Opinion

ROOKE: If Conservatives Want To Win, Parenthood Needs A PR Makeover

(Photo by EVA MARIE UZCATEGUI/AFP via Getty Images)

Mary Rooke Commentary and Analysis Writer
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The Conservative movement pontificates about the need for everyone to get married and have children without a clear answer to the Left’s demonization of the traditional family.

Over the last two generations, Conservatives have, in large part, given in to the progressive control over our entertainment and media that has served to denounce the role of parents and actively encouraged young adults against living a traditional life. Headlines in The New York Times like, “Early Motherhood Has Always Been Miserable,” would be mercilessly mocked in a proper country.

But our’s allows it.

In the defense of children and parents, Conservatives often make parenthood seem painless, negating the hard work that goes into raising kids into honorable adults. It’s good there is a competing voice to the progressive view on having children. However, the truth they fight against is no honest parent, living or dead, would claim  raising children is easy.

These beautiful, tiny humans are born with the same free will as their parents but with zero understanding of how to use it for the betterment of their families and neighbors. Couple that with our modern society making it extremely difficult to be a good parent, insisting children need “gentle parenting” instead of righteous discipline, and it’s no wonder single people are steering clear.

Children need instruction and guidelines to help them understand how to navigate. Still, our progressive society demands we give children autonomy and freedom to do whatever they want or risk raising children with “generational trauma.” Instead of freeing children from these chains, they are further shackling them into despair and anxiety, turning innocent children into tiny tyrants. (ROOKE: NYTimes Tried To Blame Men For One Woman’s Sad Life. But It Doesn’t Add Up)

Jessica Winter remarked in The New Yorker that gentle parenting requires parents to adhere to a strict, always calm parenting style that flips the power dynamic between children and their parents. “These scripts are an inversion of the look what you made me do school of authoritarian discipline: the child gets to be the one who will turn this car around right now,” Winter wrote.

The awful behavior can be ignored when children are under the age of three, but after that, people will see them as “bad kids,” and you’ll resent your own children for the way you allowed them to act. No one wants a rotten child, but few have the ability to admit their objectionable behavior is due to their parents not setting them up for success. Children need firm boundaries and guidelines, or they’ll scream on the floor and yell in peoples’ faces until they get their way.

The narrative Conservatives should push is we are blessed to have the opportunity to raise children. Yes, it’s a hard job, but it’s the most important one our society has, and in fact, raising children well can be fun and exciting. But there is a requirement to do it the “right way.” Adults unwilling to push aside their selfishness would serve society better in a monastery than leading another lost family.