How do you make kids and youth to go great things and turn into great people? Apparently according to almost every single movie geared toward younger kids, the first step to greatness is to have your parents die early on, having the youth run away from home in order to pursue his or her destiny, making the parents babbling and annoying buffoons, or to some way or another isolate them from interfering with the youth’s quest to greatness.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, all you need to do is go see enough movies or read enough books that are geared toward engaging a youthful imagination and upon further thought, I believe you will notice a distinct lack of parental involvement in the lives of the youthful protagonist. I have yet to find a movie, or book, or other form of media which portrays an adolescent as the protagonist who actively seeks and involves their parents in their exploits. (I am prepared to share a sampling of the kinds of books I am talking of.) How many stories have you seen, read, or heard in which the young protagonist are orphans, have parents but they are completely uninvolved in the plot, have parents that are portrayed as idiots, or something else that disengages from the picture of their growth to greatness? Way too many for reality, and I honestly have some trouble thinking of movie which portrays a young protagonist who does deliberately involve their parents in their growth. In my eyes, the trend of media is clearly to leave the parents out of the picture of their child’s life.
So who takes the place of the parents in the media? To a large degree, the child-protagonist does. The parents (if even present in the story) do not instruct their child; the child learns about life on their own. The parents do not give wisdom; the child looks to him or herself for answers. The parents do not guide their child; the children make decisions for themselves. Whatever advice the protagonist gets, usually comes from a peer. Either way, the role of the parent is undermined. To whatever degree, media asserts that children ought to learn and make decisions independently of their parents.
I must admit that many of these movies and books that I have experienced have brought me much enjoyment and I would recommend them highly. However, I think it is important to realize that what is portrayed in this movies is not how reality generally is. Children do not become adults by asserting their independence from their parents. God designed parenthood to be a primary role to play into the growth of their children. Their role does not end in infancy, grade-school, nor adolescence, and honestly the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized that I probably never will outgrow my need for my parents. Yet if an alien came and watched our movies and read our books, I wonder if they would think that parents are at all important to the raising of the next generation.
So what does this annoying trend of the media do? I can tell you for certain it certainly will not teach kids how to grow up. I’m not sure exactly what this does to our mentality or how it works into our psyche, but I know for certain that it’s up to no good. The youth of today are already isolated from their parents enough without the encouragement of the media. I predict that this is both contributing to and indicative of a generation which does not recognize the role of parents the way God designed it to be.
The sad truth is, we live in an age of deliberate orphans. Our youth, in their desire to be fiercely independent forsake the God-given responsibility to hold themselves accountable to their parents, and parents neglect their duty to teach, guide, and discipline their children in accordance with God’s design. Hollywood, you have got to stop encouraging this.
