Parents should also be Teachers (babysitting, teenage, baby, games)
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It started that way in the opening post, "Situation 2: Wives..."
The irony is the era that people thing was idyllic for the rearing of children in the US was also a time of some very restrictive, narrow-minded customs. Beaver and Wally may have been polite, helpful children, but Ward sat on his butt from the minute he got home until his wife made dinner 7 nights a week without complaint. and so on
The irony is the era that people thing was idyllic for the rearing of children in the US was also a time of some very restrictive, narrow-minded customs. Beaver and Wally may have been polite, helpful children, but Ward sat on his butt from the minute he got home until his wife made dinner 7 nights a week without complaint. and so on
I wonder if that was the second unspoken part of my undergrad ballet partner. She said that she wasn't going to be like June Cleaver and be at home in a skirt and makeup, ready to entertain at a moment's notice. I wonder if it was that, with her first marriage, and how far it extended into her life.
In my life, I've seen other, if subtle, messages from time to time. Like the customer's review of a pickup truck bed conveyor belt, a bed unloader, of "Now I can get a load of dirt and not wait till my husband gets home to unload it.". Long story short of it, I suppose it depends on who is sponsoring, not that the unloader company was but just saying, to the show of whether or not the husband in the is ambitious in the backyard. If it is Lowes, then I would not be surprised to see Darren "building something".
Unfortunately, I do believe a lot of parents do allow the TV to teach the family. What Richard Dawson said in "The Running Man" I am afraid had a lot of truth in it. "You look pissed, Ben. Believe me, you got every right to be. But hey, will you just let me explain. This is television, that's all it is. It's nothing to do with people, it's to do with the ratings. For fifty years, we've told them what to eat, what to drink, what to wear... for Christ's sake, Ben, don't you understand? Americans love television. They wean their kids on it. Listen. They love game shows, they love wrestling, they love sports and violence. So what do we do? We give 'em *what they want*! We're number one, Ben, that's all that counts, believe me. I've been in the business thirty years." (from imdb)
Worse, we often don't know what will be taught until it is presented in our face. There was this commercial that when it was on (and still does) infuriate me. https://www.luerzersarchive.com/en/m...ken-26256.html The family is doing the best they can and here is someone showing that if you don't like it, misbehave. Worse was that in the long version, the TV version, he goes to his room and chows down on a bucket of the product chicken. There is no explanation of how he gets it, no pictures of him sharing with the family, but just keeping it all for himself.
Now, in some cases, maybe the commercials do teach the right lesson. There was a traveler's checks commercial which showed (seen back in my teens) the family driving off into the southwest in the station wagon, all cheerful, of how this was going to be the best vacation and a day later, they are driving back, subdued, with Dad saying it was the shortest vacation because they got robbed. My Father used that commercial as one of his lessons about how bad crime was, of how not to let the media glamorize crime.
Finally, growing up, my parents massively limited how much TV we could watch. In elementary school, I was only allowed 90 minutes a night during the week and often that was limited to syndicated Lost in Space and The Addams Family. As a tween, my Father was seriously considering not to have TV in the house except for a portable locked up except for football. As a teen, more was allowed only if my grades kept up. When we were overseas, well, TV came with its own limiters for it was broadcast only a few hours each morning and then only a few hours each evening and off the air all other times.
Of course, things can always go awry. There was a Family Affair episode (and one in The Family Circle comic, I believe) of where the Parent (s) say too much violence on TV, turn it off, and read folklore classics to the kids that night.......and the kids have nightmares of Mr. French as the bridge troll (what I remember) boiling the children to make his porridge (what those stories often told).
EDIT: As my parents limited TV, so those today might want to limit the computer/Internet for, long story short, I find, as an adult no less, it is a great waster of time, a great killer of chores being accomplished.
Curiously enough, though, this is one habit we see on TV that we never learn. On TV, their existence is often without TV, their use of the Net is off camera, focused, and without distraction. It is not really a lesson being taught for there is no, usually, entertainment value in watching people watching TV.
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Originally Posted by IndyDancer
I agree with your basic premise about getting kids involved in chores, but there is an odd emphasis/paradox happening in these posts with the girls. Most of the chores you listed above have historically fallen to women/girls, other than maybe mowing lawns. More on that below. I realize I'm assuming heterosexuality on the "need a man" comments, but it seems like boys are just as much at risk of "needing a woman" if they don't know how to cook and clean. That's why we have slurs like "nurse with a purse" when we talk about elderly single men looking for a companion or spouse.
Mowing the lawn... my maternal grandma, MIL, and aunt-in-law are or were still mowing their own lawns in their 70's and now at 80. And our neighborhood Facebook group page is littered with posts from parents whose adolescent sons are looking for lawns to mow for $$$.
My BIL, in his 50's, has always lived at home (never moved out). MIL still does all the laundry. Not sure how that's going to go when she passes away.
