IT'S PARENTS' RESPONSIBILITY TO INVADE THEIR KIDS' PRIVACY

For weeks, I've been watching this television commercial that speaks wise
words in support of an important cause. And trying to understand why it
annoys me. Maybe you've seen the spot. It features a bunch of young people,
voices criss-crossing as they address their parents in that tone of wounded
petulance and righteous scorn so peculiar to adolescents:

"Mom? Dad? You were miserable parents. I snuck out, you caught me. I lied,
you knew. I pushed and you pushed back. You invaded my privacy. My privacy!
I hated it. I hated you. Why couldn't you leave me alone? Just leave me
alone. I thought you were the worst parents in the world."

Then, the kicker: "Thanks."

The commercial is from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, which for
15 years has crusaded to change the nation's attitudes about, and tolerance
for, illicit drug use.

Good group, great cause. And yet, a commercial that bothers me. You know
why? Because of the very fact that it's necessary. What does it tell you
about the times we're living in, that we need a media campaign to encourage
parents to be, well ... parents?

That's essentially what the commercial does. It reminds mothers and fathers
that their job description includes snooping upon, policing and
interrogating kids. Maybe it was different in your house, but I don't
remember my mom requiring anybody's permission to do that stuff.

The absurdity of it is not lost on Tom Hedrick, vice chairman of the
partnership. He says that these days, many parents mistakenly believe that
peers and pop cultural heroes have more sway with a kid than mom or dad. "I
know I do," says Hedrick. "I feel like a secondary influence in my son's
life. And what we've found is that that's not true." Kids whose parents
talk to them about drugs are, he says, about half as likely to try the
stuff as kids whose parents don't. Because ultimately, the thing many
teenagers fear most is disappointing mom and dad.

So how is it mom and dad don't seem to know this?

The answer, I think, is that something happened to parenting as the job
shifted from the World War II generation to its children, the baby boomers.
As Hedrick explains: "I grew up with an incredibly overbearing father and
mother. I'll never forget saying to myself when I went to bed at night
(particularly after a pitched two-hour battle) that I was never going to
treat my kids the same way."

So he "went overboard in the other direction." As did an entire generation.
They (we) swore we would be different. We put less emphasis on rules and
more on "self-esteem." Where our folks were restrictive, we were
permissive. Where they judged, we were "non-judgmental." Where they gave
orders, we negotiated.

Our mothers and fathers had been parents. We became, in essence, co-equals.
Playmates.

And we're beginning to see the fruit of that approach. Some good kids, yes.
But many, too, who seem disconnected, disaffected, materialistic, filled
with a misplaced sense of entitlement and, sometimes, just flat-out spoiled.

Which is why media are suddenly running public service spots reminding us
that it's OK to make rules and lay down law, OK to "invade privacy" and
demand answers, OK to occasionally be hated by your children. OK, in other
words, to do and be all the things we swore we would not as we lay there on
our beds, huffing and crying after some bruising exchange with our folks.
OK to be grown-ups. OK to be parents.

Because if being a child means testing boundaries, being a parent has to
mean setting them. It's an elemental, fundamental truth our mothers and
fathers knew. We, on the other hand, were too stubborn to learn. Until,
perhaps, now.

No, the men and women of the war generation were not perfect parents. But
what we're discovering is that they were also not as bad as their children
sometimes claim. If they earned our scorn, our impatience, our criticism,
maybe we should admit that they also earned one thing we never truly gave.

Our gratitude.