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The Christianity Today women's blog provides news and analysis from the perspective of evangelical women. We cover news stories and books related to international justice and evangelism, pregnancy and sexual ethics, marriage, parenting, and celibacy, pop culture, health and body image, raising girls, and women in the church and parachurch.

Her.meneutics is edited by associate editor Katelyn Beaty and online editor Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

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May 18, 2009

Forgotten Little Pitchers

The difficulty of raising children in an adult-centered world.

Katherine Dalton, guest blogger

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A few weeks ago, a friend's ten-year-old daughter came home from school, turned to her mother with a frown, and speaking low, so as to stay out of earshot of a younger sibling, asked, "Mom, what does the word ?contraception' mean, and what does a sponge have to do with it?"

You would think she'd been talking to a classmate, but no; as it happened she had read this in a book on Ancient Rome. Since the school's fourth grade bookshelf includes a number of colorfully illustrated reference books on the period, her mortified teacher's first thought was that one of these adult books was the source. It wasn't; the information came from an Usborne book. In other words, it came from a book written and designed for children.

It is not very original of either this mother or me to complain that our children are under siege, but they are. Some days, the pervasiveness of it seems remarkable.

I have fourth grader myself, who loves to read and loves words, so many nights now she and her father tackle the Jumble word puzzle which lies opposite the comics page in our increasingly thin Louisville Courier-Journal. This is a new game for them, and it took a day or two for my husband and I to notice that right above ATCATK and YLROLWD lies the "Annie's Mailbox" column, with its sad parade of grief, trouble and abuse. We cut or fold the page now.

Our daughter would like to look at the rest of the paper also, but since the front page may feature a large colored photograph of people exploded by a suicide bomber, or the murder of a child, or a personal assault highlighted in large type, some days she can't. (I don't complain that the paper reports bad news, but I do object to the increasingly tabloid fashion in which some stories are covered.)

Two weeks after our young friend made the school book discovery, she was in a locally owned coffee shop, where, in between sips of hot chocolate, she asked her mother what "rape" meant. Each table at the shop sports a little rolodex of laminated information cards, and there, along with cards telling about shade grown coffee and Louisville's recycling efforts, was one on a women's crisis shelter which the shop owners support.

This is a little thing, but it indicates an assumption made everywhere: that with the exception of certain slurs, there is no limit on what is deemed appropriate public language, and that what is appropriate language for adults is assumed to be appropriate for the children who follow in their wake. News is reported in a way that takes for granted children either aren't listening or don't matter, and this is as true for the "highbrow" radio on NPR as it is for the "lowbrow" so-called conservative TV shows.

The definition of adult-appropriate language and topics has changed in the last three or four decades to include words and speculations no one would have discussed before, outside a law court or an exceedingly frank one-gender get-together. These words leap out from everywhere - the TV, radio, newsstand, book store display, and conversations overheard on the sidewalk. I can remember when it was a big deal for a family news magazine like Time to run a cover story on STDs, but that was at least 25 years ago. I am also old enough to remember when the word "rape" would not have been said in public, and certainly not used casually as a metaphor. Time was when no one, certainly not a lady, would have begun a column with the story I began with above, because it is too indelicate (I am not old enough for that). But we are not able to be ladies anymore, and children are not allowed to be children.

The answer, but of course!, is to foster open communication with your children, because everything can be handled well with good communication — everything except a ten-year-old's concerned astonishment about what these strangely intimate details of adulthood can possibly mean. We can try to comfort, but any further explanation at this age will only make things weirder. There is plenty that even the most curious ten-year-old doesn't want to know. Not really, and not yet.

Unfortunately, we live in a world of people who are dying to tell her. We have to counter their words with our own, when what we really want on certain topics is silence. And talk as families will, children differ in their inclinations toward privacy and worry, and parents in their sensitivity and haplessness. I know most of what is going on in the head of one of my children; very little of what truly is felt by the other. We discuss some of the books they read as it is, for the fun of the discussion, and when the requests to read Pullman and the Twilight series come, as they will, then we may talk about why we avoid some books for a good while, or entirely. Maybe that talk will be enough to forestall sneaking, but I can't be sure. I am sure that with every publishing year which passes there will be more to sneak, and more we simply stumble upon.

Whatever my children may or may not be reading, I can see that they must grow up. I can see the Big Conversation visible on the horizon for my eldest, and I know that I cannot assume my standards will become her standards by osmosis. I can't protect my children from the ugliness of a lot of history, if they're going to learn any, or from all the horrors of our current wars and other countries' conflicts. I have no illusions I can protect them from pain, death or the knowledge of evil. I don't even desire to protect them from everything, since they must learn to stand up and fight on their own, and love the good on their own. But it is a heck of a thing, to live in a culture that works so actively and in so many ways, big and small, to undermine every possible standard - even the chastity of children.

This is a condensed version of Katherine Dalton's "The Immoral Life of Children," from the blog Front Porch Republic.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty on May 18, 2009 7:30 AM

Comments

I want to start by saying that I deeply appreciate and wholeheartedly agree with the underlying premise of this article, which is that our children are precious and deserve both our protection and our consideration -- as parents and as a society.

