go swimming in the swimming hole. I was eight.

And you can look back even further than a couple of generations. David (as in King David of the Old Testament) killed Goliath at about age 17 and had killed lions and bears threatening his father's flock when he was much younger than that. Joan of Arc went into battle when she was 15 and in 237 BC, 10 year-old Hannibal (the Carthagian) said to his father before he left to the war in Spain, "I want to go with you". Hamilcar, Hannibal's father, without a word, took the child with him to Spain and went to battle! Even Alexander the Great, although 20 when he took the throne, had obviously not been coddled as a child, but rather had been raised to be a man.

Now, we have children who must be buckled in car seats until they are 13, whose food has to be cut up for them until they are 10 and who can't carry a pocket knife because they are "unsafe". What are we thinking? Have our children somehow lost brain capacity over the last few hundred years - or is it the adults who no longer understand that our children require challenges, hard work and a little responsibility in order to become viable adults.

Well, I for one do not believe our children are any less intelligent than their predecessors. I think that we as a society have emasculated our young men and dumbed down our young ladies. I think our children are every bit as capable as David when he slew Goliath and Hannibal when he lead his vast armies. I think we need to train them to be competent and expect them to be capable. I think we need to teach them to do the "dangerous" things (Hand Grenade uses the chainsaw and Miss Calamity hunts - with a real rifle) and then let them do them. I think we ought to teach them to stand up against injustice and live lives of character when they are young so they can battle injustice and live lives of character when they are older. I think we need to stop coddling and start expecting and then - watch out! We will have a generation of exceptional leaders - not another generation of wimpy, spineless, emasculated drones.

http://paratusfamilia.blogspot.com/search/label/Alexander%20the%20Great

First post of the day...............good snowy morning, afternoon, to one and all.

[Ash_Williams]

When I was a kid we didn't have many toys or supervision, so we just threw rocks at each other. No one ever got hurt. I mean except for the kids that got hit.

[oldmansmith]

I agree Ponce, when i went to Kindergarten (age 4) I told my mom that she couldn't come to the bus stop with me. Now I see high school students waiting in their parents cars for the bus!

When I was 13, my neighbor (also 13) and I hiked over 100 miles on the Appalachian Trail in Maine, making camp, carrying everything, cooking our own meals, planning our days.

Now the parents of that 13 year old would be reported to DSS.

[mick silver]

when i was 13 i had my own lawn mowing sevice . then i worked part time at a friend dad garge . and i play out side just as hard as i worked . now you never see a kid outside .

[gunDriller]

i think kids are a little bit like baby chickens.

baby chickens spend about 1/3 of their time eating, 1/3 of their time running around, and 1/3 of their time resting communally.

i have 3 baby Rhode Island Reds and what one of them will do is grab a piece of newspaper in her beak, and the others will chase her around maniacally for 5 minutes. then another one will get the piece of newspaper, and the others will chase it around. if there goal really is to obtain a piece of newspaper, all they have to do is look down, they are standing on newspaper and their are dozens of tufts of newspaper from their previous play sessions.

but they want the tuft of newspaper du jour for one reason - because the other chicken has it. i'm not saying that makes any sense, but baby chickens are not known for their IQ.

HOWEVER - what they are doing while they are running around is putting meat on their bones, and also learning to fight and defend themselves.

somehow this reminds me of the stupid things that human children do.

when i was a kid we always had basically infinite forest to play in. to a 6 year old, 10 acres of swamp is infinite. to a 15 year old, 80 square miles of forest is infinite.

compared to sitting inside playing video games ... there's no comparison.

[Cobalt]

The neighbors 13 year old isn't even expected to grab the garbage cans and bring them back to the house as he walks past them, he does sometimes manage to kick them down in the ditch so his Mom can retrieve them up the hill when she gets home, as far as I can tell he has No responsibilities, his Mom mows the lawn as he sits on his skateboard talking on his cellphone.

None of the crap I see now a days would even fly back when I was a kid.


At 10 I had a lawn mowing business along with a paper route with 136 customers, I walked to school and rode my bike everywhere within 20 miles.

