Values better than hope for happiness

[Ordie]

To all parents: Values better than hope for happiness
UNION-TRIBUNE
November 23, 2008
http://www.signonsandiego.com/images/mugshots/ruben_navarrette.gifI just want my kids to be happy. This has become “a kind of sacred star in the galaxy of parenting wisdom,” says child psychologist Aaron Cooper. It is a default dream, what Cooper calls the “fall-back wish” of parents for the lives they'd like their children to live. If kids can't always grow up to be successful, enlightened and benevolent people – what grandpa referred to as “healthy, wealthy and wise” – then at least they can be happy.
As someone who has spent more than three decades working with children and families, Cooper has heard the happiness mantra over and over again.
“Parents come in for a counsel and the child is struggling,” he told me recently. “And almost always, the parent says: 'I just want her to be happy. That would be the most important thing.' ”
Cooper noticed that the concept would pop up in parent-teacher conferences and open houses at elementary schools. He caught a glimpse of it when television psychologist Dr. Phil, during an appearance on “Larry King Live,” asked the interviewer to define his hopes for his children, and King quickly responded: “That they be happy.” Cooper also found a study where a group of psychologists traveled the world and asked parents to describe their fondest wish for their children, and the No. 1 answer was – surprise – happiness.
“It was assaulting me from every direction,” he said. “And it got me thinking: What does this mean? What's the consequence of this concept in our children's lives?”
The search for answers led to Cooper's recent and important book with co-author Eric Keitel, “I Just Want My Kids To Be Happy! – Why You Shouldn't Say It, Why You Shouldn't Think It, What You Should Embrace Instead.”
One of the first things that Cooper wants us to understand is that this idea of obsessing over children's happiness is a new phenomenon. He insists that, over the last 50 years, parents have channeled Thomas Jefferson and made “the pursuit of happiness” (for their children) the top parental goal.
“I know that my grandparents would never have said that happiness was the most important thing,” said Cooper, who is 57. “My parents, I don't think, would have said it either.”
Some of this is about the popular and destructive trend of parents-as-best-friends and the fact that – when their children are feeling blue – today's parents seem to have such low tolerance that they give into every whim, demand or tantrum.
“A couple of generations ago, parents could tolerate kids being unhappy, being mad at them,” Cooper told me.
“They didn't care. The kids would go off and pout for a while but it never occurred to people back then that their children had to be happy all the time.”
As to why things have changed, Cooper believes that to some degree Americans are victims of their own success.
“As a great many families in our country have enjoyed a certain level of comfort and convenience and affluence, life has become a little bit easier in some of the practical ways,” he said. “So the wish for parents isn't just for a good job or an education as a means to a good job – the wishes that our grandparents had back then. Now a lot of families and parents take that for granted, so the emphasis has shifted to something less practical and less tangible, which is kind of a quality-of-life dimension that they wish for their child.”
Cooper insists that the wish for happiness is reinforced through the consumer marketplace, which is selling “shortcuts to happiness ... a certain car, a certain vacation, a certain hair product.” Not to mention a pharmaceutical industry that bombards us with television ads to convince us that the road to happiness, or at least the detour around sadness and depression, is in “popping the right pill.”
Parenting is the most difficult and important job ever invented. You mess it up and society pays the price. We should give up on trying to make our kids happy and concentrate on raising children with good values, compassionate hearts, a mighty work ethic, respect for others and a willingness to take responsibility for their actions. We should teach them to follow their passion and strive to succeed, but to never forget that we learn a lot from failure. And much of the rest will fall into place.


Source:http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/navarrette/20081123-9999-lz1e23navarre.html

[philbob]

good post.

[Aor]

I was always baffled by happiness being one of the unalienable Rights in the American declaration of independence. Happiness was never considered a "right" in western or oriental texts. Values as freedom, bravery, civil responsibility for example were goals to strive for, not happiness. In the Iliad, that along with The Odyssey the basic blueprints of conduct and ethical behaviour for the Greek world , happiness is not considered a goal in life. In fact for a reader of these books happiness is conquered for both the ethical and the unethical characters in both works. In general there is a profound distinction between what we now perceive as happiness and what the ancients did. The word often translated as happiness is Eudaimonia. Meaning having a happy/ contend (Eu) soul (daimon). This is achieved through the cultivation of the spirit, the body, a virtuous life and the adherence to the laws and convictions of a society. In our society we believe happiness is linked with wealth and the satisfaction of our basic and ,more often than not, our lower instincts . That comes in contrast with every ideal of ethical life in a western society by all the philosophies found in ancient Greece and by extension the basic western philosophies. Take a look at this : http://books.google.gr/books?id=3NEKc602eLUC&pg=PA147&lpg=PA147&dq=iliad+happiness&source=bl&ots=t_4zy0JkC1&sig=jnc5kDHs8gDWJWEgi4PWDZ9r6pE&hl=el&ei=uAYPSqacEMTu_Ab49J3DBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#PPP1,M1 and this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20LTTRQcZ8c They say it much better than me.

[gaijinsamurai]

Aor, it is THE PERSUIT of happiness that is a right. Otherwise, well said.

Good article, Ordie.

[Gleipnir]

Great post.
I remember at a young age and over the course of several years, trying in vain to convince my parents to stop sending me to school. I kept telling them- "But it will make me happy, School is ruining me!" Luckily for me, they didn't give a damn what I thought about the matter.
I think it is better to be a realist and that it is okay to fail from time to time. Without failure and making mistakes you will never learn.

A few months ago I saw a group of kids racing on the sidewalk. At the end, the parent supervising declared 'Yay! Everybody wins!" and I thought to myself- what the **** good is that gonna do these kids? I think that failure and disappointment are valuable and necessary and shouldn't be perceived as 'negative'. They are as important to the plethora of experience one has in learning and in life.

[Maktab]

I was always baffled by happiness being one of the unalienable Rights in the American declaration of independence. Happiness was never considered a "right" in western or oriental texts. ...

This is a common misconception. The right mentioned in the Declaration was not that of happiness, but of the pursuit of happiness. In other words, the right of all men to freely choose the path through life that would, in their minds, bring them the greatest satisfaction and joy. It's the polar opposite of the Marxist exhortation of From Each According to His Need, To Each According to His Ability, in which a man's life is subordinate to the whims of an ill-defined whole.

There has never been a right to happiness, just as there can be no right to be loved, to be respected or to be liked. But the right to pursue the life you want, the way you want (so long as you do not infringe on the rights of others to do the same) has been at the core of the American ethos since the first days of the Republic.