06/28/2010 12:00 am
POV
What Extinct (Or Soon-to-Be Extinct) Taboo Do You Find Most Surprising?
Single motherhood, homosexuality, pharmacology ... Join Mary Wells, Joan Ganz Cooney and Liz Smith in the conversation!
Mary Wells
I am dismayed at what the wide-open, developed world accepts as acceptable. Mutually beneficial knowledge is what pushed human beings ahead of other animals but it must have been hoped that evolution would not fall off its track and promote the ugly – even the horrific – side of human capabilities. Life is too wondrous to allow standards to drop this low. It is not just abusive language or the promotion of detailed sex; it is also the willingness to go all the way down and show or discuss depravity, even evil in humans as normal stuff – as truth – in our news, in our movies, on the Internet. I keep thinking it can’t get worse but it does. What do we think this is doing to us? Maybe we are satisfied that we are trying to clean up and green up our world, not us.
Joan GanzCooney
The extinct taboo I find most shocking is the continuous talk in continuous ads about erectile dysfunction and four-hour erections. My mother’s generation, which shaped the early years of mine, barely acknowledged in polite company and certainly around children that sex even existed – much less that men had erections. Someone wrote in some paper or other last year that his six-year-old son asked him what an erection was (while watching a Viagra commercial) and the father answered, "Election. He said election." My mother would not be amused.
Liz Smith
OK, let’s elaborate about single parents, whether male or female. As a matter of fact, 84 percent of custodial parents are women and 16 percent are men. This is an astounding number to someone who grew up in the Great Depression era when most homes had a momma and a daddy and we were all rather hard up.
(If we even knew a single parent, it was a woman who had been unfortunately widowed.)
I think the reason we’ve embraced single parenthood without much taboo is that everybody is relieved that somebody else is doing it! Who are we – the singles in care of nobody else (or even the people in care of their own children) to complain and demand Mr. and Mrs. do their duty and stay together while doing it. We may not want to take care of the burgeoning needs of kids who would otherwise be thrust upon our consciences. Or placed in our hands.
So selfish as I may be, I worship single parents, I salute them, I glorify them, I am willing to pay taxes to help them, to educate their children. And sometimes I will even babysit with pleasure. But do I want all of that responsibility on my shoulders? No.
And even if I were still married and had kids of my own and maybe a husband who was active, we wouldn’t need or want the responsibility of other people’s kids or the orphans we encounter who tug at our heartstrings every day. This is good, old self-preservation in action. (It’s sometimes as painful as going to the dog pound and managing not to take home a handful of pets!)
Single parents, willing or not to assume the burden, are a relief to the population in general. They take the weight off of foxy grandparents who don’t want to be bothered and of Mr. and Mrs. Normal Family, for whatever their reasons. And upscale or middle-class single parents are generally assumed to be doing a bang-up job. (Only poverty, drugs, violence and being nuts can intervene.) A single mother can do a good job with a can of tomato soup but maybe she does need a little help now and then. We want to help her. But we don’t want to be her. Her/his job is too hard for us sybarites.
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i find this obsession with other peoples lives obnoxious. If no one is being hurt, everyone should live exactly as they please. If someone needs help now and then, and I can, I will help. I do not want to judge anybody, and i sure don’t want anyone judging me. My bedroom id off limits to you, and I don’t care what’s going on in yours. As for drugs, as far as I can see, Americans are the most "drugged" country in the world, and thats legally drugged. As long as people are not violent, let them be. I am a single Mom, raised 3 girls and they all have jobs, 2 have husbands and they all have children. None are druggies, none are just taking up space. They are productive. One nurse, one social worker and one in management. 2 went thru college, paid for it themselves, and none of them hate me. Most single parents do allright. I’ll be glad if we ever get to the point when we do not pre-judge anyone.
Where should I begin? I find that nothing surprises me, shocks me anymore. I don’t remember the last time that I said those words: "you aren’t going to believe this!!" When was the last time that anyone said anything in whispers?? It has been a while, hasn’t it? Scandal?? Is anything considered scandalous? I don’t think so.
What do I miss most?? I’d have to say "manners" and family as the center of life — with all that that meant way back when. There was something all right with the world. There was friendship that was conducted in person and not by texting and its ilk - something that only serves to separate us. What I call "the human condition" is wanting, having no center, no solid core.
