Making Babies

Our society is obsessed with babies.  Fertility and prenatal care are the best they have ever been.  Baby supply stores make a mint off of our search for unwavering unconditional love.  Heck, I've had two of them, and I love them more than my own life.  However, those babies must grow into toddlers, who must grow into adolescents, who grow into teenagers.  This is the pathway to adulthood, and it has happened to all of us.  Some of us have come out okay, some of us haven't.  The point here is that we must all grow up, sooner or later.

We have all experienced the feelings associated with the first day of kindergarten, either through our own memories or through our children.  This day is both heartbreaking and liberating, a proud moment for most parents.  We have put our love and nurturing into this child, and we send him or her off into the world for the next step in their lives.  At this moment, we are cutting the umbilical cord for the second time, and letting someone else shape and teach our child.

Yet, through the progression of elementary school, our child becomes more independent, and more knowledgeable of the world and community. He or she begins to form their own ideas, beliefs, and opinions.  Their bodies and their minds grow and mature.  Finally comes the day that they must leave the safety of elementary school and go onto bigger and better things...middle school.  Today, most middle schools consist of the sixth, seventh, and eigth grades.  Middle schools are supposed to ready them for high school and college by introducing more complex principles and encouraging independent thinking. 

Taking these ideas into consideration, what is a parent to think when a seventh grader, who is twelve going on thirty, comes home with a name sticker with a big yellow bus on it?  Additionally, what is the same parent thinking when the seventh grader tells her that they had assemblies all day, teaching them about how they need to behave in school, and what happens if they are bad little boys and girls?  The parent also learns that her child must carry a student passport, in which she gets stamps for good behavior.  Once she has a certain number of stamps, she gets a reward.  I'm sorry, I thought I was talking about middle school, not a sandwich shop, or a pet obedience class.

 So, in conclusion to this rambling, I'm thinking that society is still not ready to cut the umbilical.  They want to hold onto the baby days as long as they possibly can.  They want to hold their hands when they cross the street, want to hold the spoons to their mouths so they can eat.  They don't want them to be responsible for their actions and behavior, so they make excuses for them.  Soon those twelve year olds are going to be seventeen year olds, teetering on the edge of adulthood.  Some will make the leap, steady on their landing.  Others will lose their balance and fall through the crack.  And some may get wedged in-between.