The Void of Parents

I was struck by a thought this week as I was driving Nighean Dhonn back from her soccer game on Saturday, as I watched the parents ebb and flow at the changing of the game.  The thought that struck me was "What do the children think of the parents?"

A bit of an odd thought, I know.  But as I began to dwell on it more, I realized what I was actually looking at was the interaction of the children and the coaches and reflecting back earlier in the day to when Na Clann were watching some reruns.

TV for young people is generally not kind to parents.  Too often most are portrayed in either one of three lights:  Overbearing, Incompetent, or out of touch.  Admittedly my pool of resources is somewhat aged - reruns from 3-5 years ago - but I believe the theory remains true.  Even if adults are portrayed as competent it is very seldom the actual parents themselves.  It's the other adults or near adults in their lives - older siblings, teachers - who very often function as the holders of wisdom and advice and the model to which the younger turn.

I'll be fair - I haven't completely fleshed out my thinking on the issue.  But as I've continued to roll it around in my mind, what I have come to wonder is why the concept of parents as competent people - even as personal heroes - is not more embraced - nay, perhaps even discouraged.

It's too diffuse a thought perhaps, and I don't know that I'm suggesting at all that there is some kind of huge secret plot.  It's just that the portrayal of parents, and the subsequent view of them in the child's life, almost seems to be more discouraging than encouraging of them as role models.

Is there conflict at times?  Of course.  Children are different from parents - but that is no different than any other relationship we have in our professional or personal lives.  In fact, part of what we have to learn is simply the ability to get along with and respect - or at least play nicely with - most everyone we meet.  Just because there's conflict doesn't mean that people aren't competent.

But why don't we (again, generally speaking as a society) encourage children to see their parents more as role models, as people as worthy as any of their other heroes to be emulated?  Why do we choose to present them as less than other adults?

Are there parents unworthy of emulation?  Sure.  There are parents that have done terrible things to their children and made shipwrecks of their lives.  But the same could be said of virtually any other class of hero that we foist on our children.  Is that in the case of other heroes their clay feet are hidden from us while our parents clay feet are always visible?  Possibly - but what a potential teaching experience  about outer and inner lives, about truly being what you seem to be (B. Franklin) rather than appearing to be one thing and actually being something else.

As I've said, I don't believe my thought patterns are fully congealed around this and it deserves some more consideration.  But I'm still left with the same thought:  why do we so often portray and represent parents as least reliable, least emulatable  of all adults?