But I must disagree with this article in terms of how best to achieve that protection and consideration. Mainly, I strongly disagree that the best way to protect children is to withhold information from them. I recognize, of course, that each child is different and some may be better equipped to handle certain information at certain times; I do not deny that parents must exercise judgment in deciding how *much* information to present to their individual children. But as a general rule, I would argue that the default should be to present more information, not less, and preferably in an open, honest, straightforward way that leaves children feeling equipped, encouraged, and confident -- rather than distrusting, suspicious, and uncertain. Once they catch a whiff of an idea, kids know when you're hedging, or when things don't add up.

And trying to keep them from certain ideas altogether is just plain irresponsible if you ask me. The example at the top of the article succeeded in shocking me only because I couldn't believe no one had yet discussed contraception with a ten-year-old. I was in fifth grade at ten years old, and we were receiving sexual education in school. Most of the kids in my class had already been taught the material by their parents at home, and this was considered good timing because it was a couple of years before any of us was expected to become sexually mature, and several years before the most adventurous among us might become sexually active. But these days, those things are happening younger and younger -- thanks in part to hormones in our food and other factors, some girls get their period at eight or nine, and we read in the news about 12- and 13-year-olds having sex or even becoming parents themselves. (Unfortunately, if you want to bemoan the receding age of sexual maturity, you'll have to blame the Dairy Farmers of America as much as MTV.) This is clearly not behavior that we should encourage -- but all the more reason to talk to our children about it. It is unconscionable not to prepare our kids well ahead of time with information about their bodies and the consequences of certain behaviors. So I fail to see why a ten-year-old should not be asking questions about contraception.

The author argues that it is an indelicate subject and becomes nostalgic for the days when such a thing would have been taboo. But really, were those days really any better? My friend's mother recounts the story of when she menstruated for the first time: never having been warned that her body would do this, she panicked, believing she was bleeding to death. Such a story seems quaint and amusing now, but imagine her terror at the time. There are all kinds of ways in which our children may be traumatized by the lack of preparatory information; covering up newspapers and essentially censoring the world around them does nothing to change the circumstances of that world.

Frankly, even as an adult there are certain things I wish I didn't know about (yes, such as rape). But they are as real as anything else, and the best way to protect myself and the children I love is through education. I'm not advocating that we force these concepts on kids too early by sitting them down for a lecture, but I *do* believe that it is wise to answer questions openly and honestly when kids raise them. And it is possible to do so at different levels of detail depending on the child. Rape, for instance, may be described as "a violent act that should never happen to anyone" if the child is very young. Or it may be explained in more detail if the child is able to understand it, or asks follow-up questions. But part of the reason it's necessary to have rape pamphlets in coffee shops is to impart this information to the many adults who sadly never received it when they were younger.

I take significant issue with the idea that it's okay to deny information to a child on the basis that he or she "doesn't want to know. Not really, and not yet." In my experience, most children stop asking follow-up questions when they are satisfied. If they are still asking questions, it's because some piece of the puzzle doesn't fit; denying them further information causes them to feel unresolved and therefore uncertain. What children really want to know, underneath everything, is that they are secure. And while there are many scary things in the world, including rape, war, divorce, and many kinds of evil, I believe the best way to help children feel secure is not to deny the existence of these things, but to help kids understand them and ways to avoid or control them, thus giving them a better sense of support, security, and confidence. Which, again, is the common goal I believe the author and I share.

Posted By: Julie | May 19, 2009 10:04 AM

"I am also old enough to remember when the word “rape” would not have been said in public"

-- Surely you can't be serious in your nostalgia for such times? Such silence favors the rapist, not the victim. Women have fought for decades to bring rape out of the shadows so that victims would feel safe in reporting attacks. The neo-Victorianism of this article is mind-boggling.

Posted By: Christian Lawyer | May 20, 2009 12:06 AM

I get where you are coming from Katelyn...but I disagree wholeheartedly. My question is this: why do we feel that affluent N.American and First World country children are too fragile to know the truth about what a lot of the world's kids know on a daily basis?

Doesn't the Word of God tell us that we are to feel the sufferings of our brothers and sisters around the world? Does this only apply to adults?

In many nations in our world suicide bombers, rape, incest, war, death, murder...these are terms that they grow up living and seeing. Why are our children exempt from knowing about it? I think we underestimate their ability to process it.

Further, I think, though well intentioned, trying to shield your kids like you are suggesting only raises a generation of people who have been conditioned to not think about negative things. Rape, murder, war...these will always be horrible...and our first introduction to them is awful...but we live in a world where people live this reality. We have a responsibility to be informed...even our children.

Posted By: Lisa | May 20, 2009 12:41 PM

Thanks for your comment, Lisa. Just to clarify, Katherine Dalton of the blog Front Porch Republic wrote this post.

Posted By: Katelyn Beaty | May 20, 2009 1:21 PM

Julie: Agree.

Christian Lawyer: Agree. (I seem to agree with you a lot.)

Lisa: Agree.

Posted By: Robyn | May 20, 2009 4:33 PM

Oops! Thanks for the correction...shoot...I should really read things a little more carefully! ha!

Posted By: Lisa | May 20, 2009 11:25 PM

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