Cooper Zale raises a daunting issue in a blog entitled “Adultism vs. Legitimate Adult Stewardship of Youth.” My short answer is: notwithstanding law or tradition, the question is based on a false assumption. Adults have no right to arbitrarily boss those I like to call littler but not lesser (LBNL) around. However, my research has led me to an interesting conclusion: the LBNLs are far from passive in the dynamic between them and those I label bigger but bit better (BBNB).
By serendipity, at the outset of doing anthropological fieldwork in classrooms in England and the US working with fifth and sixth-graders, I found myself looking at the world from their perspective. Nor was I impartial in those observations. Finding a clear divide between LBNLs and BBNBs, I found myself most comfortable taking the side of the students. I found a very real pattern of behaviors by which the LBNLs very successfully redistributed adult power to themselves. I labeled that pattern “default behavior.”
So how does this redistribution work? LBNLs exhibit a three stage strategy. The first stage is “passive resistance:” the LBNL will behave in a way that an adult in authority has implicitly made clear they do not want the LBNL doing. In school this behavior can be anything from whispering to a friend in class, to passing notes, to much more blatant activities like standing on a chair when the teacher’s back is turned. At home it is often playing video games, or texting, or posting to Facebook, instead of doing homework. The second stage is “active resistance:” the adult will explicitly make clear they want a behavior to stop. The method most frequently used by adults is if…then threats. My research indicates that very often LBNLs will call the adult’s bluff. Often, the adult will back off. Adults, however, also have the option of trying to go through with the threatened punishment. If that option is taken then very frequently, the third stage is entered, “open rebellion.” Even if implemented, the punishment, e.g., grounded from video games for a week, rarely sticks. LBNLs have a knack for making life miserable for BBNBs until the sanction is lifted.
Therefore, at all stages, the LBNLs usually win. The adult’s power to control has been usurped. The LBNL does what they want. Winning isn’t always a cause for celebration. Especially if the sequence of events reaches the second or third stage, LBNLs are usually pretty unhappy. As for the adults, they are usually frustrated and angry. Accordingly, why should adults bother to impose any arbitrary authority?
The biggest arguments I hear are: “we need to keep the child: safe in a potentially unsafe environment; and/or healthy; and/or (more and more frequently these days) keep the child away from predators. I consider all these arguments pretexts for the arbitrary imposition of adult power. So, let’s say you live on a very trafficy street. Can’t teach a LBNL how to cross safely? How can five year olds in traditional African societies look out to their toddler siblings? And, if the LBNL is an equal in the learning process, if they see that learning correctly helps them be more independent: why wouldn’t they learn? My sons grew up on such a street. So did the LBNLs they played with on the other side!
Oh, but predators are more serious than traffic? Are there more predators today than when I was a child in the 1940’s and 1950’s? I doubt it. The biggest changed variable is the number of moms around while the LBNLs are out playing. Not that I remember them out there with us. Yet, being in close proximity as opposed to miles away at work, might well make a parent less concerned… especially if there’s always a gang of LBNLs…which is usually what happens when BBNBs don’t interfere. Safety? So, when I was a LBNL I’d ride my bike the several miles (and one busy four lane) to Little League practice. How many parents allow that today? Health? Then a dumped bike resulting in a nasty scrape no big deal then? Today, nurse mom is at work. Or is she? My sense is that many moms are able to leave work early enough to easily switch into their helicopter pilot role.
I have absolutely no scientific evidence for the following claim, however I do see a correlation between phenomena like binge drinking, especially in college, and excessive BBNB interference with LBNL’s desire to be free to overboard parental scrutiny of their activities. Another example: this fall, over 1000 University of Massachusetts-Amherst students congregated for a Saturday night “party,” at a large off campus housing complex. Local and campus police (maybe the State police even) responded to neighbor’s noise complaints. Chaos ensued, bottles were thrown. Very few arrests were made. University administrators blamed a small element of trouble makers. No, this was default behavior college student style.
The tragedy is, if my research is correct, when those very same pissed off, bottle throwing, young adults get to the point in their lives where they take on adult roles, the odds are they will treat LBNLs the same way they were treated: parent the way they were parented. They may in fact have much more sophisticated helicopters. The cycle will continue. LBNLs will still be unhappy way more then they need to be; and BBNBs will continue to be frustrated and angry far more than they need to be.
We do have a potential model by which to break the cycle: democracy. As some readers may be aware there are a number of private, usually very small schools at which adults and non-adults are equal: schools with democratic assemblies in which adult’s and non-adult’s votes are equal. Not only does this model reduce tensions between LBNLs and BBNBs, but it basically eliminates the default behavior cycle. Unfortunately, these schools are very small, widely scattered, and often vulnerable to disbandment when founders loose interest. Bringing that model into main stream education would require an incredible commitment from professional public school teachers and administrators.
However, even if that miracle occurred, it would still only be half the equation, the same model would need to be applies to households. Parents would need to cede their authority, to treat the LBNBs living with them as equals, to accept that no arbitrary imposition of adult power would be allowed. Discussion, and where appropriate, voting, would replace arbitrary power and, hopefully, in the process the three steps of default behavior escalation. How can this radical change in the paradigm of proper intergenerational behaviors come about? If sincere love and concern motivate most adult interactions with non-adults, then the transition can use those positives to redirect the ways in which they are expressed.
Yet, adults will need to recognize the ways in which their behaviors with each other color the behaviors of the LBNLs under their roof. They must realize that moms and dads need to keep alive the flame of passion that pulled them together. They can’t take out frustrations with each other or with external, maybe job related, events by arbitrary impositions of power on LBNLs. They need too accept LBNLs as equals.
And they need to insist that paradigm be applied in all educational situations as well. I can see no other way for the cycle to be broken.