this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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[–] [email protected] 59 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Parents' jobs aren't to protect their kids. It's to make sure that their kids are sufficiently prepared for the world when the kids grow up.

There seems to be this rising trend of parents being overprotective of their children, even to the point of having parental controls enabled for children even as old as the late teens. My impression has always been that these children are too sheltered for their age.

I grew up in the "age of internet anarchism," where goatse was just considered a harmless prank to share with your friends and liveleaks was openly shared. Probably not the best way of growing up, to be fair, but I think we've swung so hard into the opposite direction that a lot of these children, I feel, are living in their own little bubbles.

To some degree, it honestly makes sense to me why the younger generation nowadays is so willing to post their lives on the internet. When that's the only thing you can do on the internet, that's what you'll do

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I have recently learned that the new helicopter parent type is the snowplow parent - these are the ones that not only shield their kids from the world, but also fully manage their lives for them. I work for the University of California and seeing how absolutely helpless these kids are is scary.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm in the UC system as well. It's both concerning and amusing how much college students nowadays go to their parents for permission on minor things. I get it, to some degree. Respect for your parents and all that. But some degree of autonomy would be helpful at that age

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you’ve spent any amount of time among people who went to / are in college in their early 20s, and people who were working in their late teens and early twenties, it becomes clear that college arranges for the students to have a managed-for-them life to a degree that I actually think is severely harmful to them. It’s basically a big day care. Education is fuckin fantastic, I’m not saying it’s not, but the nature of the way your life is organized within it to me I think is very bad for people.

Like yes you know integrals, very good, but e.g. I spoke to a guy who had not paid his phone bill for months, who somehow still had phone service but was genuinely very confused about how the bills he was getting now could have gotten as high as they were. No matter how many times I tried to explain to him, I couldn’t get it across. I finally just gave up the endeavor.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Part of the issue with the value of college isn't that it educated, but that it acted like an ordeal to overcome and filtered out people who didn't have the makings of being a leader. Not all of that is due to educational ability.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Parents jobs arent to protect their kids

I get you don’t mean this so broadly but you lose all nuance with this statement.

Protect them from every minor mistake or risk that could ever possibly happen, and smothering them? Sure.

Someone about to stab your kid? Protect them from predators? Protect them from various risks and hazards in life which every parent should be teaching them?

  • dont get into strangers cars
  • dont let strangers into the house
  • look both ways when crossing the road
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Hard to prepare a kid for adulthood when they're dead I suppose

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

What is dead may never die

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It wasn’t the comment that lacked nuance; just your reading.

All the stuff you added went without saying.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Parents jobs arent to protect their kids.

What the fuck else does that mean? If you want to believe you can read minds and assume what a person is talking about, whatever.

But if someone makes a statement, maybe take it at face value rather than “ah yes they must mean something else”

fucking idiot

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I’m pretty autistic, so you’re not allowed to write this off as “people using magic communication I can’t understand because I’m smart” or whatever your model of the current situation is.

When a person says it is not a parent’s job to protect their kids, you already know what it means. It’s right there in your three bullet point.

  • dont get into strangers cars
  • dont let strangers into the house
  • look both ways when crossing the road

If a parent’s job were protecting their kids, these would read:

  • Don’t let your kids near roads or cars
  • Don’t give your kids control over the door
  • Don’t let your kids cross roads

Like, if I was given care of a dog for a week while their owners went on vacation, and my job were to “protect the dog”, I wouldn’t be putting the dog in any of the situations where its own choices were the source of its safety.

Are you ready to stop pretending that you don’t see?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

The first line of my reply literally says I dont think this is what you mean, BUT …. I very clearly stated I assume that isnt exactly what the commenter meant. The rest of my comment is to clarify what the poster defined as “protection”.

If someone came up to me and asked protect something, contextually yes obviously I understand that.

That isnt the situation here. The comment chain is someone with a “hot take” on what “parents protecting children” means. It being a hot take I feel it is completely valid to put aside any assumption that the commenter is talking about “well obviously I mean protect them from x y z”. Because its a potentially unpopular hot take. It’s not a common idea in society.

Unless you can read minds it is very possible this commenter meant it literally. IE how kids are raised in the film 300. “Heres a stick. go fight a wolf kid”.

Im not writing it off. I assumed what they meant but followed up for clarification. Did you just expect replies to be “agree” or “disagree” with zero further discussion?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Oh you’re right. It is a hot take, so it is likely that they mean the thing one wouldn’t expect.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I thought you'd be talking about letting kids climb up high into trees, going into the city on their own, let them hang out at the skatepark without supervision, stuff like that.

But no, it's about computers and kids not being able to see goatse. Lol. That's lemmy i guess.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

It’s tule 10. Don’t mess with kids when they’re gazing at Goatse

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

On the other hand I owe my career in IT to learning how to bypass the parental controls my parents set up and cover my tracks. That got me started in computers really early.