There was an article in a recent New York Magazine about childhood in the city in earlier eras. The article was an interesting read as a retrospective, but otherwise not particularly notable - until the last two paragraphs, applicable in any city, which I adored for their total honesty.
"And who really knows, ultimately, if it's even healthy for the city's children to lead such sheltered lives? Certainly, the bubble they inhabit has its educational and economic advantages, training and priming them for the information economy that awaits. But all the insulation in the world can't protect New York children from life's most difficult realities -- failure, rejection, illness. This city no longer tests children as it once did, and it demands far less resilience. 'First, ideally, we are made to feel special,' writes the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips in his most recent book, Missing Out. 'Then we are expected to enjoy a world in which we are not.'
"The New York of old may have been harsh in many ways. But it probably prepared children far better for the world's ultimate indifference."
No comments:
Post a Comment