RAISING CAIN

I have been reading with amazement reports and articles in the media calling for greater control of children's online time, e-mails, texts, cellphone usage, etc.  All this has arisen because people seem just to have realised that children are exposed to porn, inappropriate messaging, online bullying, peer pressure (or whatever you call the silly compulsion to meet pre-adult fashion and quasi-adult societal norms), etc.  Of course there is pressure from advertisers; every business wants to increase its product penetration and the impressionable teen or pre-teen is a valuable market.  Of course there is also pressure from sexual predators; think of them as businesses and the same motivations apply.  But protecting one's kids from these is exactly what parents are supposed to be for.

Parenting is not just about applying bandaids or hugging when crushes don't work out or even just handing out placebos when hunger pangs or hormones strike.  There's a lot of advice and help and steering and general caring involved.  Look it up in the dictionary - a parent is 'an offspring's caretaker'.  And there's example setting.  Too many parents seem to want to be friends with their kids.  That can work, but what doesn't work is pretending to be a kid and doing things you should have grown out of long ago.  And nor does it work pretending that they're adults and letting them do things at home (or worse outside of the home) which they should do only when old enough.

Children need role models.  If parents don't offer them that, then children will fall for the role models seductively offered by advertisers, anti-social peers, petty criminals and pedophiles.

And the stricter you are, the more your kids will look elsewhere, where the lifestyle seems easier to achieve or persons seem more loving.  It's tricky, isn't it!  That's why parents sometimes need training too.

Anyway, back to online pressures and threats, where do these kids get their smart phones, iPads, Internet connections, etc from?  Well, the answer is that their parents pay for them.  Of course I understand why you might want your young son or daughter to have a mobile phone, but, let's be honest, how often are they used just so that you can contact each other in the event of an emergency?  And how much are they used additionally to send texts, to call others, to email, to log onto the Internet?  50% of the time?  75% of the time?  All the time?  Don't know?  And what are they taking photographs/videos of with their emergency contact device?

This, I believe, is the essential question.  If kids use their parents' equipment (equipment bought by parents for these emergency purposes), or their parents' Internet connection, or cellphone provider, then parents surely have the right to check usage of this equipment.  No, not just a right, an obligation.  If your child was speaking to strange adults in the park, you'd be concerned.  If they are doing the same online, and worse, given the pressures not to appear wimpy or boring, then surely you should know.  You should certainly be concerned.

Why am I saying 'you'?  Sorry, it's probably not you.  But I am surprised by the number of times I read letters from parents saying they don't like to read a child's e-mails or check their text messages, because of some misplaced sense of privacy or fear or even ignorance.  Yes, kids grow up too quickly these days.  But we can help slow the process down.  There are just so many cases today of adults who were psychologically damaged when young, who had childhoods interrupted in some way, who grow up to become anti-social in some way, that it's clear to me that the pre-teen and teen period is something valuable to sustain and nourish.  If humans leap from child to adult with no fun, development, nurtured, learning period in between, they must become incomplete adults and are liable to join the ranks of those we so much wish them to avoid.  And, oh so tempting though it is to be young again, we must try to act our age and only behave irresponsibly at those times when the kids are not around.  And if you have kids, sometimes those times are few and far between, (if they exist at all, now that pubs are full of kids . . .).

On the point about role models, I don't want to get into the discussion about sexy pop videos, except to say that they are one thing parents can limit access to or at least talk to their children about.  But I am struck by the number of publications that look harmless, but which are just as pressurising.  Comics and newspapers, apparently just for the young are often geared to push kids into consuming and thus to be more adult than they are.  Comic strips about 'normal' kids, who just happen to have the latest fashions or new technological products, or ads again, or just straightforward lives of celebrities that have appealing lifestyles for the impressionable young, can be just as pernicious as adults grooming the kids for something else.  And of course they create a demand for  products, ownership of which can be very seductive and dangerously compelling.

I leafed through the so-called autobiography of some teen star while in WH Smith the other day (I was waiting for someone.  Honest.).  I shan't query the ability to write an autobiography whilst still only just out of your teens, but there are two points about this - one, in the absence of actually having done something, there is a need to write trivial nonsense to fill the pages and to make it sound important, and, two, they set themselves up as role models (maybe unwittingly) whilst writing about their incredibly inappropriate lifestyles.  On the page I read, this young lady (I can't remember the name) was starting a new school, and found she was bullied because she had the wrong hairstyle and trainers.  But a really nice boy took her under his wing and helped her buy the right clothes and have her hair cut the right way and told her who to be friends with and who wasn't cool, etc.

