"Children, in America, now rule" - Joseph Epstein (WSJ.com)

There's more than a grain of truth in Joseph Epstein's WSJ column today:

And child-centered we indubitably are, like no other people at no other time in history.  ...  I began by saying that I take my own 16-year-old granddaughter to summer school every morning.  I should add that I also pick her up.  Her music, not mine, plays on the car radio. This is not something we argue about; it isn't really up for discussion. When she is with my wife and me, menus are arranged to her liking.  It's in the air, the culture: Children, in America, now rule.

Whether the vast attention currently paid to children will end in smarter, kinder, larger-souled adults we cannot yet know. ...

In the QC household, the adults manage to resist this pressure better than some; even so, the pressure continues, subtle but unrelenting.

Comments

[John Wilkins]

I need to think about this: I suspect they rule because of how they contribute to the economy, but I think we fear children and spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to control them.