Darn Kids!

Not a whole heck of a lot has happened since last night—although I did manage to secure a second pillow from the apartment agency. Exciting!—so I think I'll just write about a few of those things I mentioned were on my mind. And I'm going to pretty much skip Ricci. You've all read it or at least read about it, and your analysis is probably as good as mine. It does make me think, however, that the forced symmetry of our laws (you can't discriminate based on race, period, whether you're an all-white group discriminating against blacks or a mixed-race group discriminating against whites) seems to me to be contrary to the whole reason race is a strict-scrutiny category in the first place. Not that I have a better suggestion.

Now, please, allow me to get riled up. Judith Warner had a column the other day about how people freely and openly criticize mothers. At one point she tells a story about how she snapped at her kid one time, and another mother said, "Julia, I love you, and if your mom ever doesn’t feel like bringing you home, you can just come home with me." Warner hopes that after this story, we are "all now gasping and gnashing [our] teeth, rending [our] garments and gesticulating." I read this while I was wearing my work clothes, so there was no garment rending, but I was pretty close. And Warner thinks this is less about other people loving the children and more about other people hating on the moms. I think the two are inextricably intertwined in our society in an absolutely awful way. We are crazily, irrationally protective of children. I can't really write about this without devolving into a rant, so, well, prepare for the inevitable devolution.

Adults are people, too. Yes, children are especially vulnerable people, and I think we need to protect them in a way that's proportional to their vulnerability. They're too small to physically defend themselves, too immature to emotionally defend themselves, and they get very disturbed by things that would hardly bother adults at all. And if you want to go econ on this (nobody really does), you can say that they have some more value than adults because they are going to live for more years. But I don't think children are in any way more inherently valuable than adults. Adults and kids both think and feel, they both love and are loved, and there's really nothing so great about kids. I really don't think kids are innocent in any meaningful way. Yeah, they're not sexual. Great. Kids are horrible to each other. Maybe my own experiences were unique (they're certainly more common to girls than to boys) but pretty much every major insecurity I have now I got before I turned eleven. Yeah, sure, some things come with puberty, but my social vulnerability was cut in the halls of Quaker Ridge Elementary School and the bunks of Camp Timber Tops. Kids are amazing in some ways, and again I stress, they are in some ways vulnerable and need our protection because of that, but they're not these perfect creatures who can do no wrong. They may still be learning, but they know exactly when they're hurting people, and they do it constantly.

And on that vulnerability: do we really know what's best for kids? Most of the time we have no clue. There's this big "don't experiment!" attitude, as though we have a system at this beautiful unstable equilibrium, and if we stick to tradition, everything will turn out hunky-dory, and if we don't, we run the risk of careening into the fiery pits of Hades. I think both prongs of this are wrong: We're not so great at raising kids now, and there's no reason to expect a little bit of experimentation will be horrible. Philip Larkin's poem This Be The Verse is wise, indeed. Parents will, inevitably, mess up their kids in some ways. And kids, for the most part, seem to be resilient enough that most of them get a little messed up but not too messed up. I have two of the greatest parents in the world, and my sister and I are both totally awesome and a little messed up. It happens. I'm sure there is a robust statistical correlation between certain kinds of non-traditional parenting and certain kinds of problems. But I don't really care how robust this correlation is; I care how big it is. And my guess is that for most things, it's not big enough to flip out about. Like, I'm sure this kid will be just fine. A little messed up. But fine. Quirky but non-abusive parents make the world go 'round.

What gets me most worked up about this stuff, though, is that because people have put kids and their version of proper treatment of kids on such a pedestal—nobody questions thinking of the best interest of the child—it has become a free excuse to openly hate on people. This mother column is one good example. Generally, you wouldn't start yelling at a stranger you thought was being slightly rude, but because it's for the children, you can feel completely righteous as you act like a total jerk. But the most extreme expression of this hateful attitude is toward pedophiles. Now, I am happy to salvage my dead-in-the-water political career right here, right now, by coming out against pedophiles! Woohoo! But let me clarify: I'm coming out against pedophiles who actually abuse children. I am not coming out against pedophiles who have the constant urge to abuse children (a pedophilic orientation, you could say) but spend their whole lives successfully restraining themselves. I am perfectly happy to come our for these people. They have been dealt the worst hand in the world, and they have to struggle every day to fulfill an obligation. And if they do, they're heroes. At the same time, they get no choice. Once they fall, they have committed a serious, serious offense. But this is only an offense because it's one of the few things we know does really mess up kids. It's not a serious offense because the person is seriously lacking a moral center. It doesn't take a horrible character to give into a desire you know is very, very bad. But that's also what makes pedophiles so dangerous: They don't have to be otherwise evil to pose a horrible threat. They may deserve an unusual amount of restraint or even, in some cases, forced castration, but they need this for instrumental reasons, not because they deserve our condemnation.

Gah, and I meant to talk about climate change, too. Suffice it to say I'm glad we haven't forgotten about the Earth, even in "these trying times of crisis and universal brouhaha."

Sheesh, this post is totally coming down after the summer. 'Night, all.