[quote=walterwhite]when we were young we were far more ignored than children are today. your parents kicked you out into the world and you spent a day exploring and mixing it upw ith various neighbor kids and generally amusing yourself. you came back at nightfall to be fed, like some sort of feral animal int he process of being domesticated. Now we pay more attention to children, much to their detriment. they do not need this much parental attetion. they need to be ignored in the best sense, in that the parents set up the right situation for them, and then let em grow. the last thing a kid needs is a parent who dropped out of the workforce to “focus” on them. what a nightmarre. parents aren’t friends to chidlren. they should be slightly mysterious. separate. above. not hanging out buddies.

however, you ignore your wife at your peril.

it might be best to occasionally delete certain things she says though during certain episodes of anger, despair or craziness, or at least not listen entirely carefully.

what would have happened to calvin of calvin and hobbes if his mom and dad had “focussed” on him more? Would that have been a good thing?[/quote]
We can’t kick our kids out into the streets today while mom and dad go to work. Why not contrast that ideal tutelage with the kid going to day care 6Am to 6PM, standing in the corner puking from the stress of his lonely life and a diet of crappy factory box food?

There is a serious tendency here to paint this idea of Mortgage free, semi-employed family life as dysfunctional and scary without valuing the opportunities and potential it creates. What is dysfunctional is so many people living beyond their means or up to the max of them.

On the dark flip side, look at the suicide rates and other failures of the ambitious child as product sector of the ascensionist “upper middle class”.

It all comes down to personal choice, Nobody is perfect, we don’t all have the same backgrounds. What is ridiculous to some, is genius from another.