On Politics and Parenting

Grow up already

Being a parent has an effect on your politics. But not necessarily in the ways you’d imagine. I don’t mean in the sense of wanting what’s best for your children, of wanting them to have access to quality education, or wanting them to be safe and to be healthy, and then voting in a manner that you think will maximize or ensure those wants are met. Well, okay. All that, sure. Naturally. But that’s not what I’m getting at. What I’m talking about is the diminished tolerance you develop for grownups behaving in childish ways.

So much of parenting is constantly policing the pettiest squabbles among the littles. It leaves you with no patience for such snowflake notions as “triggering.” Because everything the kids do is triggering. Every action of one triggers another, whether by design or simple immaturity. One of them picking up the wrong toy sends another of them into conniptions. Humming the wrong tune, preferring the wrong cartoon? Chaos ensues. Even cuddling too much with Daddy. All these things and myriad other such “microaggressions” cause an immediate eruption of screaming and fighting.

It’s the epitome of childishness. It’s ridiculous. It’s insane-making. And it’s sure as hell not something to be coddled or encouraged but rather to be reprimanded and corrected.

And yet, in our modern society, precisely such childishness is actively championed and protected, creating a nation of whining infants, while it’s the adults who are scolded and given time outs.

When children are fighting over a toy, how does a responsible parent respond? By taking the toy away from both of them? By sending them to their rooms? By offering up another toy for the aggrieved party, or perhaps suggesting a new activity they can both do together?

Any of those options seems reasonable enough. But what you don’t do is chastise the one who innocently picked up the “wrong” toy:

“You should have known picking up that toy was going to make your brother mad, even though there was no way you could have known because he just arbitrarily decided to be mad the moment you picked it up out of pure pettiness.”

How would that be fair? How is it not just rewarding bad behavior? And anyway, at some point you no longer care who caused the screaming. You care only who’s doing the screaming. And you want it to stop.

Neither side of the political spectrum is innocent when it comes to acting infantile. Like when Trump was first elected and all the Lefties were marching in the streets, petulantly declaring he’s “not my president.” Oh, I’m sorry, did you recently renounce your U.S. citizenship? No? Okay then, did he steal the vote? No? Ah, so it was, in fact, a perfectly fair election and you just don’t happen to like the results. Hmm. Where have we seen that recently?

And don’t even get me started on the right-wingers. I mean, now that Trump’s truly not anyone’s president, what do we get? “Let’s go Brandon.” “Trump 2024: The Revenge Tour.” Mike Lindell being a household name for non-pillow-related reasons. Sigh.

Our nation, our planet, and our species are facing an unprecedented series of interrelated crises. But our inability to be civil, our inability to rationally discuss our differences, our unwillingness to act like grownups and tolerate one another’s foibles while taking responsibility for our own actions and reactions both — this is the most pressing crisis of all. How can we solve anything while acting like a bunch of spoiled toddlers?

Colby Hess is a freelance writer and photographer from Seattle, and author of the freethinker children’s book The Stranger of Wigglesworth.

If you’re just discovering Medium and you like what you see, please help support this author and others by subscribing here.