Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Jeffy's Corner: The Age Of Irrational Parenting

Episode Date: March 14, 2015

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You're listening to the Jeff Fisher Show. We live in an age of irrational parenting. Really? Do we? We live in an age of irrational parenting, and we live in an age of irrational grandparenting, I would say, as well. If you fancy yourself a normalish, read this article from Jennifer Senior, a science of us. Science of us.

You probably read the equal parts of a fastening of recent travails of the Maryland couple. Yes, we talked about it here. on this show that tried to allow their children to walk a mile to local park from their home. They were charged by child protective servitors. They were charged.

This is what they were charged with. Unsubstantiated child neglect. What the hell is that? Don't they cancel each other out? Unsubstantiated child to get... We can't say it's true,

but it's child neglect. I'll tell you that right now because we should. showed up. And if we show up, we have to document our time and we have to get paid. So we got to call it something. You know they sat around. What can we call it? We call it something. We have to call it something when we show up. And if there's nothing wrong, why did we show up? Someone complained. We have to call it something. I mean, okay, it's not child neglect. Okay. Can't prove it's child neglect. Okay, but someone said that someone got us there on the thought that it was child neglect,

but we can't substantiate what they said. Unsubstantiated child neglect. We can call it that. Then we can still get a paid, and we can make it look good, and we can keep them on the files for five years, because we've filled out a form. Huh? So if something happens in the future, we've got our butt covered, and they're still on file with the unsubstantiated child neglect, which just just,

means that if something happens, we were too stupid to figure it out back then, but we figured it out now. And we've covered our butt. Yeah. What do you think of that? Huh? Yeah, even though it's

you know, pretty much safer than ever to live in the United States right now. It's pretty much safer than ever, but some would say, you know, some would say that it's safer than ever because of our irrational parenting, right?

But it does have to do a little bit with the, we're waiting longer to have children, according to our girl here, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, principle of economic scarcity. We've deferred having children for so long, college-educated women, first child, 30 years old, and instead of having five or six children,

we have two, right? So we put a far higher, value on their well-being, right? But then we, you know, once we, I love the, there's one line in here that, once we ban child labor in the United States, we have come to view children as economically worthless, but emotionally priceless. In the words of one of my favorite sociologists, Viviana Zellzer, and who doesn't love the sociologist, Viviana Zellzer.

But extending equal protection to kids and assigning them the value they deserve is one thing. Swaddling them and bubble wrap is quite another. It has led not just to a culture of irrationally around safety issues, but the moral high-handedness of gratuitous censure among parents themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember, you know, as a kid going away, going away for, you know,

weeks at a time to my grandparents and go stay here and stay there. Now, someone would say, Jeff, that was just your parents trying to get rid of you. That's possible. But I remember doing that. Now, my son, my youngest son, 13, just he was gone for this past week. We went and picked him up yesterday. And he was gone this past week, first time that he was gone without one of us for an entire week. You know, he's gone, obviously gone camping for a weekend.

with the scouts. But this was a whole week, a big training week, up at one of the big scout camps without either one of us on his own, so to speak on his own. And A, man, was it nice around the house? B, still have an eight-year-old daughter that has time to go hanging around the house. see he came back amazing but it was

it was kind of cool to see him actually have that time and you know realize that go get out you know it's an amazing kind of thing and to overprotect them like that no you can't go outside and play

unless I'm sitting there watching you and stop it stop it. I don't want to I don't want to say we're over protecting but you know there were plenty

oh times as a child when you were told go get out get out. I'm going to be here

in this area here but I don't want you here. I want you out there. and don't come back unless there's blood. When it starts getting dark out, then I want you back here. Then you come back here. But until then, I don't want you here. I'm going to be here by myself.

And if there's blood, if someone somewhere else can't take care of it, then you can come back here. But I don't want you here. Again, the more I say that, again, I think that that was more like my parents saying, we go away. you shouldn't be here. I got to work on that story

because I was thinking that it was more of an independence thing, but really I'm turning it around to thinking my parents just didn't want me around. Huh, I got to work on that. This is the Jeff Fisher show. Only on the Blaze Radio Network.