It’s a wonder that John Adams ever grew up, let alone became our second President. While researching my soon-to-be-released book, Then Comes Marriage? A Cultural History of the American Family, I discovered that his parents gave him a gun when he was just 8 years old. Although he could barely lift it, Adams would go off by himself into the woods and marshes trying to bring down small game.
Childhood was different then than it is today. Little ones were given important household chores to do early in life, and adult responsibilities came quickly. All hands were needed, including small ones. Not until the latter 20th century did most American children get to focus mainly on schoolwork and play.
How ironic. On the one hand, today’s children get to be kids more than at any other time in our nation’s past, with a lot of parents not demanding much of them regarding chores or other responsibilities. But while kids get to be kids far longer than in the past, our culture forces grown-up things at them from the get-go. For example, it isn’t uncommon to see thongs for little girls, or to see them dancing to sexually suggestive songs they in no way understand. I’ve even seen a boy wearing a Hooters tee shirt. Sexual material floods our airwaves and techno-gadgets in ways that would have been completely unacceptable not that long ago.
Yesterday I took my 5 year-old son to the mall, and he wanted to buy at book at Borders. At the check-out, right at eye level was the new Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition featuring a barely covered model. I politely told the salesclerk that orienting that magazine at eye level—right above material aimed at little kids—was completely inappropriate. He shrugged and said that the store had orders from the chain to display the periodical in that fashion. You can bet that I e-mailed Borders complaining about this policy. Friends tell me they regularly do battle with store owners about similar situations.
We might think that John Adams’s parents were crazy to give him a gun when he was 8 years old, but can we consider ourselves more enlightened when we introduce sexual things to our small children and somehow expect them to handle those responsibly?
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