The author, educator, and cultural critic Neil Postman points out in The Disappearance of Childhood that childhood is a social construct. Genetic expression makes no distinction between who is a child and who isn’t. Children, as we understand them, have existed for less than four hundred years. “The idea of childhood is one of the great inventions of the Renaissance,” he writes, because it allowed children to develop, to learn, to have a safe space to play and explore and discover themselves.
Like any invention, childhood can disappear. How? With the disappearance of adulthood. Childhood, as both a social structure and a psychological condition, works when things like maturity, responsibility, literacy, and critical thinking mark an adult. But when things like long-form writing and reading decline, the gap between child and adult shrinks; the line between them blurs and then dissolves.
As parents, we have to protect this great invention. We have to increase the gap between childhood and adulthood. Let them be kids . . . but also make sure that you are being an adult. Be a leader. Be responsible. Be an example, a model they have to strive toward. Let them see you with a book they can’t yet comprehend. Let them be around adult conversations they can’t quite understand. Let them see you working and sweating and providing.
Let them see an adult—so they have something not just to look up to but to look forward to as well.