Post: #1

The car seat is a metaphor for America’s treatment of its children. The parents have to take their child somewhere, invariably a place that they, not the kid, have chosen. They stuff him into the car. Even being in the car means that he is totally under the control of the adults; he has no influence and makes no difference. But – they strap him in. Wrap him and so he can’t wiggle around like a normal kid. The idea is to keep his body at an attitude where he will be perfectly safe in the unlikely event of an accident. So, if an accident happens once in every million outings, the kid spends the other 999,999 in a straitjacket, being driven someplace he doesn’t want to go by people who are fighting traffic and swearing and speeding a bit in order to get them there.

This is not a recipe for raising a healthy child.  And car seats are only the beginning.

There are child guards at the head of the stairs, to keep the little ones out of parts of the house where they don’t belong. There are child locks on kitchen cabinets. Kids are subject to child harnesses — leashed like dogs to keep them from getting hurt. There’s a message in all this.  Kids are irresponsible and that life is fraught with dangers from which they must be protected. Of course there is some truth to this. But we overdo it.

How has humanity survived until now?

It’s the same once children get outside. If and when a kid gets to walk on the street, he must invariably be accompanied by an adult. Poor neighborhoods are the exception. The kids just play on the street and they don’t seem to get into a whole lot of trouble. In Nicaragua, all the kids play together. There is not much traffic and everybody knows each other. They don’t worry about child molesters. The kids generally grow up to be healthy, sane and productive – Nicaraguans. You may not want your kid to be to become a Nicaraguan, but you have to respect that they are psychologically normal.

America has seen the recent advent of a notion called Free Range Parenting, the idea of letting kids do things independently.  Schools, government and society are working vigorously to squelch it.  A Maryland family got arrested for letting two kids, 6 and 10, walk home from a park by themselves.  The authorities insist on exercising authority!  How things have changed.  One of my grandmothers told me how in the 1890s she and my great aunt rode the horse-drawn tramway to Wall Street from their house in midtown Manhattan.  The coachmen all knew the sisters – and nothing went wrong.  My St. Louis grandmother would cross the Mississippi River on a train trestle, hanging on below the tracks whenever a train came by.

My father lived in a tent with his with his parents as my grandfather worked on the section of the Los Angeles aqueduct passing through the Tehachapi Mountains. He would sit on a dry hillside babysat by his dog. In my own youth, I started walking six blocks to kindergarten, across one busy street, when I was four.  At seven years we kids had the run of the hills behind our house after school. Our parents never knew where we were.  There were dangers – abandoned wells, quarries, and lumber stacks that might collapse. Joan Didion does a great job of describing a California childhood.  Somehow we had sense enough not to get hurt.

Cossetted and cocooned

For my own millennial children it was a different story. Our family lived near a lovely stretch of the Potomac River full of turtles, frogs, snakes and fish that any child should have been keen to investigate and pester. However, dynamite could not get them out of their air-conditioned cocoon.  The kids absolutely were not interested. Like all kids in the neighborhood, they were bound to the television.

America’s amusements have become financialized in the name of reducing risk.  My kids learned to swim under close supervision in the neighborhood pool.  Lady Bird Johnson had made cleaning up the Potomac River one of her projects as First Lady.  She succeeded – north of Washington it is a beautiful, clean, free-flowing stream.  But swimming remains forbidden.  My government-socialized kids never followed their outlaw father into the water, despite assurances that it was clean and cool as well as lovely.

A misplaced sense of danger

Kids of eight in Kyiv take public buses to school.  They are not whatsoever afraid of strangers.  They are delighted to take advantage of a short bus ride to practice their English with my five year old son and me.  Taking the bus might be more dangerous than being ferried in a car seat — one can’t tell — but it is a pleasure to witness the feeling of empowerment and mastery they develop being in charge of their own lives.

In La France Orange Mecanique Philippe Obertone offers another example of a misplaced sense of danger. Highway deaths fall every year in both the United States and Europe. Nevertheless, police expend ever greater amounts of money and restrict civil liberties through harsh enforcement measures in order to protect this statistic. Meanwhile, violent crime in France’s Muslim no go zones is skyrocketing. It is much easier to terrorize the middle class than rowdy immigrants who don’t respect the namby-pamby police and don’t want to be suppressed. That’s what we do with our children. We measure the fact that car seats make them safer, but can’t count the cost of their failing to develop.

Sex education

Is government sex education causing the falling birth rate among white children? It would follow the general rule that if you want an enterprise to fail, give it to the government. There is no surer way to take the fun out of sex, and keep it from accomplishing its intended objective, than to put the government in charge of teaching it.

Back in the bad old days we learned about these things quite naturally. Our household pets were not spayed. We watched them go about making puppies and kittens, which we would see being born on towels spread out in the kitchen. Our own sex education was handled in a process as old as mankind, starting with excited, exaggerated and erroneous descriptions by the older children. With a bit of well-directed input from our parents, everybody eventually figured it out. We had free time and free spaces to play doctor, which gave us a pretty good idea of the geography of the opposite sex.  Enticing the girls to play the game also gave us some notion of female sensibilities and appetite for risk.