I was taught gun safety from the time that I could walk and at 13 I was allowed to hunt on my own and I never abused that privilege because I not only worked to hard to obtain it but it proved that I was trusted with responsibilities of a man

[bellevuebully]

Childhood memories:

Knives
Matches
BB Guns
Traintracks
Airborn bicycles
Bushfires
Rapids
Mine Quarries

Still here.

[skid]

My kids ride their bikes without a helmet sometimes, they don't sit in their car seats sometimes, they ride their dirt bikes all over (sometimes doubling), they can shoot, plus they have chores, music lessons, sports, and are expected to do well in school and do come home with good report cards. I still need to give them a kick in the ass every now and then...

[MAGNES]

We were walking ourselves to school age 5 , that was the 70's .

My brother ran off to the mall age 5, gone all day, got a beating first time, lol .

We did some crazy stuff at a young age, got hurt,
I wouldn't want my kids doing what we did.

Today kids are safe with their electronics. The cities are full of fat kids with no skills.

[nunaem]

Masculine parenting is gone. The feminine role is so utterly dominating parenting that fathers(if there is one) have taken the role of redundant mothers. Fathers are completely superfluous in today's society.

[bellevuebully]

Masculine parenting is gone. The feminine role is so utterly dominating parenting that fathers(if there is one) have taken the role of redundant mothers. Fathers are completely superfluous in today's society.


Not entirely true, not in my household anyway. But compared to the past, you might as well say it is.

What does this trend say to you?

[Antonio]

One of my all-time favorite articles:

http://www.rense.com/general74/dss.htm

Then And Now
12-8-6


Scenario - Jack pulls into school parking lot with rifle in gun rack.

1953 - Vice Principal comes over, takes a look at Jack's rifle, goes to his car and gets his to show Jack.

2006 - School goes into lockdown, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.


Scenario - Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school.

1953 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up best friends. Nobody goes to jail, nobody arrested, nobody expelled.

2006 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.


Scenario - Robbie won't be still in class, disrupts other students.

1953 - Robbie sent to office and given a good paddling by Principal. Sits still in class.

2006 - Robbie given huge doses of Ritalin and/or Prozac. Becomes a zombie. Almost

commits suicide. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.


Scenario - Billy breaks a window in his father's car and his Dad gives him a whipping.

1953 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.

2006 - Billy's Dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang. Billy's sister is told by state psychologist that she remembers being abused herself and their Dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has affair with psychologist.

Scenario - Mark gets a headache and takes some headache medicine to school.

1953 - Mark shares headache medicine with Principal who has a headache also.

2006 - Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations. Car searched for drugs and weapons.


Scenario: Mary turns up pregnant.

1953 - 5 High School Boys leave town. Mary does her senior year at a special school for expectant mothers.

2006 - Middle School Counselor calls Planned Parenthood, who notifies the ACLU. Mary is driven to the next state over and gets an abortion without her parent's consent or knowledge. Mary given condoms and told to be more careful next time.


Scenario - Pedro fails high school English.

1953 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.

2006 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state democratic party. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English banned from core curriculum. Pedro given diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he can't speak English.


Scenario: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed.

1953 - Ants die.

2006 - BATF, Homeland Security, FBI called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from home, computers confiscated, Johnny's Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.


Scenario - Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary, hugs him to comfort him.

1953 - In a short time Johnny feels better and goes on playing.

2006 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison.

[nunaem]

Masculine parenting is gone. The feminine role is so utterly dominating parenting that fathers(if there is one) have taken the role of redundant mothers. Fathers are completely superfluous in today's society.


Not entirely true, not in my household anyway. But compared to the past, you might as well say it is.

What does this trend say to you?

It's bad, really bad.

With paternity fading into irrelevance paternal investment in the family unit is threatened, and this is the very foundation of advanced society. You only need to look at societies where paternity is irrelevant/nonexistent, namely African societies, to see what the future may hold.

Agrippa sums it up nicely in another thread (http://gold-silver.us/forum/general-discussion/the-garbage-generation-the-female-headed-family/):



Marriage is largely a social construct. Once this is in place, "Fatherhood" in the sense used in the OP becomes possible: as fathers now know who their children are. This makes male investment in the support of their children possible; which is to say that it makes male investment in children a winning evolutionary strategy rather than a losing one.

