For reasons I'm sure stem from the fact that children are not of legal voting age, there is some sort of philosophy floating around that says we're indoctrinating children when we bring them into politics at a young age. By default, this philosophy suggests that indoctrination of children is wrong.

Holy jumps in logic, Batman. I was only referring to this specific form of "indoctrination," not the passing on of values generally.

Anyway, at this age, this kind of stuff is all about the parents anyway. It uses the kid as a walking billboard. Tacky (see post above ;-)

I think you are correct. Without some sort of foundation to build on you have no way to get started. Everything just sinks into the mud or falls apart.

"Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching.
They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck."
-Proverbs 1:8-9

I think the real reason we are seeing this is because the Boomers have all had kids. As a generation, the boomers by-and-large forsook their parents teachings. Now they aren't teaching their kids because they don't think its important. After all they didn't do what their parents told them so why teach their kids anything? The kids should just find their own way. This has just given their kids the impression that nothing matters and you should just do what you want. What a great foundation to build on.

As for the the old people saying that kids are rebellious and such. I think you're wrong on this one. People have been saying similar things for as long as we have recorded writing. Sumerian Cuneform tablets have been found saying "These children, why back in my day..." Kids are going to be rebellious and want to go hang out with their friends, it is a natural part of adolescence. However that doesn't mean that parents should just give up and let them. Parents just need to adjust their parenting style accordingly.

Memer: Holy smokes he who thinketh more highly of himself than he ought ;-) I didn't write this post based on your comments....I know you didn't imply that passing on of values was wrong.

Jeff: In Biblical culture the age of maturity was far younger than what it is today. America lacks a true "rite of passage". Our rite of passage is turning legal drinking age, or getting a driver's license. I think we've suffered culturally because of this. I don't buy the hype that teenagers are meant to be rebellious. I don't see that as the norm in the Bible or in other cultures. Do you?

With all due respect, teenagers with any level of slack are rebellious. If not in their teens then earlier. Physiologically young children aren't mentally capable of the abstract reasoning that adults are. Evaluative reasoning is a higher and more advanced cognitive function that takes a while to develop. When that does kick in you are going to experience some rebelliousness and questioning of authority. Suddenly they aren't listening to you and believing you, they're listening and testing what you say.

Most of the cultures that don't experience it do so because they have very strict consequences to discourage it. Your family could disown you. Under Mosiac Law if you were a rebellious son unwilling to accept discipline, the people of israel took you to the edge of town and stoned you to death. Perhaps the reason 13 is picked as the age of adulthood is because it reclassified teenage rebelliousness as a dispute between adults. If you see teenagers more as budding adults instead of children, perhaps you handle the transition better.

Holy smokes he who thinketh more highly of himself than he ought

Hee! Ye know me too well, young! ;-)

Are you guys using 'rebellious' to be synonymous with making a mistake?

I know I made several mistakes in my [just passed] teenage years, but I never 'rebelled' against anything of the fundamental values that my parents taught (religion, social customs, etc.) I might've overstepped my authority, or disobeyed, but I can't recall ever doing a 180 on my parents.

I find that rebellion occurs most often when the child 1) Hasn't had a foundation of values laid for them 2) Has had no authoritative figure in their household [especially a father figure].

If I did not have a father figure in my home, I know of several, less desirable role models that I could've chosen. My parents reside in an upper middle-class neighrborhood, and all of my (African-American) childhood friends have been to jail, or dropped out of school. All of them had no authoritative figures in their household.

My kids are 3, 5, and 7. I know the two older ones despise Kerry and love the President very much, because we have discussed with them different aspects of each man's career and candidacy. The 3-year-old pretty much rolls his eyes and walks away when we talk about this stuff, he's just not that interested. But since both Mom and Dad are news junkies, the two older kids are interested in what interests us so much. They know about the war, having heard stories or seen the occasional photo in the paper -- we do not let them watch TV news, ever, and we chased them off to their playroom when we watched the debates, too. They are too young for discussions of abortion and stem cell research, for example. (In fact, I can't think of any age at which they'll be able to deal with the knowledge that women kill their babies before their born. I think that's going to seriously mess with their heads, so I'm hoping to keep it off the table for a good long while.)