Gardeners and carpenters

The Gardener and the Carpenter is the wonderfully metaphorical title of a book by Alison Gopnik.  Her premise is that a parent cannot shape a child the same way a carpenter shapes a chair. The process cannot be totally controlled. Instead, more like a gardener, the parent has to provide a nurturing environment, give support when necessary, and pray that it comes out well. A gardener must accept risk: unexpected frost, uninvited slugs and deer that jump the garden fence. In a sense, the vegetables will grow as they will, some doing spectacularly and others failing for no obvious reason. We have to give our kids the freedom to grow, which includes the freedom to make mistakes and sometimes suffered damage. When we don’t do it — and America is headed this direction — we raise a crop of hothouse flowers without the resources or vigor to survive on their own.  This degradation of our vitality is a process that simply cannot go on forever.

Name that generation

I hope I am not too darkly prophetic in choosing a name other than Generation Z for my young son’s peers.  The labels are generally: Greatest Generation (through 1924), Silent Generation (through 1945), Boomers (through 1964), Gen X (1982), Gen Y or Millennials (2004).  We see the beginning of the end of the postwar liberal idyll, as the middle class is increasingly stultified, hungry, and unemployed.  Nationalist, populist movements are coming to the fore on both sides of the Atlantic. There is a sense of foreboding, ominous minor-key music playing in our background as we wait for the coming economic collapse.  Therefore I would name the generation to which my five-year-old belongs generation Phoenix, because they will surely have to rise from the ashes of the collapse of system that smothered humanity with restraints in exchange for a false promise of security.

Conclusion

Throwing off the shackles of car seats may be too much to ask.  They are required by law.  The premise to examine is whether the kids have to be driven at all. Can’t they get to school by foot, or at least school bus? Why are you sending them to public schools instead of homeschooling them? Do they have to be freighted every day to some lesson or another—tae kwon do, swimming, piano, dance – for which they may express no particular enthusiasm? In the final analysis, can’t you simply let kids be kids the way their great grandparents were? It was not called the Greatest Generation for nothing, and they did not earn that title without taking risks. Let your kids live a little! Maybe they will grow up to be real adults.

Read More: Gaia Democratic School Takes Children On Field Trip To Porn Shop

Posted on Thu, 05 Jan 2017 01:00:00 +0000 at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ReturnOfK...ed-society
Comments: http://www.returnofkings.com/111601/chil...ty#respond

Post: #2

You guys are really reaching. What's wrong with a car seat for your kids?

Post: #3

Yeah Fortis right on this is a pretty dumb way to make a point. Car seats are about physics not about restricting development of children.

OP/writer you lose the entire effectiveness of your other points which may or may not be valid when you say something as utterly moronic as criticizing car seats as shackles.

Go start your hippie camp with babies crawling all over the place, but don't write irresponsible ignorant crap that some young parent might try in an effort to be cool. ROK editors must be asleep at the wheel tonight of this car speeding along with the unrestrained babies in the back seat. No matter what other point there may be, or even if you mean it as a metaphor, when you ram that car into something else and it suddenly decelerates, the pussified babies don't decelerate until they hit a tree trunk or a wall outside of the crash scene.

You see, car seats, seat belts for adults, airbags and even crumple zones designed into cars are all about DECELERATION. Your metaphor FAILS.

On second thought moronic isn't dumb enough to describe this article.

Post: #4

(01-04-2017 08:26 PM)Fortis Wrote:  You guys are really reaching. VWhat's wrong with a car seat for your kids?

Nothing wrong with them in themselves but I've observed the point I think the article is trying to make.

The law where I am is that every child had to ride in approved child safety seat until the age of 7. The vast majority wouldn't drive without one when their kid is 1, but by the time they're 5 or 6, they're more trouble than they're worth. A parents judgment about the safety of their own children doesn't matter - Failure to comply will result in a several hundred dollar fine. Good for the polices consolidated revenue fund, a pain in the arse for everyone else.

It doesn't sound like much an annoyance until you want to put more than a family of 4 into a 5 seater "family" car. I recently took my son and two of his friends out, and it was a fuckload more trouble than it needed to be. For starters, their parents had to bring their own car seats, and then I had to put 3 of them across the back seat. Problem is, they barely fit, and once they're all I place, they can't access the seatbelt buckles. It took 5 minutes just getting them in and out of the car, and made the journey itself more uncomfortable for all of them. it makes the old family car inadequate for most families, making a 7 seater almost a necessity. A far cry from my own childhood, spent piling people into the back of a station wagon, or riding around in the back of a ute. Good for auto makers, a pain in the arse for everyone else.

I can however count myself lucky that my wife isn't as neurotic as one of her friends, who wouldn't have allowed them to just chuck in a car seat. No, she gets them "professionally installed" in her car - a 2 minute job of clicking a hook into place and adjusting a strap she outsources to someone at ( I think)$40 a pop "just in case". Just in case what? Just in case you're a fucking retard. Consider the associated industries of training and certification for this bozo to become a "professional" child seat installer and it becomes apparent there are a lot of leeches making a lot of money off this, by exploiting the protective instinct. Good for them, a pain in the arse for everyone else.