There is no sense looking backward. We will not be going back again —- and the sense of family that once was is no longer in the sense that it was our center and our bond.
As for darling Liz, you my dear are a dynamo. We are amazed by your verve and vitality, your fountain of youth looks — and retirement (are you kidding?) It doesn’t suit you at all — so forget that thought. . right now!
The most surprising taboo now broken into a million pieces? Well, Joan, I’ll add a hearty second to your statement that NOTHING truly surprises any more in our wide-open and wild society these days.
Manners? Oh, yes, how I miss them. Those days when mothers reprimanded a child who pushed in front of another adult, reminding them to "say excuse me"; the holding of doors, the offer of a seat on a train or a subway, the pleasant smile and sincere "thank you" from a sales assistant. Sigh.
And having a real family life. Well, perhaps, since there are so very many - myriad - variations on the term "family" this was never quite as simple as we might have believed, but I miss the idea of the family dinner table, the low-key occupations (badminton games that went on all summer; the Sunday drive; reading aloud, picnics), and Mom and Dad who had made the decision that being the kids’ "pals" was pretty low on the priority list.
I also miss the days when some things were best left to the imagination. When the sexual misdeeds of the famous (or infamous) were not trumpeted in lurid detail, complete with photographs and videos on YouTube. When one could turn on TV without having to endure commercials for all manner of products that, frankly, if you need them, you already know about! (I have a vivid memory of the first such ad, way back in the 1970’s. It was for, I believe, some sort of lady-parts spray "freshener", and the ad so mortified my father that he turned beet red, strode out of the living room, got in his car and drove around for an hour with the winter wind blowing through the open window to help calm him down. If he were alive today, he would probably be approaching the Arctic Circle by now.)
The apparent "no boundaries" TMI culture is also regrettable. I’ve had conversations with relative strangers who feel compelled to reveal things that leave me stunned. I find myself with a frozen smile on my face, desperately wondering how to respond to some deep, dark piece of really personal revelation. Usually, I end up with, "Well, my dear, you HAVE had some challenges, haven’t you? I really wish you the best."
I also miss QUIET. Perhaps because I have begun to really suffer from a combination of deafness, tinnitus and Meniere’s, I am super-attuned to noise levels. People speak louder than ever (especially on cell phones - and YES, we CAN hear you now, thank you very much!), leaf blowers and lawn mowers blast, car radios pound us into submission, electronic devices beep, click and whirr, the volume of TV and radio commercials is earsplitting … I would love to have a time machine to revisit those quiet Sunday afternoons of my childhood, when the loudest noise was the melodic tinkling of the Good Humor truck with the promise of a Toasted Almond ice cream.
But, again agreeing with you, onward and upward, as they say. Excelsior, and all that. We can’t go home again to those olden days when things SEEMED simpler - although they really weren’t.
As for Liz, long may she wave the banner of wit and clear thinking. Don’t think for one minute about retirement, Ms. Smith. We need you!
Thank you Liz all the way around, my daughter has raised two boys alone, never accepted a dime of aid or assistance, put herself through college and always been conscious of being the mother and father in thier lives. A few years ago she told the oldest they needed to have a talk, I figured this was going to be her sex talk though instead she told him they needed to talk about homosexuality and she wanted to assure him if he ever chose that life, she would still love him and support his life choices. He hasn’t, but she wanted to remove any stigma in those choices from him feeling the choice would change thier relationship. Maybe it is a common talk anymore between parents and children, but it was a first for me to listen unfold.
I hear so many very young children anymore dropping the F bombs, regardless if thier parents are present or not. Something when I was a kid would have been a absolute instant reprimand and now it seems normal to so many, and disusting.At five, I read the letters on the side of a building not knowing what I was saying and before I could take another breath I felt my mom’s hand cracking the side of my face. :-) There were just things I did not do in the presence of my parents whether a child or adult out of respect for thier own intolerance, so maybe respect has taken a nosedive also?
My wish for this world is too move beyond just tolerance on many levels to really listening and accepting other people. Big wish, but I like to dream big.
I’ve seen commericals for two newer-sih shows about men with large penises: "Hung," on HBO, and the "Hard Life of …."someone or other. That last show is on MTV. Could any show be more shallow?
