Yes, Phillip Larkin they do
Mar. 20th, 2009 02:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fingertroubleJust heard about the whole chattering debacle about that Myerson book. Where a mother has been writing professionally about her son since the age of 2, initially anonymously but wrote the 'OMG DRUGZ!!!!' drama novel identifying her son after throwing him out.
Understandably the son, who does look rather Pete Docherty but seems to express himself far better, is rather upset at all this.
Why do the middle classes hate their children so much?
They do, don't deny it. It's like little inconveniences that interrupt the dinner party or the Spanish tapas meal (eh Maddy?)...despised, passively aggressively treated, then attacked cos they can't stand the headgames and politics like this kid.
The working classes might have excuses and reasons - poverty lack of education, stress, large family sizes, habitual neglect - but what interests me is the stories like this of family breakdown where no-one is lacking of any of those or have small family sizes. I read that line years ago about middle classes hating their children and it struck so many chords, not so much my rather non-typical family in my peer group, but among my mostly middle class or upper peers...
Yes I've been there, was 'analysed' by my mother, a trainee psychologist since birth...and like all kids sensed it very early on. Although this is none of my business and there's a lot of ranty hyperbole (had to spend ages to find a non-Daily Fail / Torygraph link - interestingly the moral outrage is against the mother, not the son there, where the Guardian is of course pro since she worked for them) - I do sort of in a small way understand....and mine wasn't really a middle class background with the proper strains (sort of arriviste mobile working class...).
I hope he comes out of this well and not just a tabloid drama...but like the horrible Sunday Express 'expose' on the kids of Dunblane - survivors of a terrible tragedy who SHOCK HORROR get drunk and act out as 18 year olds and haven't spent their lives in convents or eternally unstable for the last 13 years...that this kind of intrusive behaviour towards kids seems endemic - from Jade's kids being used to sell papers to the tabloids muck-raking via Facebook trawling for juicy photos and statuses to middle class parents writing about their seemingly normal - if rather dysfunctional, which seems par for the course - lives. And of course all of this scars young adults, probably affecting work opportunities and making their lives hell - for what? Not very much it seems.
And the sad part is mostly powering this is social media, and the press seem to think it's fair use and fair game to use Facebook and such like to talk about people either thrust in the news or not properly newsworthy at all (being related to someone or something happen to you 13 years ago is not 'public interest') - seems the whole reality TV thing is now having it's predictable privacy fallout. As John pointed out, that 13 year old father got Max Clifford as his publicist...it seems we are teaching kids how to be media-savvy Jades, and throwing them to the lions at earlier and earlier age - or letting them be devoured anyway...like Jake Myerson. And then writing 'woe is me' books and articles about how much a fuck up they become - self fulfilling prophecy maybe?
Or maybe their only way to cope with such straightjackets is to take the John Peel method and fail the prescribed middle class smothering smugness and do something else instead... certainly this kid cutting off his mother from her career cash-cow - ie. writing about him and resulting headfuck - seems a very wise, and mature decision.
Understandably the son, who does look rather Pete Docherty but seems to express himself far better, is rather upset at all this.
Why do the middle classes hate their children so much?
They do, don't deny it. It's like little inconveniences that interrupt the dinner party or the Spanish tapas meal (eh Maddy?)...despised, passively aggressively treated, then attacked cos they can't stand the headgames and politics like this kid.
The working classes might have excuses and reasons - poverty lack of education, stress, large family sizes, habitual neglect - but what interests me is the stories like this of family breakdown where no-one is lacking of any of those or have small family sizes. I read that line years ago about middle classes hating their children and it struck so many chords, not so much my rather non-typical family in my peer group, but among my mostly middle class or upper peers...
Yes I've been there, was 'analysed' by my mother, a trainee psychologist since birth...and like all kids sensed it very early on. Although this is none of my business and there's a lot of ranty hyperbole (had to spend ages to find a non-Daily Fail / Torygraph link - interestingly the moral outrage is against the mother, not the son there, where the Guardian is of course pro since she worked for them) - I do sort of in a small way understand....and mine wasn't really a middle class background with the proper strains (sort of arriviste mobile working class...).
I hope he comes out of this well and not just a tabloid drama...but like the horrible Sunday Express 'expose' on the kids of Dunblane - survivors of a terrible tragedy who SHOCK HORROR get drunk and act out as 18 year olds and haven't spent their lives in convents or eternally unstable for the last 13 years...that this kind of intrusive behaviour towards kids seems endemic - from Jade's kids being used to sell papers to the tabloids muck-raking via Facebook trawling for juicy photos and statuses to middle class parents writing about their seemingly normal - if rather dysfunctional, which seems par for the course - lives. And of course all of this scars young adults, probably affecting work opportunities and making their lives hell - for what? Not very much it seems.
And the sad part is mostly powering this is social media, and the press seem to think it's fair use and fair game to use Facebook and such like to talk about people either thrust in the news or not properly newsworthy at all (being related to someone or something happen to you 13 years ago is not 'public interest') - seems the whole reality TV thing is now having it's predictable privacy fallout. As John pointed out, that 13 year old father got Max Clifford as his publicist...it seems we are teaching kids how to be media-savvy Jades, and throwing them to the lions at earlier and earlier age - or letting them be devoured anyway...like Jake Myerson. And then writing 'woe is me' books and articles about how much a fuck up they become - self fulfilling prophecy maybe?
Or maybe their only way to cope with such straightjackets is to take the John Peel method and fail the prescribed middle class smothering smugness and do something else instead... certainly this kid cutting off his mother from her career cash-cow - ie. writing about him and resulting headfuck - seems a very wise, and mature decision.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-20 03:59 am (UTC)Somehow, it persists. *ignorant shrug*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-20 07:50 am (UTC)Ugh.
My family is a-typical as well, although I did feel incredibly damaged from my upbringing all the way through my teens.
IMO, it comes down to being strong enough to stand up and break the cycle, like most all abuse cycles, or else repeat it. I wasn't abused, but I did have to stand up and fight for my own path in my life.