The NYT blog Freakonomics has a post in which the question is raised as to what parents’ goals are for their kids. The Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley (writes Freakonomics author Steven Levitt) says parents’ goals should be to raise “happy and emotionally literate” children. The author disagrees and says he wants to raise children who will be “happy and successful as adults” - even if that means they’re not very happy as children. Then one commenter wonders if “emotionally literate” is just code for being nice all the time, which he feels is neither productive nor desirable, pointing out that it’s also something that’s especially difficult for young boys. I’d say that’s all the more reason to teach them how to be more emotionally literate… imagine how much less misery grown men would cause if they reconsidered their stance on being nice. I don’t think “nice” per se is the point, however, but I’ll get to that later. Another commenter points out that parents who say they just want their children to be happy drive her nuts: why not say you want them to work for a greater good, be compassionate, etc. instead - being happy is a rather individual quality, after all, and when it comes to the question of how one should live life, it is also rather beside the point because, for example, torturing small animals might make someone happy but it’s doubtful (one hopes) that their parents would really want them to be happy quite that way. Others mentioned that you really can’t define what your children will consider success because it will very likely be something different from what you think success is.
The other day A. and I were talking about what we hope our daughter will be like (provided all goes well and she’s born healthy, of course). I said I hope she’ll be spirited, insatiably curious, and compassionate. A. said he hopes she’ll be brave. Maybe (surely, in fact) we are projecting our own values onto her: the qualities of the kinds of adults we tend to like. But in the end, that’s what it comes down to: one has to raise one’s children in a way that allows them to fit successfully into the community or society we consider ourselves a part of, or else the one they will consider themselves a part of. And there is a balancing of the interests of the individual and the interests of the community going on there, which demands, to my mind, emotional literacy. Compassion is another way to put it. Which can’t exist without curiosity (about other people, for one thing), and a form of bravery or spiritedness that gives someone the confidence to trust their perceptions, and to trust other people too. Happiness comes from that, I think.
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