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Posts tagged ‘parents’

Feb 12

GOP response to newly proposed child labor regulations

Recently, the Obama administration has proposed several new child labor laws pertaining to agricultural work, and Republican Congressman Danny Rehberg, from Montana, has accused the administration of trying to meddle and not knowing enough about the situation before getting involved. These new laws would target young people working on farms, and would try to limit the sorts of tasks they are allowed to perform in their work. In this article, found in the Huffington Post, Rehberg attacks the new laws and claims that the work they target is perfectly safe for young people. He says, ”You can’t get hurt…It’s impossible. You could have a five-year-old out there running it.” Congressman Rehberg believes that this disconnect comes from people in Washington not truly understanding the work being done on American farms anymore. In his opinion, new technology makes previously unsafe tasks more fit for young laborers, and new safeguards will prevent injuries that previously occurred.

This is a grain auger, one of the types of farm machinery being targeted by the newly proposed child labor regulations.

As my fellow classmate, Daniela Hernandez, wrote in her piece Labor Department proposes new child labor laws, the reaction to the law is similar to the one discussed in Zelizer’s article on useful children. Farming families are attacking the law in a similar way to when Congress proposed child labor regulations in the 1920’s, as an invasion of the rights of parents to use their child’s labor for the benefit of the family (Zelizer, 36). I agree with this connection, in that families who use the labor of their children on family farms still feel that the government has no business meddling in their affairs. They believe that through new innovations in safety technology, the labor is safer than ever and is not a threat to children. Along with this, they also feel that the federal government is overstepping its boundaries in legislating on a topic that should be left to state governments.

Feb 3

Indulgence on Black Friday

Considering the current economic state, people would believe that Christmas would take on a different meaning. Maybe, it wouldn’t be all about the children and what presents they get. Maybe it would be about families spending time together, a time of reflection, or maybe a day for a people to just relax a little. Unfortunately, I have noticed that this is hardly ever the case. If anything, Christmas has become a time when people (mostly parents) indulge children while attempting to snag a few deals here and there. While the recession has led to people tightening their belts here and there, the overall trend has been to continue indulging children at Christmas. A great example of this is Black Friday.

The popularity of shopping on Black Friday (the day right after Thanksgiving, usually beginning before the sun even rises) has increased so much that many retailers this past Black Friday began their sales at 12:00 AM on Friday forcing many families who have a family member working at a participating retailer to have to cut their Thanksgiving festivities short so that they could go in and get prepared for the oncoming storm.

Many families who have shopped on Black Friday know the crowds.They line up at ungodly hours. They are dense and often pushy and they are rude.

credit to somarbar.wordpress

Black Friday crowd

And what is all that for? It is for the daughters and sons. So that they can have the nicest things and parents can show off the love for their children without having had paid as much. The sad truth is that more families are turning to Black Friday as way to buy their children all the things they couldn’t without having to break the bank. Which is just sad.

Feb 3

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The “American Girl” Franchise

The original line of historical "American Girl" dolls.

When I was little, one of my favorite book series was the American Girl series. This collection of chapter books followed the lives of several young girls from different time periods and classes in American history – all hinging upon the common denominator of their titular national identity and exploring the story directly through the girls’ viewpoints. These books were created chiefly to advertise to children (more specifically girls) the line of character dolls upon which the American Girl company was originally built, in the same vein of such toy lines as Transformers and My Little Pony. Selling for upwards of a hundred dollars (and initially only available by mail-order) when you factor in toy accessories and doll dress-up, the American Girl dolls were expensive enough to require additional persuasion in the form of books, movies, and even games. After all,  parental resistance in the face of cost to satisfying a child’s preference for a particular character or story tends to wane the more enamored the child becomes with the pageantry of  a full product line.

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Feb 3

Sandwiches for Christmas

Christmas spirit has been lost, and in turn replaced with feelings of competition and greed. The joys of Christmas are now dependent upon the types and amount of gifts children receive on Christmas morning. Of course, parents want nothing more than to make their child happy, but in order to achieve such in today’s world, one must be prepared to empty their wallets and hope for Christmas bonuses. Christmas is also a time of year for families to display their wealth, and hope that their gifts can compete with, if not trump, those of their neighbors.

In Gary Cross’s article “Modern Childhood, Modern Toys”, Cross states: “But in the nineteenth century these celebrations of indulgence were increasingly focused on the family, in parents pampering children. The shower of gifts became a way of demonstrating personal affluence” (59). Many children today seem to get whatever they ask for, resulting in a generation of spoiled children, and parents are the ones to blame. Competition drives parents into a shopping frenzy, and it seems that most families believe that overspending on your child is better than being out-shined by your neighbor.

The amount and quality of the gifts given to children today has increased in comparison to previous years, as seen by this 10-year old girl receiving a cell phone for Christmas. This girl is one example of the many kids that are now getting cell phones, ipads, and other gadgets at such young ages. Through this gift exchange, the girl is happy, and her parents are able to maintain their reputation within the community, for they are able to keep their child up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies.

Jimmy Kimmel challenged the previously discussed trend of overindulging your children with gifts on Christmas on his late night show. He asked parents to give their kids a gift they would not want for Christmas, and to record their reaction upon opening the present. As one could guess, the kids’ reactions were a combination of upset and anger. This experiment effectively portrayed the expectations children hold in regards to the types of gifts they receive, and the disbelief they have upon not getting what they want.

