The Myths and Reality of Raising Children in Modern Athens

Now That's a Surprise

We live amidst live theatre of the absurd. The NZ Herald recently carried a piece from the Independent, reporting on the results of a research project completed by two professors at Cambridge University. The two august professors, Galton and Macbeath, conducting research on behalf of the UK's National Union of Teachers, concluded that classroom disruption from unruly pupils was a significant problem for teachers.

Well, knock us down with feathers. That's an unexpected finding. It must be a deep and well hidden secret if it required the rigour and deliberation of a professorially managed research project to expose it. That's the first absurdity—that the National Union of Teachers would employ Cambridge Dons to tell us what is blindingly obvious.

The carefully crafted press release used all the buzzwords of political correctness to describe the problem. Pupils lack “social skills”; schools faced “formidable challenges”; there appears to have been “a significant and inimical impact on school life from a rapidly changing social scene”. This is the second absurdity—glossing over a crisis with a patina of social-engineering buzzwords that give the vague impression that we will be able to muddle through this all right.

But, then, things in the press release took an unexpected twist. Apparently the bad behaviour of pupils stemmed from bad parenting. Parents could not control their children at home, so the schools could not control them either. Mmmm. Parents cannot control their children at home. Why might that be? Diet perhaps? Global warming? Television programming? We know a veritable plethora of child-psychologists, enlightened commentators, mentors, reality TV programmes, popular magazine articles have been rabbiting on for decades now about enlightened parenting. Is this the outcome? The end result of modern parenting is that parents lose control over their children at home. How enlightened is our age. The more “clever” parenting becomes, the less effective is appears to be. How absurd Athens has become.

The study went on to describe “highly permissive” parents who bribed their children simply to keep the peace: they had run out of alternative incentives and sanctions. Apparently, “time out” was just not doing it. The professors were also told of parents who would do anything to “shut their children up 'just to get some peace.'”

Now, every parent knows that living with children can be bedlam. Wise parents work out very quickly that the home will be torn apart if it is not well regulated and controlled. Therefore, they quickly establish some “non-negotiables” that turn around respect, obedience, and politeness. In a well ordered home there is rarely a need to raise one's voice. The home will at times likely be boisterous and noisy during times of play and frolic. But, a clear word of command, and the time of play passes, and the next activity subsumes. In such homes, children are free to live life to the full, with their energies channeled and focused. Yet respect for parents, order, authority, and structure is preserved. For many Christian parents such homes are the norm. For a rapidly growing population of Athenians, such homes are a utopian dream, never to be seen or experienced.

Where is the dividing line? What causes the fundamental difference? What tends to make one home happy and the other destructive? A Rubicon is the belief one has about the innate nature of the child. Athenian parents believe—pretty much universally—that children are intrinsically good. Christian parents believe that children are intrinsically bound up with evil (in common with all humanity).

Now Athenians have heaped up scorn upon Christians for their negative, medieval, benighted view of children. It has been mocked as a vestige of Dickensian moral turpitude to have such a low view of children. It leads, we are told, to all kinds of repression and evil child-rearing practices. But the exact reverse is the case. Lay the propaganda aside and you find that Christian families are in the main happy, well ordered, joyous, fulfilling, and affirming. Athenian families, where they have fallen under the thrall of humanist myths concerning children, tend to be disappointed, frustrated, bitter, angry, divided, and tempestuous. Anything for some peace.

Athenian propaganda would have us believe that since the child is intrinsically righteous all you need is to “get out of the way” and let the goodness flow. Any contradiction or “crossing” of a child will simply impede the natural goodness of the child and will stop them developing into perfect adults. Therefore, indulgence is often a dominant characteristic of Athenian families. Give the child what it wants is the basic mantra of Athenian parenting—for in so doing, the inner beauty and moral perfection of the child will shine.

There is a second variant of Athenian child rearing ideology. This propounds that man is an animal like all other animals. To learn how to raise children successfully, one must take a cue from the animal kingdom. Here patterns of successful survival amidst a hostile environment appear to dominate behaviour. Ethics and morality do not enter into consideration. Therefore, Athenian ideology seeks to inculcate children into an evolutionist model where children are taught to do things or think things in order to succeed or survive. From an early age, parents seek to reason with their children to ensure they learn survival habits.

