Stop forcing children to grow up too quickly, says Archbishop of Canterbury.
Well, yes. "too quickly" is all very well - but what do you mean by that, Rowan?
We shall test you relentlessly in schools, we shall bombard you with advertising, often highly sexualised advertising, we shall worry you about your prospects and skills from the word go.
I happen to agree that these things are unhelpful - but what to do? Bans, rules and regulations? Or might we take personal action as responsible parents to
be the change we want to see in the world?
We shall do all we can to make childhood a brief and rather regrettable stage on the way to the real thing...
The myth of golden childhood again - a discrete and measurable stage of development in the life of every child; a time of innocence and joy that was once so gloriously celebrated by the merry urchins who were sent up chimneys, down mines and around looms throughout their waking hours.
...which is ‘independence’, turning you into a useful cog in the social machine that won’t need too much maintenance.
Hmmm. I see independence as a positive goal, unless one wants to be vulnerable to authoritarians attempting to govern the intimacies of one's life in some way. Whilst others might think and do differently, my role as parent to my children is to ensure they grow into independent people - at their own, unique pace - as human beings are genetically predispositioned to do. I don't believe it is my role to make them happy, or kind, or even responsible. They must choose those things. But supporting their transition to independence, and modelling the behaviours and qualities I would like them to have - yes, that is most certainly my job.
Parents should learn to enjoy their children’s dependence on them, instead of forcing them prematurely into independence.
Yes, a child forced prematurely into independence is an unhealthy and unhappy thing, and a child's dependence is so fleeting it should be enjoyed and cherished while it exists. But how equally unhealthy and unhappy is the child whose dependence is artificially preserved - most often by parents, but also parenting experts and advisers - who are terrified of risk, of raw human emotion and drives, of life itself!
In the long term, dependence is not a productive state to remain in. Interdependence is possibly the state most worth striving for, where independent human beings realise the benefits of working together voluntarily and co-operatively in order to look after each other as well as themselves.
Each of us is called to grow and mature from an infancy of faith into a mature willingness — like Mary’s — to be instruments not of our own ambition, but of God’s will.
Perhaps this is the problem. I do believe myself to be an instrument of my own ambition. And I don't think that makes me a bad person or parent.
Update: I see Katherine also covers the Archbishop's Christmas sermon here.