Again, no explanation of where the money came from for buying all these things, but wouldn't alarm bells ring for you if you read this in your daughter's blog for example?  But, no, feeling newly confident now, the girl apparently went home and told her Mum, 'you can't stop me going out at night now.  I'm fourteen and I have to have my own life.'  And there it is - the moment real parenting begins, not where it ends.  Of course for her it ended and she went on and became famous among teens for doing something, or dating someone, and wrote an autobiography, etc.  She just has another 70 years in which to actually do something, but meanwhile she will be no doubt wish to be emulated by many girls even younger than she.

THE BIG ENFRANCHISEMENT DEBATE

I fink it would be well awesome to vote.  All the TV cameras and lights and fings.  Showing some teef to the chicks as you slot that slip in the box.  We could go in togever, like Luis and Gay Tony, and kick some ass.

Nah.  They don’t have no cameras for everyone, dude.

Why’s that then?  Well, I’d get my homies to fill the place and work da crowds, like.  I ain’t doing it for nuffin, bro.  Just need a bit of respect, right.  When I vote, I want the whole world to see.  Me, right.  I’d get that jacket from Topshop.  And those trainers.  If my Mum gives me the money.  That’d show everyone.  Anyway, it’s my right to vote, innit.  Like, human rights and fings.

It’s just that bloody government, like, innit, wot says we’s too young to vote cos we’s ony 16.  Well, I just hate em.  Who wants a bloody government anyway?  Even old geezers who can’t even walk proper gets to vote.  That ain’t fair.  They just want NHS and fings.  They don’t care about us – always moaning when our ball goes over their fence and fings.  I’d vote for getting rid of them and getting rid of schools. 

And parents,

Yeah.  We should tell that Brussels thing about it.

Wot’s that then?

Dunno.  The EU thing.  Wot's always telling the government what's right an fings.  That government, it’s like, we’re the bosses, we don’t want them kids telling us what to do, right, innit, like.  If we’re old enough to steal a car, we’re damn sure old enough to vote, innit. 

Too right, bro.  I’d vote for that Louise Mensch, she’s well hot.

Don’t work like that, bro.  She ain’t on the ticket.  Anyway, she’s in New York now.

Don’t matter.  She’s fitter than that Cameron bloke.  And not so posh.

Yeah.  And that Adele, she’s not posh neither.  I’d vote for her.  An she said she don’t like that Cameron too.  I heard er say it on YouTube.  Just like that!  Way cool.

Adele?!  She’s fat.  You ain’t voting for no fatty. 

You’re fat.

Ooh, you callin fat?  

Well you ain’t fit exactly, like me an Leon an Gazza an Bo, innit.

You won’t be my BFF anymore.

I don’t care.  I didn’t want to be your BFF anyway.  I’ve gotta go home now anyway.  It’s teatime.

LIFE IN THE LAY-BY

There has been another exchange in the press recently about baby boomers.  On the one hand, young people wishing to start out in life on their own believe that the older generation had it easy and still have it easy today, luxuriating in their retirement, whilst jobs, homes and benefits are in short supply; on the other hand, older folks think they have only the champagne and foreign travel that they deserve and that youngsters should stop whingeing and get their fingers out.

It is the (relatively) new Government and the severe cuts they are having to make in spending that has prompted this new exchange of recriminations.  But the debate has in fact been going on for years.  To be honest, I, one of those selfish baby boomers, was quite taken aback at the ferocity of one article I read recently by some 20-something.  I have never felt I was luxuriating.  I still have to scrimp to do what I do and I only benefit from anything easy to the extent that I don’t have to leap out of bed in the morning (nor go to bed yet) and can only spend what little I receive from pension and lifelong investment (pretty pathetic income at present) because I have scrimped for a very long time and managed in the process to pay off my mortgage.  As usual in these things, the truth is somewhere in between the two extreme views.

I accept that university degrees are not a guarantee of a job these days and that probably they were in my youth.  But, in my youth, gaining a university place was pretty tough.  One change that happened during my younger years was that the number of universities was near enough doubled.  This meant that many more students had the opportunity of further education.  I didn’t succeed in gaining entry to a university and so the benefit of a degree was irrelevant in my case.  What was important though was that instead I worked all hours under the sun and managed to save some money for my future.