The lowest common denomenator between people is sex - and instead of making it more mysterious, elusive and tantalizing - producers have made it more revealing, more base and ….well, gross. Camile Paglia has an op-ed on this very sad topic in the NYTimes. She says Lady Gaga is a complete phony. (Have you seen her latest horrendous video?)Really, the culture is disintegrating in front of our eyes, and we’ve entered freak show territory - for teenagers.
The problem with single motherhood, is that it is almost no one’s ideal for very practical reasons - it doesn’t work very well, for very long - especially not in such a toxic, degraded culture.
Daughters identify with their mothers and learn to relate to their fathers. Sons identify with their fathers and learn to relate to their fathers. Now if the parents are toxic and harmful and don’t balance each other out - people end up very messed up. The stress on one parent to be the role model for both father and mother is nearly impossible to overcome. In Obama’s case, he had grandparents to pick up the slack, but I’m sure he would have turned out differently if he had just been raised by his mother.
The other extinct taboo is that there are jobs for women that are much too sexually degrading. After watching "The Girls Next Door," and commericals for the newer show of hefner’s ex-girlfriend, Holly - with her new Stripper show, I have grown numb with dismay that these young women believe happiness will come to them through this degradation and overexposure.
Watch any of the Housewives shows and the Jersey Shore and realize that manners are OUT. Crassness is in - but Rozanne gave us that too. In fact Hollywood traffics in crass.
Retailers are no better. Abercrombie insists on the hyper raunchie:
"(A&F) continues its pattern of pushing pornographic-themed material into mainstream America. Abercrombie & Fitch has just begun offering their "New College" line of T-shirts.
The first A&F T-shirt pictures a young girl opening her blouse - exposing herself. A&F titles the image: "Show the Twins".
The second picture is of a female running nude. A&F titles it: "Female streaking encouraged."
"The next Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt is entitled: "Female Students Wanted for Sexual Research"
And my #1 most tragically extinct taboo is the taboo against promoting adultery. In the past it used to happen in soaps, everywhere….but it was still seen as the bad thing to do. But the Ashley Madison Company sells adultery: Tagline - "Life is short, have an affair."
They actually have an "Affair guarantee program." - or your money back. "An affair to remember" "The #1 married dating site."
Dr. Hartley at Marriagebuilders.com says that he has a subset of his marriage therapy clients who have been raped. he said of those who have been both raped and cheated on, almost to a one they have reported that the truama and pain from being cheated on is WORSE than the rape.
SO, How much pain and trauma can one business cause? Ashley Madison president claims to have 5 million members….do the math.
HI Phyllis,
Actually, we have "church standards" that require their shoulders be covered, and they wear clothing at least 1/2 way down their thigh. It’s a line in the sand, and it requires constant vigillence and accountabilty from the girls to the parents. We just had a big confrontation about an outfit our daughter wore out with us on an outting. It was NOT chuch standards, but rather Daisy Duke shorts and skimpy top for our well endowed 20 year old. I wrote her a strong but loving letter, saying she embarassed us, she disrespected us, and a young friend’s daughter was at the event so that she set bad example as well.
She was sorry, and both girls have done better since this event. It was more a concern that they had hurt their father’s feelings and embarrassed him. I feel strongly that fathers have right to say what is and is not appropriate dress for their children as long as they are living under the same roof.
It helps to know that the other parents at church are holding their girls to the same standards.
Teenagers having the privilege of sharing their bedroom with their boyfriend or girlfriend …. overnight.
Hi Bonnie,
I like to think I am forward thinking but this "Sleeping over" stuff in the same bedroom is simply unacceptable. My 16 yr old Step daughter wanted to bring her boyfriend to visit us and have him stay in the same room with her because her Mother allows it. she obviously does not live with us. Not gonna happen in this house! Her Father almost had a coronary at the thought. I told her it was much safer for her boyfriend to leave him at home. It took me an hour to calm Dad down and stop him from freaking out on the Mother. When did this become ok? I had friends who would sneak and "share" tents when camping without the parents knowledge but it was never openly allowed by the parents…especially at 16!
The words. I fell victim once on a forum and used the "F" word and still feel, well, so impolite. I know it’s acceptable but it’s still so impolite in its casual usage among strangers. I’ll use it, and some others, if I know you, even used it once in a courtroom forgetting not everyone knew I knew the judge, but it’s just so,well, impolite.
I suppose it’s gratuitous language. Goes well with the gratuitious sex and violence. We’re very gratuitious today. And very impolite.