I suppose this could depend on where we are raised for in the interest to the above posting, there is this commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=janrnKKenv0
Now, of course, these are the commercials of now, like Subaru's CrossTrek of "Welcome to the Pack" where the independent woman is promoted....one shudders of what the commercials of their childhood were like.
Last edited by TamaraSavannah; 06-04-2023 at 06:11 PM..
And not just on forum sites like this. We live in a 'headline' society. MSM has become very, very good at writing inflammatory or misleading headlines because they know that's what people look at... and many stop there, their mind made up. Further, many people are unable to read 'critically' and see through the BS if they do bother to read the article. Sadly, neither the liberal or conservative media can claim superiority on this. Both sides do it, and equally well.
I don’t think this is anything new, recent, or novel, controversy and drama are big business, and have been over the last century and possibly before. It’s the main thrust behind most television, for example. This is because people jump to preconceived notions instead of doing research and reading between the lines.
I don’t think this is anything new, recent, or novel, controversy and drama are big business, and have been over the last century and possibly before. It’s the main thrust behind most television, for example. This is because people jump to preconceived notions instead of doing research and reading between the lines.
Perhaps in more ways than one. A psychology study that I used as the basis for my research (of public appraisal of whether police women were competent or liabilities that needed to be rescued) talked about for occupations that people don't have much contact with that when they do come in contact with someone from that occupation, they fill in the unknown with that they have seen on TV. Such as if they meet a young, good looking woman doctor, they are likely to assume that she sleeps around a lot.......because that is how women doctors are shown on TV. But was it always like that?
No, because earlier medical shows did not get into the private lives of doctors, it was all about the disease of the week........putting aside, here in our discussion, how many women doctors there were in the 50s and 60s.
So realistically, to our subject here, maybe we ought to teach children to indeed think too much about a subject, for them to question of how they know the facts they supposedly have.
Ok, so I’m old, and I was raised by a dad who went to work and mowed the yard, and a Mother who did everything else. After she died, my grandmother did everything for us. They were wrong to not expect more of us, but it wasn’t us kids’ fault. We all kept tidy homes, but I’m not sure why we didn’t wind up slovenly.
I raised 4 kids and I did everything for them. Vicious cycle. Now that dh and I are retired, I notice that, unintentionally, I have positioned myself so that he does almost everything, except the shopping and cooking.
OP is right, that patterns are set very early in a child’s life, but there is also an individual component. Some people are sticklers for order and hard work, and some aren’t.
Ok, so I’m old, and I was raised by a dad who went to work and mowed the yard, and a Mother who did everything else. After she died, my grandmother did everything for us. They were wrong to not expect more of us, but it wasn’t us kids’ fault. We all kept tidy homes, but I’m not sure why we didn’t wind up slovenly.
I raised 4 kids and I did everything for them. Vicious cycle. Now that dh and I are retired, I notice that, unintentionally, I have positioned myself so that he does almost everything, except the shopping and cooking.
OP is right, that patterns are set very early in a child’s life, but there is also an individual component. Some people are sticklers for order and hard work, and some aren’t.
Good stuff.
I learned more by watching my parents than I did from them intentionally "teaching" me things. I probably had to un-learn a ton of stuff they "taught" me.
The irony is the era that people thing was idyllic for the rearing of children in the US was also a time of some very restrictive, narrow-minded customs. Beaver and Wally may have been polite, helpful children, but Ward sat on his butt from the minute he got home until his wife made dinner 7 nights a week without complaint. and so on
I tend to think there's a lot of rose-colored glasses about how well-behaved children were back then. Plenty of my colleagues over the years have told funny (to them) stories about pranks they pulled as kids, or some other way they got one over on some grumpy adult, whether while messing around leisurely or at some job during their youth. It's just not as funny when you are the adult and you're on the other side of that transaction, and suddenly it's "those darn kids".
TamaraSavannah - good points about TV. I hear/read a lot of people who are dismissive of the influence of TV/movies, saying "everyone knows it's entertainment, that it's not real", but I beg to differ. I think TV and movies are highly influential as to how people perceive the world and expect things to be. Look how much we (society) reference Leave It to Beaver, even though it was just a TV show. We treat it like it represented all of reality. I think that's why there's so much angst when issues of representation surface... because we know deep down that it does matter.
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Originally Posted by rokuremote
Good stuff.
I learned more by watching my parents than I did from them intentionally "teaching" me things. I probably had to un-learn a ton of stuff they "taught" me.
So true. Kids learn not so much by what you tell them, than by what they see you doing and what they hear you saying in normal conversation.
I wasn't allowed to watch any tv at all during the week and I'm not sure it helped me out in life. I think it made my mother feel better about herself in that she wasn't letting her kids watch tv during the week. I see that a lot today from parents not allowing kids to watch tv or use iPads. They think they are being better parents for it or something meanwhile their kids are running amok and they're not doing anything about it.
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