Childhood Lost and Found

This is a guest post by Anne R. Pierce, author of Ships without a Shore: America’s Undernurtured Children (Transaction Publishers, 2008) : www.shipswithoutashore.com

Childhood is nearly lost. In fast-paced, competitively charged modern America, there is unyielding pressure upon children of a younger and younger age. Today, tiny toddlers in uniforms gather on fields and in gymnasiums, with frustrated coaches imploring them to “listen” and learn the rules of the game. Young children expend their energy on long days in group situations, in structured activities and after-school programs, on team sports and music and athletic lessons. Teenagers build resumes and prepare feverishly for the future. Super-parents are raising super-kids, supposedly capable of both outstanding academic and artistic performance and athletic prowess.

For much needed relaxation, our high-performing children collapse in front of the TV, computer or “play station,” the now defining features of homelife. “Relaxing at home” no longer signifies shelter from corruption, nor does it signify quiet and repose. A veritable storm of lurid, violent and sensational “entertainment” now inundates our young, robbing their innocence. (Highly orchestrated teenagers are especially vulnerable to media-induced definitions of relaxation and release.) There is little room in this scenario for idle contentment, playful creativity, and the passionate pursuit of interests. Our busy lives leave too little time to question whether all this busyness is necessary and whether the content that fills our children’s lives is good.

We have become unsympathetic to exhaustion, vexation, and demoralization, seeing them as necessary corollaries to high achievement. ”Come on you can do it” parents shout as children “try again” to achieve the perfect pitch of the ball, the perfect ballet pose, the perfect runner’s mile, the perfect musical performance. Thus, we are taken by surprise when success strategies backfire; when, instead of gaining momentum, children and teenagers lose energy, motivation and enthusiasm. But, this end result simply makes sense. For, it takes freedom to be creative, time to be a thinker, and opportunities for independence to become inspired. Moreover, when we emphasize outward displays of accomplishment over children’s actual moral and intellectual advancement, children feel a void.

It is sad to think of young children with little time for play. They are missing the multifarious opportunities that play provides: for relaxing, imagining, exploring, creating, interacting, relating and just having fun. Play in childhood is important both for intellectual growth and for psychological growth. Play is a way for children to relish the experience of childhood and way for them to prepare for adulthood. Teaching children to be tough and prepared for the world, achieving doers instead of capable thinkers,has its price. Children’s innate curiosity is intense. When that curiosity has no room to fulfill itself, it burns out like a smothered flame.

It is also sad to think of children whose innocence is disregarded. Innocence is vital. Innocence allows children a freshness and creativity which artists and writers since there was writing and art have tried to recapture. When we let children into a hardened adult world. we risk putting out their flame. Once a child’s need for trust in the world and in their parents is jeopardized, the child’s positive approach to the world is jeopardized. The child is forced to adopt a defensive posture; she holds here innocence at bay for fear that the world might get the best of her.

An alternative to the harried, preordained way of life we give our children would rest upon renewed respect for childhood and a reassertion of parental influence. Research shows that attachment and bonding with mother in the early years, and such moments of family togetherness as working in the yard, casual conversations and family dinners in the later years have a hugely beneficial effect upon childhood development. Children do need a “homelife” to which to retreat and from which to explore.

Anne R. Pierce is an independent scholar with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She has published articles and books on social/political issues and intellectual history, and is particularly interested in transition periods in American life. The author’s website is www.shipswithoutashore.com.