To be best friends or not to be? Is the question how to avoid extremes?
At a party for university professors I recently attended, talk turned to identifying changes in student attitudes. I was taken by surprise when one colleague–who perhaps hasn’t raised children–offered the opinion that current students no longer respect let alone revere teachers and professors because these kids are on best-friend terms with their parents. What she was getting at, I think, is that the world of adults loses allure when young people gain easy access to it. She may also have meant that in taking on the role of friend many parents go on to coach their children not to take an uppity prof too seriously – “to put them in their pace” or “set them straight.”
Maybe there’s some of this at work.
Maybe friending and parenting are at odds, or allow for too much boundary fluidity. But I can’t think why teens and young adult children being friends is always a bad thing. Why couldn’t a mom in the role of “besty” pass on her memories of admiring a good teacher? Why couldn’t a dad pass along community-building advice about respecting others–maybe pointing out that teaching students can be a hard slog, that human misunderstandings are common.
How it applies here, to the issue of mommy blogging conduct? What comes to mind is that extreme positions make us more vulnerable to mistakes. If I am best friends with my kid, as a mom blogger I may feel free to write anything: we have no secrets, we have no separation, what’s mine is hers and same in reverse. On the other hand, if I am an old-fashioned parent who thinks I am the authority figure, as a mom blogger I might say that I own what’s yours–that I have, own and control you, as child and intellectual property. (When we say we “have” children, we may even inadvertently pick up this ownership paradigm).
So: apart from mulling over another application of borders and parenting, to see about shedding comparative light on blogging and setting limits, this reflection has helped me feel happy to unpack (and throw out) the wobbly theory that parents and children shouldn’t be friends!
Maybe there’s some of this at work.
Maybe friending and parenting are at odds, or allow for too much boundary fluidity. But I can’t think why teens and young adult children being friends is always a bad thing. Why couldn’t a mom in the role of “besty” pass on her memories of admiring a good teacher? Why couldn’t a dad pass along community-building advice about respecting others–maybe pointing out that teaching students can be a hard slog, that human misunderstandings are common.
How it applies here, to the issue of mommy blogging conduct? What comes to mind is that extreme positions make us more vulnerable to mistakes. If I am best friends with my kid, as a mom blogger I may feel free to write anything: we have no secrets, we have no separation, what’s mine is hers and same in reverse. On the other hand, if I am an old-fashioned parent who thinks I am the authority figure, as a mom blogger I might say that I own what’s yours–that I have, own and control you, as child and intellectual property. (When we say we “have” children, we may even inadvertently pick up this ownership paradigm).
So: apart from mulling over another application of borders and parenting, to see about shedding comparative light on blogging and setting limits, this reflection has helped me feel happy to unpack (and throw out) the wobbly theory that parents and children shouldn’t be friends!
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