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21st Century Parenting and the Facts of Life
Imagine that you live in California, Minnesota, or Massachusetts and your precocious 8-year-old comes home with some probing questions.
“Mommy, where do babies come from?”
You’ve already thought this through — you’re going to answer honestly but not tell her more than she asked to know.
“Well, they come from Mommies and Daddies. Mommies have what is called an egg, but a little tiny one, and Daddies have what is called sperm. The egg and the sperm get together and a baby starts to grow. Mommies have something called a uterus where the tiny growing baby goes to live and get bigger until it is big enough to be born.”
“But my teacher says that some kids have two mommies or two daddies instead of a mommy and a daddy. How can they have a baby?”
“They can’t have one together. They have to borrow an egg or a sperm from a different mommy or daddy.”
“But doesn’t that mommy or daddy want their baby?”
“I guess not.”
“But if it’s two daddies, nobody has a u-u-“
“Uterus.”
“Yes — that. Where is the baby going to grow?”
“They have to find a mommy who will grow the baby.”
“Then the baby grows in the mommy’s tummy but she doesn’t want the baby?”
“Well, she might want the baby, but she’s helping out the daddies because they want a baby.”
“But then the baby won’t have a mommy and the mommy won’t have her baby!”
“No. The mommy and baby won’t have each other”
“But I like having a mommy. And mommies do lots of things that daddies don’t do — like my hair.”
“That’s true. I guess the daddies have to learn to do what the mommies usually do and the mommies have to learn to do what the daddies usually do.”
“I don’t like that.”
She thinks for a minute.
“My teacher says that boys are sometimes really girls and girls are sometimes really boys.”
“What do you think she means when she says that?”
“I don’t know, but sometimes I like to kick the ball with the boys. Does that mean I’m really a boy?”
“No. Sometimes girls like to do things with boys or boys like to do things with girls, but they are still boys and girls.”
“But then how can a boy be a girl or a girl be a boy?”
“Well, I guess she means that some boys feel like girls and some girls feel like boys.”
“Does that mean when I feel like kicking a ball I feel like a boy so I’m really a boy?”
“No. Girls who like to do boy things are sometimes called tomboys, but they are still girls.”
“But if I felt like I was a boy, could I become a boy and grow up to be a daddy?”
“No, you can never be a daddy, only a mommy.”
“But if I felt like a boy, wouldn’t I want to be a daddy? Why can I only be a mommy?”
“Because you were born with eggs and uterus, which is what you need to be a mommy.”
“Because I’m a girl.”
“Yes — because you’re a girl.”
“Then why does my teacher tell me I might be a boy and tell the boys they might be girls if boys can never be mommies and girls can never be daddies?”
You are stumped. This is a level of confusion you will never be able to explain.
Published in General
I am so glad my children are adults now. This is way too complicated.
“Because many people live in a place called the imagination, and in the imagination, anything is possible, even a working socialist nation.”
“because some people don’t like what they were born as and other people think we should help them pretend.”
If this kid doesn’t become a trial lawyer, she’s wasting some mad interrogatory skillz.
We live in an insane world where people lie as a matter of course. It’s a lifestyle choice, and everyone goes along with it because everyone goes along with it -and if you don’t go along with it, everyone will consider you the crazy one. This is life.
But you know better. And it is better to be the sane one thought crazy than the crazy one thought sane.
Back when Facebook introduced 50+ genders, all my social-Progressive friends lauded this. When California codified rules for allowing children to select their gender, they lauded this. Meanwhile, I’m in the back saying, “This will only create chaos. You cannot take a simple system and add complexity to it while maintaining the simple structures of the original system. We have no structure in place to deal with the sheer complexity of 50+ genders or allowing anyone to select from those 50+ and behave as they like within a system that still assumes two genders, male and female.
If anything, that’s why this ridiculous social experiment will prove a failure in the long term. The downside is that the social experimenters are dragging us along for the collapse.
Excellent!
Some people think prudence means surrender. What do you think?
Is it better that children prosper and mature comfortably by, at most, pretending to agree with nonsense or, at least, remaining silent? Or is it better that they suffer for the truth?
Parents are often conflicted in this way. You want your kids to commit themselves to justice and truth. But you also want them to live pleasant, safe, and prosperous lives. You generally advise them to be brave. But do you advise them to be brave when they come to you with a specific situation in which standing up for the truth will require pain and sacrifice?
