<p>So how’s this for parental input…
Me and H had the “college car” for a week, traded with kids for standard repairs. Open the trunk and find, among other things, a roll of condoms which, to my “mom” eyes, seemed a mile long. H’s assignment is to inform sons (but which one?) that storing his stash in the trunk of a car that reaches about 200 degrees on a regular basis is not a good idea.</p>
<p>doubleplay: You made me laugh. At least you don’t have to tell them.</p>
<p>Yes, double protection is a good thing.</p>
<p>Dross, nice points. I agree that “adult” children cannot expect unconditional support from parents if their actions are contrary to parental values. And each parent has to determine which values are not negotiable. </p>
<p>While I consider myself to be able and willing to respect my child’s choices, I can imagine several situations where I would draw the line. For instance I would not support my child in illegal or self-destructive activities (eg. drug abuse). I would not let her smoke in my house. I am sure there are some types of relationships that I would not support either- for instance if she came back from college with 4 boyfriends (in one visit) and wanted to engage in group sex in her bedroom, I would find it very difficult to be supportive. If she came back with a married college professor 20 years her senior, I would also be very distraught! But if she came back with one boy (or girl) friend with whom she seemed to have a non-hurtful relationship, I would respect her privacy. </p>
<p>Basically, I feel parents need to trust their children more and respect them more as they grow older. They will always be “our babies” but we are not doing them any favors by infantilizing them.</p>
<p>doubleplay,
That’s hysterical! My H would be cracking up and have a hard time being serious. Can you imagine them in the line at Cosco with the thousand pack? Hehehe! My H was horrified when I had to send him to the store for menstral supplies after our first child was born. After that he asked me about it twenty times during my last month of pregnancy “Are you sure that you have enough…you know, “supplies” on hand?”</p>
<p>This thread has me thinking about adult children (not sure if college age applies or not, probably not) and how much to get involved with personal choices. I think of my sister with a grown son who can’t STAND the woman he’s been living with for many years. She’s distraught about it and I asked her if she’s ever told him that. She said that he’s an adult and its none of her business. On one hand its not, but on the other hand, he’s her SON. As my kids are just 14 and 11 I’m still mulling this over. Interesting for me.</p>
<p>woody, I was thinking more in terms of ages 18+. I guess I am clueless, thus my username! :-)</p>
<p>Can somebody tell me how to do those cute little faces on here?</p>
<p>Hilarious. doubleplay! Our younger daughter came home from school the other day and asked me if her dad kept condoms in his underwear drawer. “ALL her friends dads do.”</p>
<p>Sarahsmom:</p>
<p>I am trying to come up with examples but the only ones that would drive me toward the views I have expressed are quite personal. Since I have discussed pre-marital sex and mentioned the influences that cause me to view sex as I do, I’ll just use it as an example. </p>
<p>I don’t think pre-marital sex is so much a deal-breaker that when a child engages in it I think he has necessarily broken culture. Saving oneself for marriage is an ideal I prefer because I see it as the most effective way to avoid the baggage and trauma I experienced as a result of my parents’ mistakes in this area. I also think marriage and sex are about exploration and adventure, and that it would be beneficial to a child’s marriage for him and his bride to first experience them together and grow forward from there. But if a child is engaged to someone and then has sex with them before marriage, and should they shortly thereafter follow through and marry, I won’t slit my wrists because they still likely avoided the thing I wished them to avoid. The only difference here was the sex occurred shortly before the ceremony and not afterward. Essentially the same unity and exclusivity exists here. When I give a cursory thought to it, I do not see that the actual marriage ceremony is filled with such cosmic significance that it needs literally to take place before sex. Yes, it is a public declaration - but of what? It is a public declaration of an unbreakable oath, a covenant, made to one other person. I don’t think the ceremony is the oath itself. I think the sex is the real marriage, that the oath takes place in bed verbally, physically, and in every other way that is humanly possible.</p>
<p>So now given my view of the meaning of sex, imagine how I might feel should my son have sex with a girl and then not follow through with marriage. Imagine if he does this, even leaving her crushed and abandoned as so often occurs with young people after breaking from such intimacy. In this case, he and I are going to be at complete odds because that sort of cavalier behavior is false in my view and not something with which I can be affiliated. It is at this point that I would begin to sense pressure to distance myself from the behavior and therefore in some way from its culprit, my son. People here may say “It’s his life and not yours”, but c’mon now. O.J. Simpson is as far away from being affiliated with me as Timothy McVeigh, and yet I was made to catch a lot of evil because of what he did. So if I am blamed for what some stranger does, we all know that if my own son should cause discomfort to others his actions would be associated with me too.</p>
<p>But it’s not simply what other people would say should my boy act in some characteristically “un-Drosselmeierian” way. It is most important to me what I would say about me-- and also what those closest to me would say. I am being driven by my remembrance of the loneliness and stress my mother endured all of those miserable years as a single mother raising me. I am fine today, and not twisted in the least. Marriage has been for me a mirror in which each day I look into my wife’s face, see myself, and see something very good. I am now convinced of what she has shown me about me. But Merciful Lord God, the early years were so terribly sad, too sad not to affect my views today. I think these sorts of circumstances have powerful affects on all who grow up in them. It just happens that their affects on me, instead of being rage, insecurity, and fear, caused a personal culture that seeks to avoid them. Moral virtue and sanctimony have little to do with it. I am reacting to pain-- positively I hope. It is now vitally important to me that when a woman or child, certainly my wife and children, think of a Drosselmeier, they think of uncommon pleasure and joy. For this reason I want to be an uncommon husband and father, one who spreads as much pleasure, enlightenment and joy as I can so that when I die my wife, children and even grandchildren will say with sincerity, “He was joy to us”. In some ways, I care for little else. It is why I exist, why I make the daily sacrifices I make. Now if my son, who carries my genes and bears my name should live contrary to this, trampling underfoot the things that matter most to me, that have blessed him all of his days, and that I have taught him with tears all of his young life, and instead begins to promote precisely the sort of disunity and even pain in others that has broken his father’s heart, I cannot see how I am obligated to in any way support him.</p>