Many more university places means many more graduates, but not necessarily many more jobs.  I accept that there are not so many ‘good’ jobs around at the moment.  But one unfortunate outcome of widely available tertiary education is that expectations are higher.  Britain is still the same as it was 30 years ago in the sense that there are jobs and workers which more or less match up (actually there may be fewer dirty manufacturing jobs and more cleaner desk jobs around now), but having achieved academically, it is an apparent disappointment or lessening of standards to undertake work that involves physical, rather than intellectual, effort.  I really feel for those who might have had higher expectations, but in fact the same competition for much the same jobs exists now as it always did.

The main area which might arguably have been different in my youth is the general entrepreneurial one in the creative industries.  It seemed that there were young people everywhere starting up businesses or performing.  This phenomenon was hardly unexpected, as post-war hardship and gloom gave way to freedom and relative prosperity.  But none of this came on a plate and for every Mary Quant and Beatle there were at least as many failures.  But I can understand how today’s graduates may have come to expect that the job they want should just be there when they want it.

I have resisted talking about my youth in detail before because I know I sound like a grumpy old man, but never the less it genuinely wasn’t easy.  OK, we had new found freedoms, but that mostly manifested itself amongst my friends in partying.  Parties in those days consisted of gathering in each other’s homes, playing a few records which we all brought with us, dancing and, for those that could afford it, beer.  I usually managed to buy myself a couple of bottles of beer on a Saturday night and maybe once during the week met up with friends in a pub for a pint.  It’s not that I object to binge drinking, but it seems to me that the habit comes from lack of direction and responsibility rather than anything else.  Of course it signals that a jolly good time has been had, but it contrasts so markedly with my youth.  My friends couldn’t afford spirits, we didn’t have wine anyway in those days, and a pint down the pub was often mild and bitter, a cheap form of beer I don’t think you can still get today.  I would probably have enjoyed the odd binge too, but my Mum couldn’t really afford to keep me in beer and food.  The loss-leading supermarkets of today didn’t exist and takeaway food for us was a bag of chips on Friday evening.  I think this practice came from a sort of celebration of the man of the house bringing home a pay packet on Friday.  A restaurant meal was a very rare pleasure indeed for us.

And I knew that, saving money by not going out, I was putting something away which would help me in due course set up a home of my own.  When the time came to move away from home, I had saved the equivalent of a half year’s salary.  The only house I could afford then was a sort of shed in the middle of Essex, 4 hours away from my parental home and 2 hours train and underground journey from where I worked in London.  For the next few years I lived on home-made sandwiches and only went home to sleep.  I didn’t much like it, but in that way I got my foot (well, toe anyway) on the property ladder.  I know, I know, you lived in a cardboard box in the middle of the motorway.

But the main difference in modern times is simply the way in which convenience is now built-in.  Supermarkets, prepared foods, takeaway meals, inexpensive fashion, inexpensive booze, affordable technology – none of this, normal today, existed in my youth.  One of my jobs at home used to be to cut buttons off old shirts.  My Mum reused the buttons and the shirts became cleaning cloths.  We don’t do that now of course.  And I still think the ultimate decadence is buying plastic bags each week simply to throw away filled with my rubbish.  And making one’s own sandwiches and a flask of tea to consume at the desk is no doubt seen as laughable these days.

The point is not that I had it tough, but that these modern advances make it very hard for today’s young to economise or to endure inconvenience and very easy for the elderly to luxuriate in having come to the end of their hardship.

It’s not that I feel I have earned the right to be selfish, nor that I think the young should stop moaning.  But I have earned the wherewithal to help my own family get a start in life.  I have also earned the free time to spend most of my daylights hours giving back to the community in a variety of voluntary ways.  And occasionally I can afford to buy a newspaper and sit in a café and drink a cappuccino too.  But I can’t afford that every day even now.  But, equally, I don’t find it easy to hear people say they don’t want certain jobs or can’t live in certain areas.  There may be some good reason why the young person who complained about baby boomers has no help from her family or from the voluntary sector in her community, but I am happy to say that it’s not the case round here and certainly not my fault.

I do sympathise, I really do, with young people who can’t get the job they want or can’t afford the house they want, but I can’t really see the essential difference with what I and my friends had to endure.  I see how hard it is to forego pleasure and leisure, especially when so many footballers and pop and reality TV performers are able to wear the latest fashions and drink in the trendiest clubs and jet off to the most desirable destinations (and maybe also with the sight of their grandparents seemingly sitting in the garden forever).  But these choices are the sorts one has to make in this thing called life.