This generation - the into the 21st Century
I don’t know how my mother might have brought up daughters as I have no sisters.
But I have helped bring up daughters.
Like my parents, their mothers and I have generally allowed them to know whatever we believed to be true; from the age they were able to comprehend. As a young child Julia was fascinated by, and frequently watched, the video of her own birth that was made by Emily who was 12 at the time and was present at the birth.
We took them to various entertainments including the ballet and light opera. Travelling down William Street, when Emily was around eight, I was taken aback when she started to sing ‘Lovely Ladies’ from Les Misérables, musing on the prostitutes there who were waiting ‘for a bite’ ( …Whores, Lovely ladies; Waiting for a bite; Waiting for the customers; Who only come at night…). A couple of years later when in Paris, Emily and I went to the Folies Bergere and enjoyed the show - particularly the magician. There were similarly aged French children in the audience and there was no question about her right of entry to a show with adult content and considerable nudity. She was at the time attending an Anglo-French school in London and followed some of the show better than I did.
Later when it was performed in Newcastle (on Hunter - NSW Australia) we took the three older children to the musical ‘Hair’. The nudity and the F-word were not a problem (they were familiar with both); but we felt parental advice was necessary around drug use; and abuse. Who was Timothy Leary ('dearie' – in Let the Sunshine In) and what did he advocate? What were the outcomes? [read more... ]
But we did censor some media when they were young. It is obvious that the depiction of violence does badly affect children, particularly boys; when they are exposed to it their behaviour noticeably changes. ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ induced Lachlan to pick up a stick and start hitting things. So horror and violence were banned when the children were young. I was appalled when I inadvertently took Emily to see ‘Gremlins’ when she was five; a gratuitously violent film; as is the ‘Home Alone’ series of films. Some quite good films like Arnie in Total Recall are ruined for children by gratuitous violence (and the stupid ending); that mars (pun intended) the interesting existential questions it raises.
We also found that we needed to protect Julia, who started to become computer literate from preschool age, from the violent video games played by Lachlan; her much older brother.
As I sit here writing one of Emily's life drawings, of a female nude, hangs on the wall. Apart from being a professional engineer Emily, like her mother is a talented artist. And Julia too, a now a medical science graduate, has had one of her paintings hung in a competitive exhibition.
I see absolutely no evidence that their upbringing has done them any harm but on the contrary Emily, Julia, Anneke and Lachlan seem very well balanced and socially engaged. They all have University degrees and Lachlan has a PhD in marine science. All have jobs; none are drug addicts, gambling addicts or sex fiends. Nor do they swear habitually. They all have strong opinions and in my view exemplary, self-developed personal values that, as I expect, are not a simple reflection of mine or their mothers'. This is an outcome of having been exposed to a wide range of adult ideas early and calls into question all this censorship that was once believed to be so critical to a child’s proper upbringing.
Similar freedoms, perhaps a little later, have been enjoyed by journalist Jordan and her economist/bureaucrat brother Heath. Jordan, Heath and Emily are now parents themselves and so the next generation has begun.