Needless to say, I'm all in favor of indoctrinating children -- I think of it as innoculating them against the diseases propagated by popular culture: disrespect, laziness, a sense of entitlement, over-emphasis on sexuality, etc etc etc.

Ambra, if you catch yourself imitating your parents now, just imagine how often it will happen when you have your own family! It's scary sometimes, but you know? I love my mom and dad and I feel lucky that I have their example to go on. Some of my siblings were ultra-permissive with their kids, in a kind of retro-rebellion against my rather strict (but not harsh) parents. The irony? Now their kids are having kids, and they are hardliners, way more strict than my mother ever was. It seems as if permissiveness may be a self-limiting parenting philosophy: even those who "benefitted" from it appear to recognize it as useless, and accordingly discard it when they are raising their own kids.

I agree that indoctrination can be a good thing, but doubt very much that radical, hemp smoking Democrats are better than open minded people fence sitters, and it does not necessarily follow that said hemp smokers will be more open to change based on their early indoctrination. On the contrary, that early indoctrination (not to mention smoke from the "herb"), may color their thinking for a very long time. Ambra herself is a case in point. She has not moved that far away from her Democrat roots. Some of her stuff sounds like it has been taken straight from a Democrat party commercial- note her knee-jerk reference to "greedy" Republicans.

Um, Harold, are there not greedy Republicans as much as there are greedy Democrats? It was JOKE based on the fact that we pigeon-hole our parents. ;-)

Alex: I think you're absolutely right on your two points. Still, I know young men raised without fathers but with strong mothers who laid down the law.

There is a general feeling of disrespect for authority in our generation. I can't say that's without good reason as many of us have large imprints of wrongdoing left on behalf of those who call themselves "authority figures". Still, I can't say this attitude is doing us much good. We're fiercely loyal when we want to be, but the overwhelming sense of immaturity at the hands of a society that expects us to spend a good 4 years living a life of regret is just ridiculous.

Jeff: Respectfully, I still disagree. Yes, there comes a stage (in fact multiple stages) where kids will test their parents. Heck, I still test my parents to this very day. It's more fun that way. But there's a huge difference between testing boundaries and being outright disrespectful and rebellious.

You bring up Mosaic law, but I don't see anything wrong with enforcing strict penalties for refusing to accept discipline. The Bible calls that a bastard, and if you ask me, we have too many bastards running around today. The more traditional part of me wants to say we need some good old Michael Fay beatings going on. Heh. But back to reality...

Point is, teenagers rise to the expectation we place on them. Growing up in our household, we were held to high expectations. Did we always hit them? Heavens no. But my parents rarely pandered to some sociological norm of teenage apathy. We were expected to act according to the standard placed on us by the household, and not what "everybody else was doing". I question our society's standards of maturity. If you ask me, we've set up a system where the maturation process happens far too late.

Joan: I like the "innoculating" term. That's the real shot they need. Not some silly flu vaccine. And you're right. I inherited the good and the bad, but I feel honored and blessed to have had the parents I did. God knows what Hes doing. I wouldn't be who I am today without them. Go figure.

I like the term "inoculating" (yes, the word has only one 'n') instead of "indoctrinating" as well. The problem with indoctrinating someone too rigidly is that it tends to CREATE rebellion, rather than teaching the principles and/or morals a child needs to live their life productively and successfully.
jan

There is, however, a difference between indoctrinating children (which I agree, should be done mildly) and expoiting children; while the baby tee-shirt speaks to the indoctrination, it also has a component of exploitation -- these children are becoming symbols of something they can't comprehend and may someday be dispossessed of. Of course, both sides are guilty of this (the republican whose sign got torn up, and about half of the moveon.org films). I actually spent some time stamping campaign letters for a representative when I was 6 years old -- but this wasn't exploitation (well maybe the light labor was) but even if I were to disagree with the politics of said representative, I still consider it to at least have been an interesting experience -- we spent 15 minutes laughing at the fact that some fellow's last name was "srb" and how it didn't have any vowels.