Post: #5

^ This guy gets it.

Post: #6

I agree with the overall tone of the article, but the car seat metaphor is dumb as fuck.
No way I am ever driving my kid around without one until he/she can use the seat belt properly.

There is a great initiative in some developed countries (I think it was Denmark but can't remember well) where they made playgrounds for children on former dump sites. The whole idea is that on these playgrounds, the kids can actually get hurt and that teaches them a lot. On all the rubberized and pussified playgrounds in the cities nowadays, it's harder to get hurt so kids grow up without a realistic fear or better to say understanding of the real world dangers. And then they get badly hurt as adults.

Post: #7

Agreed with Fortis.

I've had an idea for an article (at least a title) that would be similar to this one but more apt I think:

Alarm systems are blue pill.

If you have an alarm system in your home, and no gun, you are blue pill. I say this because you are relying on ""the system"" to protect you when someone is ALREADY BREAKING INTO YOUR HOUSE.

That's retarded.

If someone is unhinged enough to B&E into your abode, there is more than a good chance that they are THERE TO KILL YOU. Do you really think some blaring noise and the indication that the cops are "on their way" is going to cause said person to turn tail and run? Maybe. Maybe not. But is that a chance you are willing to take? Why not take matters into your own hands and protect yourself with a firearm, instead of believing in the illusion of safety provided by "the state"?

Post: #8

^
that would be a better article

Post: #9

So dude. I was in the emergent care field for a while. Car seats simply save kids from disfigurement and death. Are some people
Idiots about them? Sure.

Post: #10

(01-07-2017 03:12 PM)Rhyme or Reason Wrote:  Agreed with Fortis.

I've had an idea for an article (at least a title) that would be similar to this one but more apt I think:

Alarm systems are blue pill.

If you have an alarm system in your home, and no gun, you are blue pill. I say this because you are relying on ""the system"" to protect you when someone is ALREADY BREAKING INTO YOUR HOUSE.

That's retarded.

If someone is unhinged enough to B&E into your abode, there is more than a good chance that they are THERE TO KILL YOU. Do you really think some blaring noise and the indication that the cops are "on their way" is going to cause said person to turn tail and run? Maybe. Maybe not. But is that a chance you are willing to take? Why not take matters into your own hands and protect yourself with a firearm, instead of believing in the illusion of safety provided by "the state"?

Not that simple. There is a persuasive effect in alarm systems. The "system" in itself is not blue pill at all, and I can show by a real life example. My previous car was intruded four times in the space of two years, the first time with high material loss, then I learned my lesson and never left any value inside of it, nonetheless had to repair four times the hole they made in the drivers door to open the lock. My current car has alarm system, and in the space of 3 years was never intruded...

Post: #11

Yeah and while we're at it, what's with those plastic electrical outlet protectors? If some little f'er wants to jam something into an outlet and give himself a nice jolt, who are we to hinder his exploration. It's just going to make him a big pussy. And kiddie pools? Sink or swim little buddy. Just toss them into the deep end and let's see what happens. (yes I understand some people this may have happened too. )
Seriously OP, the rest of what you wrote may have been the greatest article in the history of mankind. However, after the title and that opening I read, I skimmed to see how long the rest of the article was and just said "screw it, not gonna waste my time."

quoting OP "There’s a message in all this. Kids are irresponsible and that life is fraught with dangers from which they must be protected. Of course there is some truth to this. But we overdo it"

Yes kids are irresponsible. It's a part of what makes them kids. Yes life is fraught with dangers from what they must be protected. That's why we need locks on kitchen cabinets with bleach etc. inside it, we need guards on top of stairs so little ones don't take a header down a flight of stairs, and it's why we need carseats so that we don't watch them get imbedded within the windshield. If you had a specific age group in mind in regards to how society overdoes this protection, you never made that clear. You lumped all ages together under "children." The reader will then make their own deductions about what you mean. Thus, the reaction to your article will not likely go in the direction that you hoped for.

Post: #12

(01-07-2017 03:12 PM)Rhyme or Reason Wrote:  Agreed with Fortis.

I've had an idea for an article (at least a title) that would be similar to this one but more apt I think:

Alarm systems are blue pill.

If you have an alarm system in your home, and no gun, you are blue pill. I say this because you are relying on ""the system"" to protect you when someone is ALREADY BREAKING INTO YOUR HOUSE.

That's retarded.

If someone is unhinged enough to B&E into your abode, there is more than a good chance that they are THERE TO KILL YOU. Do you really think some blaring noise and the indication that the cops are "on their way" is going to cause said person to turn tail and run? Maybe. Maybe not. But is that a chance you are willing to take? Why not take matters into your own hands and protect yourself with a firearm, instead of believing in the illusion of safety provided by "the state"?

I can see your point that a home alarm system shouldn't be the end all be all of your security. But even then, it's not entirely blue pill since it is a valid deterrent I think to a would be intruder. If there are three houses in a row A B and C. House A has a home alarm and B and C do not. I'm sure a would be intruder would make houses B and C their initial targets before looking at house A.

Post: #13

Talking about all those kids riding bike with helmet on would have been a better point to OP article