OP was giving an extreme example.
When I was young, I made catapults with friends. One weekend we took our five-foot trebuchets and bombarded a neighbour’s house.
I don’t recall the exact damage we did. It wasn’t major, no broken windows. But it wasn’t insignificant either: garden shredded, porcelain gnomes destroyed. We had the riot act read to us. In exchange for not telling our parents we agreed to work their garden for the summer. It never occurred to the angry German man to call the cops and I am to this day friendly with his children.
If that happened in America today, we were in Switzerland, one of us would have been charged with juvenile delinquency. Maybe my friend, now a senior software engineer, who was the oldest of the group. Maybe me, who has the darkest skin.
I am not saying we need eight-year olds laying siege to their village to experience life. But almost every male friend of mine has a story in this genre. It might have been fights. It might have been practical jokes. It might have been my high school acquaintance and Eagle Scout who was expelled for guessing the system-wide one-factor Fremont Union High School District password (Zhongguo). His grand crime: running the printers at our rival high school on loop.
We would cut them open and use the powders to create larger and strung together bombs to blow up everything we could find from post boxes to old TVs to some cabinets we found on the streets.
Some off duty fireman found us and forced us to tell him were we lived. I can still feel his hand pinching on my ear as he dragged me back home to my parents.
Its possible fireworks are going to be illegal this December (normally, you're allowed to fire them around New Year's Eve). Why, too much weight on health care sector already due to COVID-19.
Up till age 12 or so, parents are legally responsible for their children. So if you're 11 and use a catapult to destroy gnomes in a garden, your parents are liable.
I'm concerned about my children for a different reason. We're both nerds. We got nothing with fireworks and all that. I'm worried my children will be outcasts and get bullied, just like we both were. Additionally, for our boy I am worried about staying on the right path. Statistics show men are more likely to commit crime than women. Furthermore, women achieve better education than men, nowadays. To put it bluntly: I don't want my son to become alt-right white trash. I believe all of these concerns being normal for parents, and of all time. Being concerned or worried about your children is normal, as long as its reasonable. Its of all ages, except that women achieve better education than men; that is actually a relatively recent change.
I sure hope your children grow up to not use a persons skin colour as an insult.
> Statistics show men are more likely to commit crime than women.
A bunch of comments here have expressed the suspicion that this might be partly caused by the bias against "typical boy behaviour" resulting in a feeling of inferiority, making me wonder how much of that statistical discrepancy is caused by failed attempts at fixing it.
Heh I didn't know it was racist. From my PoV it is an accurate assessment though, so I'll use the term "alt-right trailer trash" instead (second part alternative term by Wikipedia [1])
> A bunch of comments here have expressed the suspicion that this might be partly caused by the bias against "typical boy behaviour" resulting in a feeling of inferiority, making me wonder how much of that statistical discrepancy is caused by failed attempts at fixing it.
Except the statistic that men are more likely to commit crime isn't a recent development whereas the bias against "typical boy behaviour" (left undefined) is supposedly recent.
As children no one listened to the rules about when fireworks were allowed, but I don't remember it being as bad as today.
I, too, think it's the most normal thing ever to be concerned for your children. And the fact that you worry about this stuff already makes you a good parent. :)
And you'd be wrong, because it's extremely hypocritical. I too grew up a nerd. I got very in shape in my 40s, and the amount of respect I got after less than a year of diligent weight lifting was incredible -- and that was from people who would praise the feminized society, too.
> I can't understand a world where it is normal to have a bar fights.
I have to say, it has to be a very American thing. I remember two American guys telling me they were surprised to never see a bar fight in Paris, and I was shocked to hear such a thing existed. I thought it was a Western movie trope, 19th century frontier thing. But apparently not.
Are you telling me if you see someone in great shape running and someone morbidly obese in a scooter, your reaction to both will be the same? Maybe I am cynical but I don't believe that.
every human being deserves the same respect and love regardless of their appearance, and making any difference is something that i deeply reject, and i feel ashamed if i catch myself with such a thought.
Or, if you're actually complaining about people getting any respect at all for the work they put into their physical appearance?
if my friends compliment me for the hard work i did as they notice the improvement, then that's fine.
but a random stranger has no business judging my appearance, regardless if it's positive or negative.
Where does the comment you responded to even talk about random strangers?
> and the amount of respect I got after less than a year of diligent weight lifting was incredible
Sounds to me like this is mostly about friends or acquaintances. All you're doing here is trying to invalidate something someone else did that they feel somewhat proud about.
it was also not my intention to invalidate the achievement of someone improving their bodyshape, which, as someone who is overweight myself, is something i wish i could achieve too (although i am somewhat proud of the fact that i kept my weight stable for the last 20 years) and i appreciate your criticism as i realize that my comment can be read like that.
i'd like to apologize for that.
what rubbed me wrong was the implied suggestion that i should improve my body in order to get more respect from friends or anyone else.
it felt to me like doing it for the wrong reasons. again, while saying that i realize that this may not be what the comment intended to express, and i am saying this now not in order to restate or repeat any criticism on my part, but in order to explain my thought process however inadequate it may be.
finally, my comment was not meant critisize the parent at all personally but rather critisize the very idea of respecting someone for their body shape.
maybe it helps to reverse the positions:
it is fine for me to compliment my friends on their achivements to loose weight because i know where they came from, but it is not acceptable to judge someone elses appearance because i don't know how it will be perceived. especially if it happens in public, congratulating someone on their body while not doing that on the nearby overweight person potentially makes that person uncomfortable.
likewise, receiving a compliment that i don't deserve makes me uncomfortable too.
we do need to consider how our messages are received. and with someone i don't know, i can't predict how that message is received, therefore it is better not to send the messsge in the first place.
if i do want to send a message i try to word it in such a way as to not be about them but about me: i would like to get my body in a shape like yours this removes any potential misunderstanding that i might generally favor people with a certain body shape, and it won't make other overweight people in the room feel bad.
so i am doing this with the express goal to counteract how other people are reacting to me or to anyone else.
only point I find sane is that we need more male teachers but its more like a market problem assuming man can do this job well in case of high demand (good salary)
Now try replacing male teachers with female CEOs in that sentence and see what happens.
I am one of the most sought out teachers for our kindergarten classes, I'm energetic, friendly and have excellent control of the classroom resulting in students being more interested in attending.
I have an excellent record with the quiet and shy students, to the point where other teachers in our other schools are told to speak to me for advice.
My history has very little bearing as a teacher, as I do not condone any forms of violence in the classroom.
Creating blanket statements without knowledge, results in irrational fears.
While I do not condone of physical violence, I would much rather a guy having beef with me to angrily yell at me in person, rather than make up stuff and invite a twitter mob to get me fired.
But yeah, better have kids playing judo than bar fighting.