What Christian mother ever wanted her child to become a martyr?
I’m much more worried about teachers teaching bad economic principles, such as how the New Deal ended the Great Depression.
This imaginary child is exactly like Rachel Lu as a child. I am in a position to know. I think I am to be admired for raising her to adulthood.
That’s easy. “Go ask your mother.”
One of my wife’s friends has a daughter who among a variety of other issues is legitimately confused about herself. I think we need to help the people who need help, but not lie to realities face.
My all-purpose answer to any question like this was: “Your teacher is wrong.”
The next few minutes were spent explaining that it was necessary to humor the poor, deluded teacher on this point, but not to stress out just because of the teacher’s delusions.
Strangely, the topic was sometimes Math ….
Future Tom: Your teacher’s an idiot, sweetie.
At what point do you begin to look for a good parochial school , regardless of the cost , to send your impressionable child ? I used to show with my older kids when they went to public school on opening day and interview the teacher. One of my questions was always when would they be discussing sex . Then I would reply that the kids were going to be sick that day. I stated plainly to the teacher that it was not within the state’s purview to instruct my children about sexuality and sex. The last and youngest child started in parochial in the fifth grade, haven’t looked back and know they don’t discuss sex in school, instead they discuss religion . And yes Virginia there is immaculate conception, even for the consumption of the baptist mommy/presbyterian daddy child.
I would have responded:
I would assume the chances that my eight-year-old knows that his classmate is (at most) the biological child of only one of the parents is remarkably low. Even then, my answer is technically accurate for the other parent.
I made it a point to attend all teacher-parent conferences. At the first one each year I would inform the teacher(s) that they were not responsible for my children’s education — I was — but that I appreciated their assistance. I also told them not to worry about making mistakes; I would make sure my kids knew better. We actually got along pretty well.
Precisely, Doug. And may I add that children are especially averse to chaos. My 4-year-old grandson is adamant right now that girls can’t like Spiderman. He has a definite sense of what it means to be a girl and what it means to be a boy. This is very important to him and his identity. He’ll mellow, but gender identity is central to children.
Absolutely. When people are confused, help them. Be tolerant of their confusion by all means. But do we really need to confuse those who aren’t confused? I don’t think so.
Except you don’t really want to say that to your child. I remember well a conversation with my youngest son. He had misunderstood something his teacher had said about money values. We corrected him and he became very disturbed. The gist of his concern was that if his teacher had that wrong, he couldn’t trust what his teacher taught him. He really needed to feel that he could trust what his teacher taught him. I think that is very important to most kids.
Learning that those in authority cannot be trusted without question is one of the best lessons a child can learn. Verifying things before accepting them as true is an invaluable habit to learn.
You can explain adoption to a child, certainly. I would tell them that the parents wanted to raise the child but for some reason couldn’t. But how do you explain parents who make a baby that they know they won’t raise, as in surrogacy. That’s very disturbing. Children really like to hear that story about how Mommy and Daddy really wanted them and how they grew inside Mommy and then you went to the hospital and were so excited when they were born, because they were wanted.
Maybe, but not in the youngest grades. That’s a higher level cognitive skill. In the younger grades they are learning the basics and they need to trust the teacher.
Children born of surrogacy are also wanted.
We homeschool the younger ones.
And I never pull my punches about my opinions about the well-meaning idiots that fill this world. My kids are very good at distinguishing different kinds of manure. They file the stories away and we laugh at them together over dinner.
Exactly, Aaron. Life is hard enough for kids without such conflicts. If my kids were young now I would not put them in public schools. I’d find a good parochial school and maybe work at the school to pay for it. Or I’d home school, but that’s not something I ever really wanted to do, just because it was hard enough to get them to practice piano! Getting them to do all their schoolwork too–yikes!
I don’t agree with this. I stopped trusting teachers in kinder garden. And while I didn’t turn out alright, that is for very different reasons.
But they are not wanted by the Mommy who bore them, Frank. THAT is disturbing to children.
Well, you are a special case I guess, Frank, but most kids really trust their teacher and need to retain that trust in order to learn effectively. Yes, as they get older they think more independently, but teacher trust is good in the younger grades. I makes kids feel safe.
I’d reiterate the point I made above to Tom. Kids can understand adoption–things happen and parents can’t raise their child even though they want to. What is disturbing is when children are intentionally created by parents who don’t plan to raise them.