This is the published version Furlong, Mark 2010, Growing up on Nero street: on the destruction of childhood, Arena magazine, vol. 108, pp. 9-11. Available from Deakin Research Online http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30042529 Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that permission has been obtained for items included in Deakin Research Online. If you believe that your rights have been infringed by this repository, please contact [email protected] Copyright: 2010, Arena Publications 9 The Trouble with Tasers Emma Ryan Growing Up on Nero Street Mark Furlong -7+"7 On the destruction of childhood Supporting the latter view are those, Crowing Up on like Dr Carol Craig, CEO of the Nero Street A neighbour works as a health professional and passed on the United States' Centre for following story. One of her patients had attended an Confidence and Wellbeing, who Mark Furlong appointment with her four- or five-year-old son. During this argue too much praise is creating a consultation, and with his back towards the adults, the boy sense of entitlement and self­ removed something from his mother's handbag and hid this centredness that will create grown­ Mark Furlong item in his pocket. The practitioner noticed this and, assuming ups who will be 'terrible relationship lectures in Social­ a consensus on parenting policy, a little later asked the boy's partners, parents and employees'. Work at La Trobe mother, 'Did you notice your boy taking something out of your Marshalled to advance the cause University_ bag and hiding it in his pocket?' of the opposing side are a suite 'Yes, I saw Tom do that: the mother replied. 'It was a chocolate of formidable experts, an bar, but I am not going to say anything; Somewhat taken aback, aggregation that lists arguments the chiropractor replied, 'Really, I don't understand. Why not from a diverse range of authorities. say something?' The mother then calmly said, 'It is a jungle out These sources include the Dalai there, a dog-against-dog fight. As early as possible in life, it's Lama ('The most important thing much better he learns to recognise his opportunities; My you can give your children is love') neighbour, also a mother, saw the boy's action and even more and a phalanx of high-profile so the mother's response as horrifying. 'I'm not going to say psychotherapists, such as Alice anything, but I reckon it's likely this kid is going to end up as Miller, who argues there is a some kind of psychopath; 'wounded child' within all those who have problems in their adult That two educated, motivated parents could take positions lives (and isn't that all of us?). which diverge so sharply brings into focus how parenting, like Perhaps incited by the logic of childhood itself, has become a hot zone, an intensely fractious Miller's view, the sense of indignant arena. In this uncertain place many parents are struggling to grievance many current parents have navigate their way through the key 'policy' questions that have come to harbour about their own to be plotted: Do I offer my kids the kind of unconditional back­ childhoods inclines them towards up (as if this is equated with love) that I never had, or is it better the view that sparing the praise to hold the line and be positive about saying no, to keep some spoils the child. distance and take care not to be too affirming? Yet, this account of there being only two sides to the argument is misleading. For example, the mum The young women-girls?-who in the above vignette is not being have sailed their yachts to public sentimental, nor would she in any way see herself as indulging her prominence, albeit with different children. On the contrary, her point outcomes, have been termed is that her son has to learn to be competent-to be tough enough and 'extreme kids'. These high opportunistic enough to survive in a achieving, high risk minors have free-trade zone. This logic is resonant; it chimes been encouraged, even hot-housed, with the times in powerful ways, but by their parents to dare to do what it is not an attitude that is new. For example, parents living in rough is not only objectively dangerous neighbourhoods often believed that but what until very recently has their children needed to grow up tough-if they didn't they would 10-11 2010 been culturally prohibited as lack the wherewithal to be able take NQ108 care of themselves. It was thought _inappropriate for children. sensible to allow, perhaps even ACAINST THE CURRENT 10 encourage, a degree of violence in the home for the same reason. Similarly, isn't it best to prepare children for the tough realities of an existence organised around the values of the marketplace? Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant physicist and atom bomb pioneer, was reported to have said, 'My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things. It gave me no normal, healthy way to be a bastard! And that's where the policy issue sits: if a child IS to end up well-adjusted, is it necessary to be socialised to be so hard-boiled as to be a kind of acceptable bastard? In so far as this reality requires one to be a 'reflexive strategiser'-the term high-profile sociologist Lord Anthony Giddens uses to positively describe what might otherwise be labelled sneakily self-advancing-it follows that our kids have to learn this competence. A question then arises: at what age is it "..That's very entrepreneurial of you Timmy ... " developmentally healthy to be a strategiser, a thoughtful arranger of opportunities? yachts to public prominence, albeit with different outcomes, have Controversy recently broke out over the propriety been termed 'extreme kids'. Other members of this growing cadre of allowing sixteen-year-old Jessica Watson to include, as Lisa White recently discussed in The Age, pre-teenage sail around the world. On one side was Dr Simon matadors in Mexico and the thirteen-year-old boy from California Crisp, an expert psychologist from Monash who this year became the youngest ever person to climb Mt University. After jessica's arrival back in Australia Everest. There is a·new candidate for this club too, Dutch Crisp wrote in The Age that the community fourte~n-year-old Laura Dekker. To the delight of her parents, in 'should allow soon-to-be adult children to take July thIS year a Dutch court overturned an earlier ruling that Laura risks' and that Jessica and her parents were could not attempt to become the youngest round-the-world sailor. modelling the importance of young people These high achieving, high risk minors have been encouraged, even learning about ambition and risk-taking. hot-housed, by their parents to dare to do what is not only Enveloped in the public euphoria occasioned by objectively dangerous (climb high mountains, fight bulls) but what Jessica's success, Dr Crisp's tone was quietly, but until very recently has been culturally prohibited as inappropriate clearly, triumphant. for children. The alternative position is to sceptically view At first glimpse the extreme kids phenomenon is startling. This such heroic success stories. Eulogising single shock tends to quickly fade as media familiarity leaches out this winners masks the possibility that childhood as a initial charge. For t:xample, although it features squads of eight to period of play, of complex and ambiguous twelve-year-old children performing advanced, graded culinary innocence, is being destroyed by the depiction of tasks in an intensely scrutinised environment, Junior Master Chef young people as 'busting-to-get-out mini-adult has rocketed up the TV ratings. Rather than being seen as entrepreneurs: junior citizens who could be exploitative, even ghoulish, in its apparent pro-social enthusiasm Richard Branson or Laurel Jackson success stories Junior Master Chef is seen as 'inspiring' -which is the highest ' if only those who inhibit them would back off. As form of praise on a dying planet. Valerie Krips noted in Arena Magazine 103, understandings of childhood are discourses with In the classic text The History of Childhood (1974) Philippe Aries material effects. The emerging depiction of detailed the ways in which the construction of childhood has childhood as a site of entrepreneurship is a case radically changed over the centuries. For example, as children in in point. poor families were once understood to be part of an economic unit, it was not thought cruel to send young children to work. More, the neo-liberal parading of the exceptional That is, these entities were not viewed as children in the way success story obscures the fact that the great educated persons now understand young people to be. Due to the majority of the children who dare to attempt what dissemination of the theories of infant development, particularly Jessica Watson did will fail. For example, Abby those of Jean Piaget and, to a lesser extent, John Bowlby and his Sunderland, another sixteen-year-old solo round­ associates, 'educated' people have come to know that children do the-world sailor, had her yacht disabled in not cognitively and emotionally process events as adults do. We mountainous seas in the middle of the Indian now know children must progress through stages of development. Ocean and had to be (expensively) rescued. Poignantly, Abby Sunderland's near death In the time when the child was considered an adult, albeit of a experience occurred just weeks after 'our Jessica' smaller scale, it was self-evident that there was inside the child a completed her mission.