The Kids are Alright

The kids are alright. The only threat to children, if one can even call it that, is too much fretting about threats. Most parents understand that there are two directions we can thrust our concern at as to what is harming kids--the immanent (actual) and the potential (possible). When a child is drowning--that is to say, when a child is facing an immanent threat to their state of being--it seems asinine to direct our attention instead toward the potential hazard of them scuffing their foot on a rock at the bottom of the pond. For instance, no one says when a child is drowning, "Save that child, he might scuff his foot on a rock underwater!" That would be misdirected priorities.

That is clearly the case when the immanent threat outweighs the potential threat. One might excuse such misdirected fretting if the immanent harm and potential threat are of equal magnitude of danger though (if that's possible), but not when the child is experiencing no threat outside the imagination of his onlooker. These are not equal terms though. It is clearly unconscionable to think the potential for harm is more deserving of our attention than direct endangerment in here and now. That is to say, the potential for harm does not always necessitate an impulsive response from the adult or peer, but on the other hand, that immanent harm always does. Direct endangerment of a child, be it physical abuse or otherwise, is nearly always more deserving of our attention than potential, social and culturally-based perceived "threats" we have to be reminded to worry about.

This is all very well and good to say, but sometimes it is understandable that deciphering immanent hazards to children from potential ones is difficult and subjective. What is an immanent harm and a potential threat? Ultimately, potential threats are just that, potential, in it either hasn't happened yet, is happening and may just not be causing any damage to the child, or is happening whether we know its effects or not. Chances are, if our children are being bombarded with so-called destructive media messages for example (a potential threat to them), beyond our knowledge as adults, our reserve for panic isn't going to do a bit of difference in assisting us to save them from harm's way--not as it would if the threat was immediate. Children are going to be receiving these messages invariably, whether we remain ignorant of them or are running around trying to sanitize all that their eyes rest on.

The issue is, if a potential harm is causing some so-called threat so minor that parents, even with all their so-lauded "intuition," don't even notice it without having to be reminded to pay attention to it via the news media, then it by no means deserves the shock and worry that we ought to be reserving for actual immanent harms that children, and adults, can find themselves in the middle of, where the effects can be anything but minor. For example, childhood obesity is a much more hazardous threat, and an immediate one in many cases, than the potential for that obese child to be abducted--but which do parents and the media fret over more? Which inspires more legislation, despite fewer deaths? Abduction is sexier than obesity, when it comes to the mainstream culture, evidently.

One of the main differences between potential threats and immanent harms is that specific steps can be taken to respond to immanent harms in a practical, reasoned way. You can take your time with it and find a solution to the issue (proper diet and exercise, in the case of obesity). With "potential hazards," there is only so much preparation one can do because half the damage is manufactured in our minds. The only steps we can take to reduce the potential damage are whatever our minds can dream up ("stranger danger" survival strategies, for instance). It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy though. We might say, "thanks to our best efforts to keep children indoors, we have reduced sun burn--and because it has worked, we can be proud of ourselves," even when other solutions could have been less restrictive (sunblock for instance). Now that example is a bit sarcastic, but it shows exactly the kind of misdirection and self-delusion that preventionists often engage in.

Children are either being harmed or they are not. If they are not suffering in some way emotionally or physically, then they are probably not being threatened by whatever our guilty personal demons can dream up to haunt their developmental trajectories. This is true whether it be violence in video games or satanism in daycares. Often is the question asked "what is X doing to our children", but I want to know, what is X doing to parents? Is your child X's concern or is she yours?

The issue isn't so much about protecting children's innocence, because they won't be innocent forever anyways, no matter what you do to protect that artificial edifice built around them. The issue is about making that inevitable transition from one point of relative ignorance to another go as smoothly as possible in light of learning and exposure. With a potential threat, one has time to sort out solutions in working around it, and children will grow up healthier for having learned how to do that. It's not X that harm's children, it's the lack of an authoritative adult or peer presence there to give X appropriate context. If you want healthy, strong, independent human beings from your children, show them what sex is. Rather than focus on tying up the so-called "profanity apologizers" like perpetrators, we should be focusing on the kid's perception of what the they have set into the world. There are those who take responsibility, and those who assign responsibility, and only the former parenting style produces a strong human being.

When you say that children don't have a right to be harmed by something (something minor that is), you're saying they don't have a right to learn about how to deal with minor threats. Children should be free to learn about anything and everything in the world in all his beauty and ugliness, so long as it is presented to them in a way their ability to reason about it will be able to work around. Most kids grow up alright despite a whole slew of threats both real and imaginary throughout their developing years. This is true for life in general. The only ones who don't probably had no role models, or had their rumps cushioned on every fall.