The Winter of Our Disconnect Read Online Free PDF Page A

or something, but ... well, aren’t you? Boundary setting can be so hard, especially if, like me, you are secretly just a little intimidated by people who are more powerful, better looking, and wealthier than you are. Sure, they’re your kids and you love them. But they can still be pretty scary.
    That may be stating the case a little strongly. But as far as I can see, most parents of my generation—from the tail end of the Baby Boomers to the tender tip of Gen X—don’t really rule the roost. We sort of scratch around it apologetically, seeking consensus.
    We are bad at giving orders. But we are wonderful at giving options, and it’s a habit that starts right from the git-go. “Milk, sweet-heart?” we wheedle like some obsequious sommelier. “Our specials today are cow’s, soy, breast or goat’s.” We ask our children to cooperate. We don’t tell them to. And when there is an objection, we negotiate. I have one girlfriend who for many years paid her kids a weekly fee for brushing their teeth. I myself once slipped my seven-year-old a twenty for agreeing to a haircut. I think of that today and cringe. I’m sure I could have gotten it for ten.
    So it’s no wonder children today have a lively sense of entitlement. And that, metaphorically and otherwise, they take up more space. When I was growing up, back in “the black and white days,” family life—and the distribution of family space—was very different. My sister and I shared a bedroom until we were teenagers, and so did most other kids we knew. We had a spare room, which my mother called the “sewing room.” It housed a daybed that I never saw anybody use, and a Singer that dated from the Eisenhower administration. The last garment my mother had actually sewn was probably the petticoat for her poodle skirt, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, unclaimed space belonged to the grown-ups, as if by divine right of mortgagee.
    Today, most middle-class educated parents have reversed those priorities. Children are no longer the fringe dwellers of family life, but stake their claim to sit at the VIP table, even if they have to do it in a booster seat. They see resources in the home—furniture, appliances, food, adults, or any other standard utility—as their resources. I have a theory that this is particularly true in a single-parent home, where life tends to be more egalitarian, less structured and hierarchical. Okay, chaotic.
    Let’s consider the bedroom thing in more detail. Not only do our kids assume they are entitled to one, they also assume the right to maintain it according to a standard of their own choosing. My own kids were lisping, “But it’s my bedwoom!” from the time they were able to toss Talking Elmo over the side of the crib. Today, every wall and surface of my son’s private lair features sprayed-on graffiti—including, and this is no joke, a large corner cobweb—and his room is referred to affectionately as “the crack den.” I’ve given my permission for all this largely because I’m insane, but also because I’ve internalized the mantra. It is, after all, his room.
    By contrast, I didn’t grow up with the sense that “my” bedroom was “mine” in the same way at all, and not just because it was shared. In the old days—and I’m talking waaay back, before parenting was even a gerund—“your” room belonged to your parents and everybody knew it. They controlled access. They chose the furniture and decorations. (My sister and I had white Queen Anne-style dressers, Martha Washington bedspreads, and a fake oil painting of Marie Antoinette—just to cover all the political bases. No wonder getting sent to our room was an effective punishment.) Parents also told you when and how to clean your room. We vacuumed and dusted and changed the bed linen every week. Once a month—and this messes with my mind even now—we washed the woodwork . When I told my own kids about this recently, their eyes grew as wide as laser