With a male now having a secured mate that he needs to support, a lot of his energy that used to be spent competing with other males for access to females can now be expended instead building capital to help secure his posterity.

Our entire civilization is built, ultimately, upon the cornerstone of marriage. Undermining that institution will eventually result in the loss of everything we hold dear. We will indeed return to life like it was on the grasslands of Africa: brutish, ugly and short....

[Mouse]

The stuff we did when we were kids:

Climbing trees up to 40 or 50 feet. Building poorly engineered structures. Falling out of those trees.
Had a 22 when I was 8. Was responsible not to hurt anything I didn't mean to hurt and had to clean it.
Walked to school a half mile in the rockies and had to traverse a 20 ft. creek skipping on rocks. It was faster than the bus.
We played football at 7 years old and the drills included spearing competitors with your helmet
Built BMX bicycles out of whatever we could get and built trails with very large jumps. Tabletops and no helmets.
Raced bicycles on dirt courses competitively.
Went on the bus every Saturday in winter all by myself to go skiing some 60 miles away. Always came home.
Made pipe bombs for fun. Blew up stuff.
Burned anthills for fun.
Shot prairie dogs with larger than 22 caliber when friends dad wasn't home

it goes on and on.

That makes it to about age 12. Then the real fun shit started :)

[gunDriller]

At 10 I had a lawn mowing business along with a paper route with 136 customers, I walked to school and rode my bike everywhere within 20 miles.

sounds just like me. had the paper route when i was about 12, did garden & lawn work when i was a teenager.

[SLV^GLD]

Let me get this straight, we all grew up this way, right?
So, WTF?
Are we not allowing our children the same freedoms? Do our children not have other children to do the same things with? Are we parents terrified of the fallout of allowing these freedoms? Or are we not actually producing children?

I am guilty of not producing children at the moment but if I do they by god will get raised like I did.

[7th trump]

i think kids are a little bit like baby chickens.

baby chickens spend about 1/3 of their time eating, 1/3 of their time running around, and 1/3 of their time resting communally.

i have 3 baby Rhode Island Reds and what one of them will do is grab a piece of newspaper in her beak, and the others will chase her around maniacally for 5 minutes. then another one will get the piece of newspaper, and the others will chase it around. if there goal really is to obtain a piece of newspaper, all they have to do is look down, they are standing on newspaper and their are dozens of tufts of newspaper from their previous play sessions.

but they want the tuft of newspaper du jour for one reason - because the other chicken has it. i'm not saying that makes any sense, but baby chickens are not known for their IQ.

HOWEVER - what they are doing while they are running around is putting meat on their bones, and also learning to fight and defend themselves.

somehow this reminds me of the stupid things that human children do.

when i was a kid we always had basically infinite forest to play in. to a 6 year old, 10 acres of swamp is infinite. to a 15 year old, 80 square miles of forest is infinite.

compared to sitting inside playing video games ... there's no comparison.

No the other chickens want it because they think its food. Doesnt matter if theres more paper on the floor. They just think its food because its in the mouth of another chicken.

[madfranks]

By the time she was five, she was making breakfast for her family (mother, father, sister and two brothers) including making bacon in the broiler and frying eggs. She also rode the public bus downtown Seattle to meet her Grandmother at The Bon Marche for an afternoon lunch and nobody thought twice.


Really? A five year old girl taking a bus downtown by herself? Even in the safest city in the world, I wouldn't think that a five year old would have the capacity to take a bus downtown by themselves.

[po boy]

At 10 I had a lawn mowing business along with a paper route with 136 customers, I walked to school and rode my bike everywhere within 20 miles.

sounds just like me. had the paper route when i was about 12, did garden & lawn work when i was a teenager.

