Normal People Care About Children And Respect People Like Fred Rogers

I have never been the parent of a child.  Since I'm gay that's not surprising but if I were straight it would be more surprising because most straight people eventually have at least one child, many LGBT folk do as well but that only adds to my point.

Childless though I am, I come from a large family and as a single adult I've often been asked to take care of my nieces and nephews and even a few grand nieces and nephews.   I declared about five years ago that I'm retired from being  the unpaid baby-sitter.  My excuse was that my sisters and brothers were retiring and they could take care of their own grandchildren.  Children are as important as anyone else and as people who are vulnerable, unable to take care of themselves and protect themselves I can't understand any adult who doesn't care about them or anyone else in that condition.  Though I have had to conclude that there are large numbers who don't care about them and even larger numbers who only care about the ones they are closely related to.  That's what political conservatism of the worst sort is caused by, people who don't care about vulnerable people or people unrelated to them in general.

While I am absolutely in favor of adults who don't care about children not having any or having anything to do with them, I have to say I find it everything from odd to pathological, depending on the varieties of people who don't like children.  And, let me add, since I know how any opportunity to lie about what is intended will be taken, that not everyone who chooses to not have children are indifferent to or hostile to them.  I'm not indifferent or hostile to them, after all. Voluntary childlessness is not the same thing as narcissism, you can be a full blown narcissist and have scads of children.  Which would take us back to so many of those who are voting Republican these days.

Apparently some people thought it was absurd of me to mention Fred Rogers in my post on Saturday. It was pointed out to me that there was considerable mockery about it.  Of those who snarked on that point, those whose identity I know of are all childless, I can't imagine anyone who had children or who cared about children would find it ridiculous or even strange that I said what I did.

Fred Rogers was one of the most conscientious people who dedicated their professional life to benefiting children in the past fifty years. His ministry was a very important service in the lives of millions of very young children.  And while he could have made many millions of dollars by accepting any of the offers to license the characters and images he invented, he always refused because he knew how damaging commercials and commerce were to children.

If you don't care about children, it's not surprising that you would be unimpressed by that career choice, I would imagine you don't think very highly of teachers, especially teachers in the early grades and earlier.  Normal people do care about children and they care about the conscientiousness of those who teach them, in person or through the media.  Fred Rogers was one of the foremost of those who were.

The world might be divided into those who want to help children develop into good, happy, well-balanced people who aren't sociopathic, self-centered, brats.  Those brats are the ones who are on the other side of that divide,  the kind of people who don't care about children.   They're the kind of people who grow up to use people for what they can get out of them instead of having normal relationships. They prey on people who can't protect themselves in many cases.   They also tend to have a whole catalog of character defects.  Maybe no one cared enough about them as children to help them get past those.   Frankly, after they've reached about the age of twenty I'm not too concerned with what they think about what I say.  I don't care any more about that when they're 40 or 60.

And I'll bet there are millions of children who heard the first jazz they ever heard on his show, too.