|
|
|
Mistaking Identity By Rabbi Yonason Goldson
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
When their third child, Storm, was born, Kathy Witterick and David Stocker announced the birth of their new baby with the following email:
"We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? …)."
Needless to say, friends and family alike have trouble understanding Witterick and Stocker's unconventional approach to child-raising. With stereotyping, bullying, and social stigma inevitable parts of growing up, it's easy to argue that manufacturing an additional obstacle to healthy social development is hardly in the child's own best interest.
"Everyone keeps asking us, 'When will this end?'" says Witterick. "And we always turn the question back. Yeah, when will this end? When will we live in a world where people can make choices to be whoever they are?"
FREEDOM WITHOUT LIMITS
Could they be right? Is sexual identity nothing more than arbitrary social programming? By eliminating of every vestige of guidance from a child's environment might parents actually help him learn to make better choices? Will indoctrinating a child with the conviction that every imaginable alternative is equally viable produce a canny, confident, and even-keeled adult?
Well, would it make travel easier if we uprooted every street sign and tore down every traffic signal? Would it make navigation easier if we burned every map and disabled every GPS?
The hazards of unrestricted freedom often go overlooked in a society that values personal autonomy above all else. But the formula for resolving the tension between individual expression and social boundaries was articulated by King Solomon, the wisest of all men, nearly three thousand years ago.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". A SOPHISTICATED examination of faith, culture and politics. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here.
Parents who refuse to assert moral principles, albeit in the name of tolerance and progressivism, succeed only in making their home an environment of intellectual anarchy that will inevitably lead to confusion and dysfunction later in life.
CHILD-RAISING, TAILOR-MADE
Wanting desperately to believe in their own independence, children seize hold of any excuse, no matter how irrational, to invalidate the wisdom of their parents. Left to his own devices, a youth will steer confidently into the heart of the nearest storm, delighted to be free from the steady guidance of the parent who could have saved him from catastrophe.
Like old wine and fine cuisine, genuine wisdom is an acquired taste, and the immature mind will reject its lessons as surely as the untrained palate will disdain the delicacies of a Cordon Bleu in favor of peasant's fare smothered in salt and ketchup. But we do our children no favor by making it easier for them to marching confidently over the edge of the nearest precipice. Gentle instruction administered with care and consistency will lay the foundations moral discernment as a child grows into adulthood.
A WORLD WITHOUT BORDERS
No one is suggesting that we live like the Amish and eschew modern technology. But these inventions are not as innocuous as we wish to believe: in the same way that physical boundaries have been breached, so too have moral boundaries become increasingly blurred and the path of moral conduct become ever more difficult to find.
Respect for traditional family structure continues to erode. The personal conduct of political leaders raises less concern than the carelessness that leads to getting caught. Violent criminals are cast as victims while defenders of life and limb are vilified as exploiters and oppressors. And the role of human sexuality in mental health and social stability is ever more profoundly misunderstood. Political correctness and moral equivalence have so muddied conventional wisdom that young and old alike often fear censure from their peers for daring to judge even the most abhorrent behaviors.
Yes, children need to learn to make their own choices, and today's helicopter parents who micromanage every aspect of their children's lives are more likely to produce crippled than capable adults. Nevertheless, we dare not overcompensate by throwing our children into the stormy waters of amorality and expecting them to swim. As Solomon has said, it is only through the guidance and teaching of moral values that we will keep our children afloat, as well as enabling them to navigate their way to safe harbor.
YOU'LL LOVE THIS BOOK
JewishWorldReview.com regularly publishes uplifting articles. Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Interested in a private Judaic studies instructor — for free? Let us know by clicking here.
Comment by clicking here. JWR contributor Rabbi Yonason Goldson teaches at Block Yeshiva High School in St. Louis, MO, where he also writes and lectures. He is author of Dawn to Destiny: Exploring Jewish History and its Hidden Wisdom, an overview of Jewish philosophy and history from Creation through the compilation of the Talmud, now available from Judaica Press. Visit him at http://torahideals.com .
© 2011, Rabbi Yonason Goldson
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Click