The truth is…yesterday’s parent-controlled childhood protected children not only from sex, from work, and from adult decisions but also from the dominance of peers and from the market, with all its pressures to achieve, its push for status, its false lures, its passing fads. – Kay Hymowitz in Ready or Not – Why Treating Children as Small Adults Endangers Their Future – and Ours
Think about the impact and control your child’s peers are having on them. How are they being shaped by them? As parents our role is to shape our children, and part of that is controlling how they are shaped and who shapes them. Hannah Arendt is quoted by Hymowitz as pointing out that the authority of a group is stronger and more tyrannical than the severest authority of an individual person. We would do well to recognise this and protect our children.