The vicious cycle of consumerism and competition dominate our society, and it is made especially apparent during the holiday season. It will be interesting to see the buying patterns of kids today once they reach adulthood and have to then shower their children with gifts.

Feb 3

Parents in Films and Parents at Home

According to the article Parents Under Pressure in Films (Rebecca Keegan, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 2012), “parenting – specifically parental guilt and anxiety – is the subtext of a surprisingly large number of the year-end and awards-season movies”. Parents have always been a subject of interest for filmmakers, and the resulting movies have always spoken of the time in which they were created. The “hyper-self-critical, stressed-out parents” of today’s movies reflect a “culture of self-conscious child-rearing”. This is, of course, because of a societal shift in ideas of parenting. Back in the day, parents based their techniques on their own upbringing and on instincts. Today people think, analyze, and worry much more about parenting. In today’s movies, often mothers are out of the picture and fathers are portrayed as inadequate. In one such movie, 2011’s  “The Descendants”, a father has to deal with his problematic daughters while his wife is in a coma. Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of the novel “The Descendants” says of parenting,

“My grandfather would come home and have his martini hour and engage with his kids, but then he clocked out as a parent. You don’t do that anymore. I joined this mothers group, and it was just sort of this absurd culture to me. I was overwhelmed by parenting…. The focus on having the right things and what are they eating … lactation consultants, crib consultants, I swear to God there are curtain consultants. Parenting has become this whole other culture.”

Other recent movies speaking of failed parenting or parent/child relationships include “We Bought A Zoo”, “Carnage”, and “We Need To Talk About Kevin”. The main emotion that can be gleaned from these movies is guilt over parenting and how it should (or should not) be done.

This article connects to the “Anxious Parents” reading (Peter Stearns) in the course reader in that both talk about the shifting views on and anxiety around parenting. Stearns writes that the 20th century was “a century of anxiety about the child and about parents’ own adequacy”, a phenomenon which is clearly reflected in these recent films (2). Stearns also writes that children were seen as more vulnerable, fragile, and in need of protection (3).  Parents feel that they have little control over who and what influences their children, and often believe that children will act out the images they like or are influenced by, which generates more concern about parenting (10).  Also, issues such as new technology/consumer products, fears of diseases, and changes in family structure have caused parents to feel guilty about the environment in which they are raising children (3). Parents feel a huge sense of responsibility, and thus have anxieties about how they should treat their children.

These movies play to parents’ fears of bad parenting, but simultaneously alleviate guilt by showing that other parents are also not perfect.

(Below, Trailer for “The Descendants”, 2011)

Feb 3

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The Best Gift I Never Received

In Gary Cross’s article entitled “Modern Childhood, Modern Toys,” he discusses the evolution of the holiday season and gift giving, and says, “The new Santa clearly represented abundance.” (Cross, 60) While I never had Santa, reading this I quickly had a nostalgic moment of being ten years old and having received so much already that I needed a gift to top them all.

My birthday and Hanukah always fell within weeks of each other so like Christian kids who had birthdays on Christmas Eve or the day after, I always felt as though I was getting screwed over only getting one set of presents.  So by my tenth birthday and tenth Hanukah I’d had enough of it, and decided that if I was only going to get one big present it was going to be the greatest present of all time… I fully intended to rid myself of my bed and replace it with an indoor bounce house. For $200 I could have as my BED what kids longed to have once a year at their birthday parties! What could possibly be better! That’s when I saw it, there, staring at me in the Sunday advertisements from Toys’R’Us was the Blast Zone Magic Castle Bounce House, seven feet by seven feet wide and five feet tall.  It was perfect.

Blast Zone Magic Castle Bounce House from www.toysrus.com

My parents had enough sense not to purchase this for me regardless of how many temper tantrums I threw. Twelve years later and without serious back problems I am relieved they didn’t.

 

Feb 3

Christmas Consumerism

The meaning of Christmas has changed drastically over the years, from plantation owners giving their slaves a small gift, to parents spending an excessive amount of money on their children to appease them.  This new meaning of Christmas has happened for a couple of reasons, one being that society is becoming a lot more materialistic, but another, and a lot more prevalent, is what Gary Cross states in, “Modern Children, Modern Toys”, that, “The shower of gifts became a way of demonstrating personal affluence.  And it did so without seeming to deny the work ethic or ‘normal’ values of thrift. (Cross 59)” To explain this, Cross believes that the reason that people are buying so many gifts and spending any amounts of money on them, is that it is a way to show your community how wealthy your are, but at the same time it is considered ‘ok’ and not snobby because it is Christmas.  I agree with Cross’ thesis that parents spend a lot of money on Christmas because it is a time where they can do so while it is considered fine.  This is clearly something that is happening in modern day culture, because we see it all over the place.  While reading Cross’ article the first thing that came to mind that backed up his thesis was the movie “Jingle All the Way” (which you can read about here).  In this movie Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a father who goes to great length fighting off policemen, a mailman, and numerous other adults just to get this action figure for his son.  In the movie his motivation for getting this “turbo man” doll, is that everyone is getting one, so to look like a good dad he must get one for his son.  While this movie goes to great extremes backing up Cross’ thesis, it does so nonetheless by showing the world this is how ridiculous we look, and this is what Christmas has come to, a battle for who can get better presents where the parents are even more happy than their children when they get the toy, Just Ask Arnold.

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