Children as endangered species
April 10, 2008
Wouldn’t it be fair to say that children keep us all a little more innocent, a little more pure, and a little less corrupt? By rendering the child an endangered species of sorts, we have done our world the disservice of catering to more adult desires. We are therefore inadvertently exposing the few children left to these adult messages and tainting that which used to help keep us from all our perversion.
Be it far from me to place the responsibility of upholding society’s standards of morality on a child. They certainly don’t need that sort of pressure. But, by their very existence, they do make us watch our mouth, be good examples of courtesy and kindness, and love immeasurably. In short, they make us better.
It’s easy to forget what gems these little ones are. We more often hear about their carbon footprint, and how very expensive they are. They are, after all, the “unwanted” in “unwanted pregnancy.” Well, that is child un-friendly, to say the least. The media really has outdone itself.
What a deep pit we have sunk ourselves into, no? What is truly damning and alarming about all this is how the wages of sin so often exhibit the symptoms of positive feedback: fewer children leads us to become a more “adult oriented” society, resulting in more “adult” pressures being prematurely applied to what few children are left, which in turn accelerates the “adultification” of society (resulting in still fewer children) and thus leads to even more adult pressures being applied to the even smaller number of children found in the following generation. Repeat until extinct.