<p>I am a guy as hardnosed and tough as nails as the next guy. I like all the masculine junk-- tools, sports, fishing, knives, guns. I have killed stuff-- never a human, but I’ve approached it in my younger days. I like gadgets, red meat, potatoes, and I hate shopping – unless its for tools, gadgets, knives, guns, and fun things like them. But somehow, I have all this other stuff going on too. I love conversation, and lots of it. I like listening, and feeling things very deeply. I am not trying to be falsely sweet when I say these things. I am feeling others and tuning into them to a most profound degree, and there is no doubt in my mind why. It is because of my having grown up sensing the varied, subtle and yet powerful emotions of my mother. It seems to me I will have a dreadful choice should my son decide not to take these things seriously and should he begin to live mostly for himself. I will by some means have to accept his new and contrary way, or not. I guess this thread has caused me to wonder what my obligations are here.</p>
<p>Dross, I don’t understand why some CCers are so surprised and have such strong reactions to your take on this subject. My family were mainline Protestants (not super religious) and I was raised exactly the way you’re raising your kids. Sex before marriage was not an option. It was the way my parents were raised as well, and I know MANY MANY kids that went to prep school and college with me (Northeasterners mostly) who were raised the way I was. Did we follow it? Some did, alot of us didn’t but in one way or the other have made it to middle age with our wits about us, trying to parent as best we can. Your ideas aren’t iconoclastic in the least and you shouldn’t be made to feel that way. The difference maybe is that we were raised in the 50’s and 60’s and today is a different day, but that doesn’t mean that you have to change with the times. Why should you?</p>
<p>Hey Drosselmier - Good Luck with that!</p>
<p>doubleplay…</p>
<p>Just attach a note to the condoms with the warning about heat in cars destroying condoms – the “right” son will get the message</p>
<p>Funny…to me, the goal of raising children was for them to “live for themselves”.</p>
<p>If I have done my job well, I should be proud to let them go, even if their views and choices end up being contrary to mine. Short of breaking the law, I can accept most everything else (ok, I would have troubles with tattoos…;)). </p>
<p>It would never occur to me that my grown children should live my way or the highway.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier,
Your view on marriage/sex is unique and I respect it, but I also feel that for the most part, your adult children are not a reflection of you. You have worked very hard to raise your sons well and to instill them with healthy values and morals. You can continue to be a mentor and advisor for your child, but unless you are enabling them in some way , if they hurt someone else, it is not your fault. At some point they have to take responsibility for their own actions and hopefully they’ve been doing that increasingly over the years.
We don’t want our kids to hurt other people, but relationships don’t always work out and we’re not responsible. Some of the most difficult breakups that I had, were with men I did not have sex with. We can’t predict how someone else with react to a breakup. All we can do is try to be compassionate and respectful and hope that they have good coping skills. I tell my girls to treat their boyfriends the way that they’d like to be treated, but if they don’t I can’t take on responsibility for it. I’ve worked very hard to be the best parent I can be and I continue to try to be a good role model and advisor, but at this point that is where it stops.
If you distance yourself from a child who make mistakes, you may be very alone someday. We all make mistakes and forgiveness is a truly valuable a gift. It is another thing that we need to model as parents.</p>
<p>Dross, what is your opinion on human cloning?</p>
<p>Hope I’m not highjacking the thread here by throwing this out, but is anybody else dubious of all of this condom usage talk in college? Maybe things have changed, but I can’t imagine after 4 Green Machines a kid saying, “oh, wait a minute. You might have an STD. Let me just stop a second here to get out the condom I have handy in my back pocket”. I don’t buy it. Maybe I’m just jaded!</p>
<p>
I think you misunderstand me here. I doubt there is anything that would cause me to reject my kid. I will always be here as long as I am here. My interest is in the result, the natural result, that takes place when a kid decides to break culture with his folks and proceed in life contrary to them. It seems to me I have an interest in maintaining what I believe is good behavior and that that interest will naturally pressure me to reject contrary behavior, even in my kids, until those kids should agree that their behavior lies outside of who we are (i.e. it is a mistake). Once the kid understands he has committed a mistake, forgiveness is natural. The issue is resolved. The only thing left to do then is clean up the mess. So I am not interested in this. What if he persists outside of the behavior that defines our family culture, and decides his new culture is best and that my way is not? What are the remaining obligations? It seems to me that, at best, I must remain unaffiliated with his way of life, perhaps even not acknowledging it, while trying somehow to love the kid. Again, I am not terribly settled on this. Just trying to explore it. Haven’t given a lot of thought to this really.</p>
<p>
It seems just a way to copy a person in order to make new people. I see nothing wrong with this in principle.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier, </p>
<p>Maybe you should explore these ideas with your clergy person. Keep exploring these thoughts and concepts and I hope that it all works out for you. </p>
<p>dke: I think you are right. That’s why STD’s are so rampant on campus.</p>
<p>
Well, if everyone else changes, it isolates me. I feel some of this, and so from time to time like to see how far people have moved (and how far I have moved), and whether their choices are the result of proven experience or something not as reliable.</p>