The Jim Anderson Syndrome

As my sister Anne pointed out at our Aunt Bobbie’s wake, my siblings and I grew up in a sort of Leave It to Beaver world, except of course that our mom never wore pearls while doing housework. We never knew how lucky we were because our normal was – wait for it – just our normal.

Until my own kids started school, I never realized how lucky they were nor how cloistered was my own upbringing.   Mary and I were members of the PTA mafia at our daughters’ elementary school and frequent volunteers thereafter. We considered it a privilege to be involved with a fabulous group of parents. We didn’t always agree on everything and we had our tense moments but the bottom line was that the Simases and Olssons and Prestons and Prescotts and all the others had a very high give-a-shit factor and put their volunteer time where their mouths were.

The ironic thing is, we all got to know each other well because there were so few of us, relative to the school student population. I’m not saying there’s a moral imperative for being active in the PTA. Some parents are active in other ways, some work two jobs or have medical problems, etc. And some great parents are involved with their kids in other ways that don’t intersect with the classroom-mom crowd.

The thing is, even after allowing for differences in how parents expressed their caring, there were loads of kids in the school whose parents just didn’t seem to give a damn. We had kids who arrived at school unregistered, who showed up without an idea what to do for lunch, who showed up with dirty clothes and unwashed faces. My all time fave was the kindergartner who was dropped at the curb the first day of school, unregistered  and whose lack of an idea what to do or where to go was almost as troubling as the fact that she didn’t know her home address or even when – or whether – her parents would return to pick her up.

This would never have happened in the Father Knows Best world in which I grew up. But the truth is, the expectation that all fathers would be clones of Jim Anderson and the mothers like June Cleaver gave us all a false image of what we could expect when we ourselves became parents. The sad truth is that some fathers most decidedly don’t know best and some don’t even give a crap. And of course, some are monsters.

We were extraordinarily lucky, as were our daughters. Their peer groups comprised kids who were raised to believe in themselves and most of all, to believe they could trust the world around them. And so long as the adults around them were Ernie and Sharon or Mike and Helen, that trust was well placed. As long as the kids in their hang out group were Catherine or Alex or Sam, we need not have worried.

But not every kid they’d run into was raised in the Anderson or Cleaver household. Some of them were raised by absent or abusive or simply incompetent parents.

We can’t control the home life of every kid. We can’t even control the peer group with whom our own children hang. Trust me, I tried occasionally and it did NOT work out that well.

What we can do, collectively speaking, is make sure that every kid is provided with some of the basics in the form of a good education. Every kid should view school as a place where they can go and be safe and valued and – get this – educated. It’s the least we can do. It’s the least we should do.

There’s a welter of argumentation going on this election cycle. Frankly, there are so few of the issues that I thoroughly understand that I’m going back to basics in making my decision. I think of the basic things that we as a society should provide the next generation and surely that includes seven hours a day of being safe, feeling valued, a foundation of learning and with maybe a healthful lunch thrown in.

There are of course other differences between the candidates that will affect my vote. But at the bottom line, I’m voting as proxy for the well-being of the kids with whom my grandchildren will have to form their world.

Make of that what you will.