My parents warned me—repeatedly—not to engage in conversations concerning politics or religion.
“No matter what you say, you’ll only end up offending someone,” they said. “You’ll lose friends and make enemies.”
That was good advice then, in the 1950s and ‘60s, and still is. Since 1970, however, a third, equally incendiary taboo has been added to the “Don’t Talk About” list: parenting. Mothers are acutely aware of this boundary; fathers, not so much. Bill can tell Frank he spanks his kids and be assured that even though Frank does not spank, he is not going to gossip about Bill’s parenting heresy with other dads and cause him to become pater non grata as a consequence. Despite Bill’s nonchalance, however, his wife, Imogen, is scared to death that Frank will tell his wife of the parenting horrors that transpire in their household and his wife will tell someone on the Good Mommy Club grapevine and she and her kids will never again be invited to a play date.
Albeit I am a ‘cis-gendered’ male and proud of it, I’ve been made acutely aware on numerous occasions since becoming a so-called parenting expert of the divisive nature of my field.
“To be honest, John—and please know that I did my best to promote you as our keynote speaker—a majority on the committee feels that, well, you’re just too controversial, and believe me, I intend to bring your name up again in a couple of years, but for now, well, it’s just not going to work. Sorry.”
That’s a fair rendering of how I discover that I am, in the words of the inimitable Otis Redding, “too hot to handle” for the intellectually timid.
I am controversial because I believe childrearing in America went off the rails in the early 1970s, which is when parents became sold on the absurd notion that knowledge of children and how to correctly raise them was the intellectual property of people with capital letters after their names—i.e., psychologists and other representatives of the mental health professions.
I am controversial because until I recently resigned my license (in good standing, paradoxically), I was legally able to refer to myself as a psychologist, notwithstanding (and here is the paradox) that I take every opportunity to point out that psychology is a pseudo-science guilty of deceptive business practices and probably in violation of the RICO Act. Those are felonies, by the way.
I am controversial because I believe to my soul that Baby Boomers were the last generation of American children to be raised by people who, on average, knew what they were doing. Every relevant statistic supports that contention, most pertinent of which is the fact that child mental health in the 1950s was a whopping ten times better than it is today. And in the 1950s, I think there were three children in the whole of America who were seeing therapists, and they all lived in Manhattan.
I am controversial because in an age when progressivism—regardless of the topic at hand—is generally regarded as a sign of intellectual superiority, I believe that if today’s parents used their great-grandparents as parenting role models, we’d all be better off.
I am controversial because I contend that God’s instructions concerning the raising of children are all one needs to do a decent job. Furthermore, parents who strive to conform themselves to God’s instructions will discover that childrearing is a relatively simple and enjoyable affair. Not entirely problem-free, mind you, but close.
When parents adhered to biblical principles, nearly everyone agreed on how to raise children. Mothers and fathers agreed. Neighbors agreed. Parents and teachers agreed. Et cetera. And then, along came professional “experts” who did nothing but throw one monkey wrench after another into that agreement.
Which is why there are now three taboo subjects.
