Great one, Jason. It got me thinking about why it is that - it's mostly white men - orchestrating these awful mass shootings. I also was not familiar with how millennials tend to place too much emotional blame on their parents. But makes perfect sense, and something I've been coming across recently in my psychology studies. My generation tends to place far too much emphasis on our parents' influence and the failures of the Boomer mentality, I believe.
A few years ago, sociologist Michael Kimmel wrote a book called Angry White Men, which details the resulting fear, rage, etc., that resulted from a certain kind of downward mobility among that demographic. Exactly as the title suggests, it's left a lot of men really pissed off at the perceived injustice of shifting power structures, and I'm sure it plays into the kind of mentality that would lead someone into the kind of extreme thinking that precedes one of those horrible events.
As to millennials & parents, that's another good question. I'd venture that with the growing acceptance of therapy over the last decade or two and the tendency to look closely at child/parent relationships in those sessions, many millennials have emerged with titled viewed towards looking at the micro (i.e., immediate human relationships like parents, partners, friends) versus the macro (i.e., systemic culture forces). As a (barely) millennial myself, I should probably throw up my hands and say I don't know!
good post, Jason. I found myself thinking about the toy debate through the same lens I've thought about for film/TV, in the context of: ideally, what age would you like to show your child their first movie? What movie would it be? Why? Most parents stumble into it out of a desperate need for a break (fair enough). But it's a different question if you think proactively about what skills you're trying to cultivate (as opposed to what are you grudgingly willing to tolerate to get your kid out of diapers...)
I'm willing to grant that playing with guns isn't always/everywhere bad (lord knows I did as a kid). But I'm also not sure it's good, or that some other toy/focus wouldn't be more helpful for the same end. And I'm quite sure that some of it is just bad (hard to think of a prosocial case for Grand Theft Auto beyond "it's fun", which doesn't quite meet the bar for me). Because this space is overwhelmingly gendered (video games, toy guns, gun/gaming culture generally) I'm deeply skeptical that it's something we want to maintain/encourage.
Thanks, Brian, and, as always, I very much appreciate your thoughtfulness on all topics! I really had to puzzle my way through this one because I started from the position of wanting to condemn pretty much all toys (or media) that promotes violence. Or at least point to them and say, "We should all be aware of this issue; it's not good for masculinity/ies at large." In a way, it's why this newsletter exists (and probably yours too on some level!): to point at things that we aren't aware of and say "hmmm, maybe this isn't great." So, with that in mind, I 100% agree with you; some toys (and certainly a bunch of media, including GTA) are far from optimal vehicles for promoting constructive values in kids.
However, I found myself thinking a lot about whether it was the most productive place to focus attention. And to me, it seemed that it might be more helpful to put more focus on the fact that this dichotomy of "boys do this" and "girls do that" may overall be more harmful to the development of kids because it remains (mostly) unseen. Further, putting more emphasis on remedying that (i.e., mixing toys among genders) probably has a better shot of getting traction than trying to take away the kinds of media and toys entrenched in boy culture today. Both of these arguments undoubtedly stoke a broader culture war. However, in the past couple of decades, many have tried and had little success with the "take the violent media away" argument, so I think it's worth giving the latter case a shot. Appreciate you!
Great one, Jason. It got me thinking about why it is that - it's mostly white men - orchestrating these awful mass shootings. I also was not familiar with how millennials tend to place too much emotional blame on their parents. But makes perfect sense, and something I've been coming across recently in my psychology studies. My generation tends to place far too much emphasis on our parents' influence and the failures of the Boomer mentality, I believe.
Thanks, Alex! Yes, that is a powerful question!
A few years ago, sociologist Michael Kimmel wrote a book called Angry White Men, which details the resulting fear, rage, etc., that resulted from a certain kind of downward mobility among that demographic. Exactly as the title suggests, it's left a lot of men really pissed off at the perceived injustice of shifting power structures, and I'm sure it plays into the kind of mentality that would lead someone into the kind of extreme thinking that precedes one of those horrible events.
As to millennials & parents, that's another good question. I'd venture that with the growing acceptance of therapy over the last decade or two and the tendency to look closely at child/parent relationships in those sessions, many millennials have emerged with titled viewed towards looking at the micro (i.e., immediate human relationships like parents, partners, friends) versus the macro (i.e., systemic culture forces). As a (barely) millennial myself, I should probably throw up my hands and say I don't know!
For those interested, link to Angry White Men: https://www.amazon.com/Angry-White-Men-American-Masculinity/dp/1568589611
good post, Jason. I found myself thinking about the toy debate through the same lens I've thought about for film/TV, in the context of: ideally, what age would you like to show your child their first movie? What movie would it be? Why? Most parents stumble into it out of a desperate need for a break (fair enough). But it's a different question if you think proactively about what skills you're trying to cultivate (as opposed to what are you grudgingly willing to tolerate to get your kid out of diapers...)
I'm willing to grant that playing with guns isn't always/everywhere bad (lord knows I did as a kid). But I'm also not sure it's good, or that some other toy/focus wouldn't be more helpful for the same end. And I'm quite sure that some of it is just bad (hard to think of a prosocial case for Grand Theft Auto beyond "it's fun", which doesn't quite meet the bar for me). Because this space is overwhelmingly gendered (video games, toy guns, gun/gaming culture generally) I'm deeply skeptical that it's something we want to maintain/encourage.
Thanks, Brian, and, as always, I very much appreciate your thoughtfulness on all topics! I really had to puzzle my way through this one because I started from the position of wanting to condemn pretty much all toys (or media) that promotes violence. Or at least point to them and say, "We should all be aware of this issue; it's not good for masculinity/ies at large." In a way, it's why this newsletter exists (and probably yours too on some level!): to point at things that we aren't aware of and say "hmmm, maybe this isn't great." So, with that in mind, I 100% agree with you; some toys (and certainly a bunch of media, including GTA) are far from optimal vehicles for promoting constructive values in kids.
However, I found myself thinking a lot about whether it was the most productive place to focus attention. And to me, it seemed that it might be more helpful to put more focus on the fact that this dichotomy of "boys do this" and "girls do that" may overall be more harmful to the development of kids because it remains (mostly) unseen. Further, putting more emphasis on remedying that (i.e., mixing toys among genders) probably has a better shot of getting traction than trying to take away the kinds of media and toys entrenched in boy culture today. Both of these arguments undoubtedly stoke a broader culture war. However, in the past couple of decades, many have tried and had little success with the "take the violent media away" argument, so I think it's worth giving the latter case a shot. Appreciate you!