Applied Nostalgia Essays - Family, Parenting, Kinship And Descent

Applied Nostalgia Applied Nostalgia--A Parental Look Back Without past memories, Americans lack a standard to base present conditions upon. These memories lie carefully shuffled and categorized in the giant shifter called the brain to crudely approximate the present standard of life. They hope to draw gratification and fulfillment in the progression of the quality of their and especially their childrens lives. This innate desire to compare the past to the present drives personal and political decisions, especially conservatives who advocate a change to the policies and values of the past. Today, the faded memories of an emerging group of parents of their post-World War II upbringing, like cherished family dinners around the kitchen oak table and careless excursions into town, against a perceived modern backdrop haze of random violence, date rape, and single parent households, turned a group of parents hearts and minds to the bygone 1950s. They hope to revive their cherished childhood memories. The Medveds, parental authors, recall their upbringing: The women enjoyed being home for the kids and peers came over for basketball and homemade lemonade (Paul 64). Shalit, author of Return to Modesty: A Lost Virtue remembers when past women helped around the community and raised their children with a unparalleled dedication (Paul 64). In the wake of the Colorado school massacre such a move seems justified. Yet, even in spite of many social ills of our drug-addicted, sex-obsessed, morally lax and spiritually bankrupt society (Paul 64) parents remain skeptical. of such a drastic reversal in a drastically changed time. For now, the skepticism over the reversal to the past merits further examination before any drastic action. The parents advocating a change to the past promote a bleak present and future with problems ranging across the social, political, and economic spectrum, afraid that their worries might mirror in their kids. Adult fairy tales that marriage will last forever, sex produces only pleasure, loyalty to an institution will be returned, and elected leaders are benevolent and wise(Paul 63) are to unbearable to be placed on the weak shoulders of their children. Thus, they shield this information from the children. Armed with reams of statistics, especially in the drop the number of nuclear family homes in the United States (Two 1), they present a fair case for the reversal to the parenting style of the aging baby boomer population. An incomplete list of their claimed ills includes single parent households, an overly demanding work environment, influx of undesirable media, and the feminist movement. Fatherlessness, as David Blackhord president of Institute for American values points out, is the most harmful demographic trend of our generation...and the leading cause of declining child well-being in our society. It is also the engine driving our most urgent social problems, from crime, to adolescent pregnancy, to sexual abuse, to domestic violence against women. The evidence is now strong that the absence of fathers from the lives of children is one of the most important causes [of the above problems] (UCSF 1) In one augmenting study performed by the University of California at San Francisco on Californias family makeup reported that twenty percent of children under age eighteen are currently raised by a single adult. Accusative fingers of these nostalgic parents turn like an vengeful hinged gate from family structure to the work environment, citing statistics on the economic difficulties that modern employers cause, or on personal obsessions with work that deters from the infinitely more important job at home. With parents trapped in consuming jobs, they leave their kids to fend for themselves (West 2). The type of work and work environment changed in the last few decades with the advent of new technologies and pressure on employers to cut costs. According to the parents and researchers who advocate a reversal to the past, the modern work environment is besieged with problems. Reductions in real wages, corporate downsizing and the cessation of the company man ethos that governed American labor relations during the 1950s and 1960s has made it impossible for parents to devote necessary time to their children because they have to work harder than every just to make ends meet (West 1). The goals of financial success have placed the goals of raising a kid to the back burner. These impersonal parents scrape up the few extra dollars to buy the hearts of their children (McCallum 2). In our materialistic society, parents are more concerned about the physical things they provide their children that about the values and habits that prepare children