February 6, 1974

Epidemic Of Reality Overtakes Youth

If I can live just a few years longer I yet may hear all the fuzzy-headed social theorists recant one by one.

Latest to admit the error of preconceived notions is Dr.  Benjamin Spock, the baby care specialist, who says he helped create a generation of "brats."

In a recent issue of Redbook Magazine, Spock blames teachers, psychologists, social workers and physicians - himself included - for depriving parents of their self-assurance in dealing with their children.

Spock once was the leading exponent of permissiveness.  Now he says parents aren't firm enough with their children for fear of losing their love or incurring their resentment.

"This is a cruel deprivation that we professionals have imposed on mothers and fathers," Spock declares.

Now, get this:

"Of course, we did it with the best of intentions," confesses Spock.

"We didn't realize, until it was too late, how our know-it-all attitude was undermining the self-assurance of parents."

Spock says parents are prone to letting a child defy a simple directive - such as, "Don't eat any more candy."

"They're afraid that if they insist, their children will resent them or at least won't love them as much," says Spock.

"The way to get a child to do what must be done or stop doing what shouldn't be done is to be clear and definite each time."

Hallelujah!

The return to sanity has been slow, but the harbingers are encouraging.

It is somewhat difficult for those of us who raised our voices against the permissiveness of the last two decades to now forgive and forget.  Too much damage has been done with good intentions.  What shall become of the "brats" created by the dangerous nonsense that children will develop superior character unguided?

And what of the other flaming causes Dr.  Spock embraced in his second childhood?  Was the violence he stimulated with his anti-war protests, for example, as good intentioned but stupid as his child rearing theories?

It seemed so at the time, and more so today.  Yet, let us be grateful for confirmation of faith wherever we find it.

It took considerable courage for Dr. Spock to admit grievous error.  Perhaps God will grant him a few more years to help rectify the damage.

An epidemic of reality seems to be sweeping through the social never-never land.

The drug madness, which many sociologists attribute to our overly-permissive society, also seems to be abating.

Five Columbia University students - products of the so-called "Spock era" - have learned the hard way that the old nursery rules no longer apply.

They have been arrested under New York state's tough new narcotics law dealing with distributors and users of "hard" drugs.  They indicate surprise that the law is being applied as literally to them as to those "outside" the campus.

The students are victims of the lingering belief that young people - particularly COLLEGE students - are an elite segment of society exempt from the grubby rules of common people.

Certainly, our youth were justified in assuming this special status.  During the sixties we tolerated campus violence and gave college students special privileges.

But campus violence ended at Kent State, and now it appears that campus drug pushing will end at Columbia.

As Kent State was tragic, Columbia is equally so.

Two students, both varsity athletes and both fraternity officers, have been indicted for the sale of cocaine.  They could be sentenced to life in prison.

Three other students face up to 15 years imprisonment for lesser narcotics violations.  One of the students, a pre-law undergraduate, summed up the awakening to reality by admitting: "I'm scared to death."

A lot of the rest of us are scared to death, also, for the sake of society.

We berate the political conservative for seeming reluctance to move forward.  Yet, after years of observation, I have found the conservative person a true realist whose concern for solid progress leads him to try and conserve those values proven essential.

It is so easy to write down on paper a "law" that social equality should happen.  It is more difficult to deal with the realities of human nature which - in toto - moves reluctantly.

We need some liberals to prod us to our utmost endeavor - just as we need conservatives to keep us on the right road.

So we must tolerate the likes of Dr.  Spock and, perhaps, even be grateful for him so long as he stops short of national suicide.

We shall put him on our trophy shelf along with Daniel P. Moynihan, the Harvard law professor who denounced central bureaucracy after a hefty dose of the same; and Howard K. Smith, the network television commentator who once championed the spy Alger Hiss but now is more balanced in his news coverage than his TV colleagues.

Perhaps there yet is hope for Teddy Kennedy, George McGovern and Walter Cronkite.

Author: Lindsey Williams