Role Models for Your Kids

I’ve touched briefly on role models in another post. But I think a deep dive into this topic is important, because it impacts our kids so very much. 

Role models used to be thought about more consciously in society. Parents were at least conscious of who their children’s role models were, and who they didn’t want them to be. For boys, heroes in books would be (in general) strong, brave men who fought for justice and truth, and who would not be cowed into submission to evil or wrongdoing no matter the cost. The heroes were men who would fight for the protection of women and children, even if it meant death for themselves. For girls, their role models were often women of virtue who had inner (as well as outer) beauty. Women who were sacrificial without a desire to be noticed as such, patient, and full of compassion. Both heroes and heroines often bore sadness and tribulation with great patience and forbearance. The rebellious in children’s books were taught a lesson. The evil ones were brought to justice. The unkind were taught kindness, and good behavior and right morals won in the end. Obviously, this is a generalization, as nothing is ever 100% the case, but as a generalization it was true.

The hero was not the evil person, or the cruel person, but was the just person who did right. 

What about today? 

Today the main characters in popular children’s books, as well as movies aimed at kids, do not display virtues like patience, chastity, temperance, humility and kindness, and if they do, it is portrayed as weaknesses or issues that the cool people need to teach out of them. The virtuous person needs a reality check. They need loosening up. Virtuous people are tightwads. They don’t know how to have fun or to defend themselves, and they definitely aren’t “true to who they are”. 

So instead, we find all sorts of characters displaying the opposite—the vices. We see instead hate, anger, lust, greed, pride and envy as totally accepted elements of heroes and heroines’ “personalities”. And that’s the key: accepted elements of their personalities. It’s not that vices weren’t portrayed in children’s books long ago, or that they should be kept from children. The problem is when these vices aren’t displayed to children as being negative, and are instead portrayed in any other way, then they learn that these things are ok. They aren’t THAT bad, or dangerous, and actually people who are bold, brave, beautiful and heroic do these things quite freely. The people they want to be like actually embrace the vices, and by doing so, are better for it. 

The main characters nowadays are very often the villain, the stuck-up mean girl, the arrogant boy, the rebellious teen. The main cartoon character who is crass, a bully, and makes children laugh, that has become the latest role model. 

But you say, that’s not their role model. That’s just a cartoon they enjoy or a book that makes them want to read. It’s just a funny movie or popular show. And it’s on the Disney channel for heaven’s sake, so it must be fine!

The problem is that you can’t separate what they read and watch from what they think about and admire.

Children are designed to both learn from everything around them about how to behave, and also for things to stick in their brain. Things stick as if their brains are made of super glue and everything that touches it, gets stuck there or at least becomes caught up in their brain and difficult to remove, which creates the perfect storm. Your child is created to learn constantly from what they see and hear, and to learn by these things how to talk, think and act. They don’t separate things out into different categories so that they only learn behaviors from people you particularly like. They learn from who you allow them to watch and be around (be that real people, or movie/book characters). If a character does evil things in an appealing way, and is portrayed to be likable (without turning from that sinful behavior and changing), then those character traits become admired by your child. That child will seek to emulate that character, vices and all. 

So what your child is hearing and reading—are those characters ones you want your child to be like? 

Grace Kelly was a famous and stunningly beautiful movie actress of the 1950s, who later married the prince of Monaco. She gave an interview in 1982, where she said “I know a teacher here in Monaco who said ‘I dread Monday recreation [recess] because the children are acting out everything they’ve seen on television and it’s pretty rough and violent.’ So you know, it’s one of the problems of our time. Because something is possible doesn’t mean it is desirable. Because it’s possible it should be on all the time, people [think they] should be watching everything. It’s become a babysitter. Children become brain soaked by it and numbed. I’ve read a static recently about it and an American child on reaching the age of 18 has seen 18,000 murders and 350,000 commercials. Now that’s kind of scary isn’t it?”

It is scary, especially since TV and movies have only gotten more violent, sexual and profane since the 80s, not less, and since more commercials are shown now, not less. To think our children wouldn’t be hugely impacted by these things is to deny the obvious truth the evidence of which we can see all around us. It’s so important that we pick carefully what we want going into our children’s hearts and minds. We need to select their role models carefully. It will change them.