I grew up as a latch key kid and at 7 it was my job when I got home from school to get the fire going.
Used the ole man's table saw without permission to build a dog house while he was at work and still have all my digits.
Played with yard darts, thew them straight up to see who could throw them higher, lost a few to the sun.whew! lol
I used to go on ten mile bike rides and not come home till dark and no one worried.
Fights with friends siblings were not uncommon and no parents complained.
No need to knock at friends homes just come in. Got a friends snowmobile running that had not ran in years, even his dad could not do it.
First shot gun at age 10,could shoot a 44 mag better than a 22 pistol.First and last scope cut from a .243 at 8.
Shooting range had no "line cold" and wasn't supervised.
I started cutting grass at 10 with borrowed lawn mowed after one month bought and old snapper from and old guy across the street, had the engine rebuilt.
I made business cards by hand and half ass ran it till 14 or 15 and would average 75-150 wk.
Most of which was spend on model rockets, bowling ,dirt bikes, cassettes,fishing gear or all the stuff I wanted but parents would not buy.
My best friend's dad at the time used to give me pointers as he was in the business and I was always welcome to swim in their pool whenever I wanted even if they weren't home.
Now days a kid would need a workers comp exemption, liability ins, county license, file for fictions name and file taxes.
Good times and even better memories. I feel bad for kids these days they are getting screwed/programed.

Ash: the rock throwing story made me laugh,we had dirt clods. ;D

[SLV^GLD]

Ash: the rock throwing story made me laugh,we had dirt clods. ;D
Yeah, so did we. Unwritten rule was you didn't chuck one you KNEW had a rock in it but if it turned out it did then them's the breaks. Seems a bunch of them did and KNOWing was really a matter of judging if the rock in there was enough to actually give away the fact you knew.

[dys]

From Silent Weapons for quiet wars:


ENFORCEMENT

FACTOR I

As in every social system approach, stability is achieved only by understanding and accounting for human nature (action/reaction patterns). A failure to do so can be, and usually is, disastrous. As in other human social schemes, one for or another of intimidation (or incentive) is essential to the success of the draft. Physical principles of action and reaction must be applied to both internal and external sub-systems. To secure the draft, individual brainwashing/programming and both the family unit and the peer group must be engaged and brought under control.

FACTOR II FATHER

The man of the household must be house-broken to ensure that junior will grow up with the right social training and attitudes. The advertising media, etc., are engaged to see to it that father-to-be is pussy-whipped before or by the time he is married. He is taught that he either conforms to the social notch out for him or his sex life will be hobbled and his tender companionship will be zero. He is made to see that women demand security more than logical, principled, or honorable behavior. By the time his son must go to war, father (with jelly for a back bone) will slam a gun into junior's hand before father will risk the censure of his peers, or make a hypocrite of himself by crossing the investment he has in his own personal opinion or self-esteem. Junior will go to war or father will be embarrassed. So junior will go to war, the true purpose of the war notwithstanding.

FACTOR III MOTHER

The female element of human society is ruled by emotion first and logic second. In the battle between logic and imagination, imagination always wins, fantasy prevails, maternal instinct dominates so that the child comes first and the future comes second. A woman with a newborn baby is too starry-eyed to see a wealthy man's cannon fodder or a cheap source of slave labor. A woman must, however, be conditioned to accept the transition to "reality" when it comes, or sooner.

As the transition becomes more difficult to manage, the family unit must be carefully disintegrated, and state controlled public education and state operated child care centers must become more common and legally enforced so as to begin the detachment of the child from the mother and the father at an earlier age. Inoculation of behavioral drugs can speed the transition for the child (mandatory). CAUTION: A woman's impulsive anger can override her fear. An irate woman's power must never be underestimated, and her power over a pussy-whipped husband must likewise never be underestimated. It got women the vote in 1920.

FACTOR IV JUNIOR

The emotional pressure for self-preservation during time of war and the self-serving attitude of the common herd that have an option to avoid the battlefield -- if junior can be persuaded to go -- is all of the pressure finally necessary to propel Johnny off to war. Their quiet black mailings of him are the threats: "No sacrifice, no friends; no glory, no girlfriends."

FACTOR V SISTER

And what about junior's sister? She is given all the good things of life by her father, and taught to expect the same from her future husband regardless of the price.

FACTOR VI CATTLE

Those who will not use their brains are not better off than those who have no brains, and so this mindless school of jellyfish, father, mother, son, and daughter, become useful beasts of burden or trainers of the same.

dys