What parents fear

Ever since the bursting of the fearful bomb in Hiroshima, we have known that our children are facing an age different from any previous age. They will have to possess the courage and the ability to stand up for what they feel is right; the ability to defend it. They will need to be strong where strength is called for and gentle where gentleness can help. They will need the ability to be angry and aggressive where indignation and aggressiveness are appropriate. Able to be kindly and loving and tolerant in the normal course of their daily lives.

They will need whatever heritage of hope and faith we can bequeath them. They will need to know from us that people can still have moments of vivid enjoyment and times of relaxation and thoughtfulness and calm.

Because we know that our leadership is more important than ever before, we worry more when we feel a child of ours growing away from us. We are more bewildered still when we see him manifesting traits of which we disapprove. We ask ourselves anxiously what makes him so moody? What makes him standoffish? Too forward? Too timid? Too tempestuous? Too meek?

We wonder: Why does there seem at times to be a chasm widening between us? Why does he look down on us and tell us virtually that we know nothing? What can we do to get him over acting as if he knew it all?

What can we do about his argumentativeness? His sudden withdrawals? What does it mean when he seems so secretive, as if he were living his life apart, not wanting to let us in? What about his confidence in us? Just yesterday, it seemed, he depended so on us. Today perhaps a little. Tomorrow not at all. For what is he searching when he wanders away?

A father says: "My kid has me stumped. One day he's reading about world affairs and discussing them like an old man.

The next day, he's tearing up bits of sponge and floating them in the tub like a two-year-old, claiming he's carrying on great experiments. He's a neither-nor. You don't know how to treat him."

A mother says: "My girl's an enigma. One day she demands, 'Why won't you let me do anything on my own?' The next day she's scolding, 'Why won't you do anything with me?' . . . I wish I knew what she really wants."

A son says: "My dad keeps quarterbacking me, and my mom wants me to do everything without any reminding. You don't know if you're expected to be eight or eighty. It's rough."

A daughter says: "I'm too old to be a squab and too young to be a chicken. What am I? I guess a dead duck, that's all."

Each young one speaks according to his own lights, prompted by his own feelings. Yet each after his own fashion is saying the same things:

These are the years when the pull backward and the push forward are at a tug of war with each other . . . These are the years when we are wishing for yet fearing the things to come.

As for us--we, the parents, are looking forward to our children's growing up, yet we fear the separation. We are hoping that they will gradually form boy-girl contacts, yet we fear that the demon sex may move in too quickly and that they will lose their sense of proportion and hurdle too many barriers too fast.