In my September 22nd, 2011, post, I mention a 2008 book by Hara Estroff Marano entitled A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting. This book was mentioned in an article entitled Less Play Time = More Troubled Kids, Experts Say. I made these references in the context of looking at parentification, adultification, and role-reversal patterns (e.g., treating small children as if they were adults). I haven’t read A Nation of Wimps but it looks intriguing. Its content looks similar to the content that Kay Hymowitz presents in her 1999 book Ready or Not: How Treating Children as Small Adults Endangers Their Future—And Ours. (Click on the Contact Us link above to request a copy of my summary of Hymowitz’s book.) So, I went to Amazon and looked at the preview for A Nation of Wimps. The preview consisted of the first few pages from the introduction. Right off the bat Marano makes a statement that really caught my attention:
The attachment bond that normally develops between parent and child [that is, if all goes well] naturally equips children to explore the world on their own terms—but adults are hallucinating hazards to keep kids from exercising the separation that nature has prepared them for.
Yes, I know, more on attachment theory. My interest in Bowlbian attachment theory will not die easily, nor should it. Plus, attachment is in the news everywhere if you know what to look for (although the above Marano statement is unabashedly about Bowlbian attachment). What caught my attention was Marano’s use of the image of parents “hallucinating hazards.” This ties to my discussion of the philosophical conflict between John Bowlby and Melanie Klein over “real fear-producing events” versus “imagined fear-producing events” (see my post of August 30th, 2011, entitled Bowlby Phobia). I won’t be getting into this philosophical debate here. But what could Marano be pointing to when she uses an image like parents hallucinating hazards. I think I have a possible explanation—a provocative one to say the least.
Back in the late 1920s, the silent movie Metropolis—a movie depicting the future fate of mankind—introduced us to an archetypal image that has captured our imaginations ever since: the Fembot. The Fembot is part female woman and part robot machine. Much has been made out of what exactly the Fembot represents. It’s clearly a blend of some kind. Art historian Bram Dijkstra talks about Metropolis in his 1996 book Evil Sisters—The Threat of Female Sexuality and the Cult of Manhhood. Dijkstra describes Metropolis (and, by extension, the Fembot) thus: “Metropolis thus graphically illustrates how, toward the end of the Twenties, the themes of economic imperialism and gender depredation had come to overlap quite consciously in the thinking of many.” Dijkstra uses the word overlap; I use the term blend. What does the Fembot blend for us (as it did for the late 1920s mind)? Primarily it blends the conditioning of men in the direction of assembly line production with the increasing need for men to derive pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, from this bond between men and machine. So, the Fembot is a blend of men being conditioned in the direction of machination (e.g., “machine-nation”) and the increasing pressure on men to find some way to derive pleasure, even sexual pleasure, from this melding of men and machine. The hallucination of a mechanical woman—the Fembot—is really more about men being conditioned in the direction of increasing industrialization and the dissociative (even delusional) state this brings.
So, I am here proposing that the hallucination that Marano points to is none other than the development of the Fembot into … wait for it … the Kidbot. In the same way the Fembot represents a complex blend or overlap combining together the industrialization of men’s psyches with what that process does to their sexual behavioral system, the Kidbot represents a similar blend combining together the industrialization (e.g., the conveyor belt assembly) of kid’s psyches and what such an assembly process does to the caregiving behavioral system (of both kids and parents alike). As Marano points out in the introductory pages of A Nation of Wimps, kids are increasingly being manufactured (and fed copious amounts of behavioral drugs along the way to “grease the skids” so-to-speak). They’re being put on a conveyor belt of development. And parenting styles reflect this industrialization of child rearing. Parents invade, parents hover, parents drug, parents overprotect, parents hallucinate danger, parents are simply there 24/7 like shop floor foremen.
So, the Kidbot reflects this pattern of parents being conditioned in the direction of manufacturing child development, and parents (as well as kids) having to derive some form of pleasure—caregiving(receiving) pleasure—out of this form of parenting. I would suggest that the image of the “hover parent” is a complex blend blending together two central trends: 1) parents intuitively knowing that for their kids to be successful in the digital age they have to become more like digital computers (robots), and, 2) parents intuitively knowing that it will increasingly become difficult to bond with or attach to kids as machines, kids as robots. The image of the hover parent tries to answer the question, “How do you love a kid machine, a kid robot?” One possible answer: You monitor it (the kid as robot) like you would an assembly line.
I laugh because Bowlbian attachment theory has been attacked by postmodernists on the grounds that it adheres to closely to the idea that child development progresses through certain stages or steps. Postmodernists contend that Bowlby’s theory is too mechanical. Yes, Bowlby was an advocate for nature’s steps (which clearly are affected by culture); ironically though, postmodernists, in condemning nature’s steps, embrace the mechanical manufacture of kids. Hmmmm? Seems like postmodernists attack Bowlbian attachment theory not because it is too mechanical but because it’s not mechanical enough. Nature’s steps tend to be slow, laborious and messy. It’s much faster, easier and more antiseptic to just feed a child a behavioral drug.
Now what’s interesting is that the Fembot image is often condemned on the grounds that it is pornographic but yet there has been no strong outcry that I know of concerning the Kidbot image. As a matter of fact, the Kidbot image is one of the mainstays of popular media today. I’ll point to the very popular (and profitable) Spy Kids movie franchise controlled by Miramax (which was bought by the Walt Disney Company back in 1993) as just one example. (For those of you who are not familiar with the Spy Kids movies, they depict young kids employing high tech spy gadgetry as they attempt to catch the bad guy.) Or how about the current movie Real Steel? Here’s the tagline for Real Steel (DreamWorks Pictures):
In the near future, a bot boxing manager and his son take their 2000-pound robot fighter to the bot boxing championships.
Real Steel fuses a young boy with a robot fighter. The result: kidbot. And the development of childhood into robothood takes place under the watchful eye of the boy’s father (who actually encourages this fusion process according to the promotional materials).
I know it’s provocative and controversial but if I am correct in putting the Fembot and Kidbot images on the same pornography continuum, then the outcry against the Kidbot image should be just as loud as the outcry against the Fembot image.
What do you think? Are you seeing the Kidbot image as well, or am I simply hallucinating. Leave a comment. Don’t let me get away with being such a provocateur.
