Daddy Days: It’s a great time to be alive
Does this headline seem out of step with the sentiments of our time? In general, when you look at the news, social media, or hear people talking, is it usually in praise of the era we’re living in and the state of our society? I think not, and I can understand why.
Yet, many of us look at the eras we grew up in and say the same thing, “that was a great time to be alive, a great time to be a kid.” For me it was the '90s. Playing outside with neighborhood friends in a pre-cell phone and pre-social media decade, back when the library was a place to check out books, not practice activism, those were the days.
I’ve heard the same stories of great times to be alive from those who were kids in the '80s, '70s, '60s and '50s. A cursory view of American history says something doesn’t quite add up here. All these eras dealt with either wars (Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf war), economic turmoil (inflation, gas shortages, recessions), political strife (Watergate, impeachments, deficits) and/or social upheaval (anti-war protests, drug issues, pandemics).
And this is just the surface level stuff. So how did so many of us come out of one or more of these eras looking back at the time as rose-colored and great? Because our parents made it that way.
I’m going to posit that if you grew up in a stable family, you can look back fondly on any era. Because the truth is, every generation has its struggles and hardships. Yes, some have been worse than others, but a child’s perspective is incredibly (and often thankfully) myopic. Which means, if their home and immediate family is stable, their foundation is solid and all the stuff going on around their home life isn’t in focus.
I think we used to collectively understand this better than we do now. At some point there was a push or desire to make a philosophical change from an objective family-centered ethos to one centered on subjective individual happiness.
Instead of encouraging and supporting the building of stable families, it said adults and kids don’t need a solid base and in fact the idea of a solid base, an idea as old as humanity, is an obstacle to the full potential of the individual. Everyone should just do their thing. The individual should pursue whatever makes them happy, and kids, if or when they’re involved, will just go along for the ride. Life is a random, crazy, spinning, dipping, twisting and thrilling roller coaster anyway. Kids love roller coasters.
But it turns out the roller coaster analogy presumes the roller coaster is on a safe framework and there are adults in charge of the ride. The post-family worldview is really like putting kids on a floating piece of debris in the ocean. Up and down, side to side, no end, no beginning, no thrills, just motion sickness. Kids need things to be tethered to reality.
Dads and moms are the anchors that keep kids from being tossed about by the waves of uncertainty crashing in every decade.
We all know that kids don’t stay children forever. The time will come soon enough when they experience the hardness of the world and those rose-colored glasses will come off. After all, we all went through that, too. But that may be one of the benefits to the often-maligned nostalgia we have for our childhood days. It can put us in mind of the awesome power we have to provide something similar to our kids. I’m not talking about trying to re-live childhood or curate their experience to be exactly like yours was, but to know it doesn’t take money, power or a turmoil-free world to provide a stable and loving home life for your kids.
That’s real and important. And if you want them to look back on these days and remember what a great time it was to be alive, it’s really important.
Harris and his wife live in Pflugerville with their seven children. Please email comments or suggestions for future columns to thoughtsforcaleb@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Daddy Days: It’s a great time to be alive