“Brush your teeth, Johnny.”
“No!” (Johnny is a five year old, who has never been trained out of the two-year old mentality.)
“Look, if you don't brush your teeth, they will get rotten and fall out.”
“No!”
“But Johnny, you don't want other people not to like you because you have rotten teeth, do you?”
“No!”
“So, let's brush your teeth.”
“No!”

How many conversations like this take place in Athenian homes up and down the country every day, a hundred times a day? Johnny is learning two lessons—bad lessons that will scar him for the rest of his life. Firstly, he can say “No!” and get away with it. In the end no-one has a right to tell him what to do. If he can out-govern his parents, no-one else can tell him what to do either.

Secondly, he is learning that the fundamental driver of human action is environmental. Right and wrong turns around what will impress those people whose regard he wants to have.

When that is the frame of reference of the child, inculcated from the cradle, by the time that the child becomes a teenager, and experiences the drive for peer approval, the scene is set for identification with criminal gangs and other sociopathic behaviour. Lawlessness ("no-one is going to tell me what to do") and an ethic of peer group approbation ("do things to gain the approval of others") is an ethically lethal cocktail.

So, for all their mocking and scorn, Athenian child rearing practice is turning out to be a dismal failure—as indeed our good Cambridge Dons have told us—and it all stems from the lies upon which Athens is built.

Christians base their child rearing practices upon a principle that each child bears the image of the Living God—and is therefore unbelievably precious and has great dignity. But another truth is present—that like all men since Adam's Fall, every child is intrinsically wicked. The fallen nature of the child has to be trained out at much as possible. Therefore, child rearing is often “going against the grain.” This is to be expected. It brings a common-sensical, matter-of-factness, into Christian child rearing practices.

Children are to be loved, but corrected. The home is a training and correctional institution, in an atmosphere of love and affection. The Proverb says: “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him.” In the Scriptures, “foolishness” is moral, ethical, and religious wrongdoing. These things have to be trained out of the child. This requires correction.

Christian parents, therefore, are fundamentally personal trainers of their children. In order to fulfill that role in any way successfully they must have and maintain their children's respect. Disrespect for parents is bound up in each child's heart. Loving, firm correction drives it out.

So, in Christian homes up and down the country we get thousands of the following types of training and correcting moments every day:

“Johnny, it's time to brush your teeth.”
“Why?” (Johnny is now a three year old. He has passed through the “terrible two's” and has learnt through being corrected and trained that if he does not respect and obey his parents, there are painful consequences.)
“Because I asked you to.”
“Why?”
“Johnny, you know that if you do not obey me quickly and cheerfully, I am going to have to discipline you. Please brush your teeth. I will not ask you again.”
“OK.”
“That's a good boy.”

In such Christian homes, because the authority issues are settled, there is a framework to deal with bad behaviour. But equally importantly the home is thereby released to be able to channel Johnny's creativity and energy into exploring and discovering and learning copiously about the world.

Take a simple every day learning experience like going to the supermarket. Ever seen those failing suffering parents who have to argue with their children all the way around the supermarket over not touching, eating, throwing, screaming, yelling, kicking and otherwise creating mayhem. Contrast that with the trained child or children who in a well behaved fashion can walk with their parents around the supermarket, not touching anything (“Because it does not belong to you, Johnny”) but being free to ask a thousand questions, and have animated conversations with mum and dad about colours, shapes, brands, pictures, people, money, buying, foods, eating, tastes, and likes and dislikes—and on, and on.

When such well-trained children go to school, they will end up respecting their teachers, because if there ever is an issue over the matter, their parents will tell them to—and that will be sufficient.

Contrast this with the fruits of Athenian wisdom: Profs Galton and Macbeath tell us that “Motivating certain children, it was claimed, had become more difficult because by the time they came to school many of these children had become expert in manipulating adults. . . . Children arrive at school knowing too much and not enough.” Indeed.