The Myth of Choice_ Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits - Kent Greenfield [46]
2.
As I write this chapter, it is winter. My wife, son, and I have just returned from a hike through a local forest with our dog Murphy. During the hike, we made our way across a frozen pond, where some enterprising kids had cleared the snow from a part of the ice to make a place for ice skating. While we were there, another father was enjoying the spot with his son, who looked to be about six years old. I noticed them only when I heard the father call out urgently to his son: “Move away from there!” The boy had eased up to one edge of the pond, where the water falls over a spillway in summer. The flow was only a trickle, but the ice there was noticeably thinner—gray-brown rather than blue-white. The son looked up at his father quizzically but didn’t move. The father was probably fifty feet away, and now moving quickly toward his son. His second command was even more urgent: “Don’t question me now. The ice is thin there. Come here now!” The son still looked confused, but he started walking toward his dad away from the spillway. The crisis was averted.
It was averted because the son followed an order.
Obedience is often a good thing, and our individual urge to obey certainly has deep roots in our respect for and trust in our parents. More broadly, the tendency to obey surely has an evolutionary source. Moreover, much of the socialization that occurs in school emphasizes the importance of respecting elders, following directions, and pledging allegiance.
As a parent, one of the most difficult lines to draw is how to encourage personal accountability but also respect and deference. We do not want our children to “decide for themselves” if they are standing on thin ice, running after a ball thrown into a busy street, or bantering with a creepy stranger on Facebook. As long as the subject is not electronic gadgets, music, or sixth-grade math, parents usually do know best.
A key decision for parents is when to allow questions and when to require obedience from our children. Which situations demand obedience, and which are opportunities for children to decide things for themselves, make their own mistakes, and learn personal responsibility? I have no easy answer. Different parents, different cultures, and different generations may answer this question differently. My guess—based on my own experience—is that a good number of parenting disagreements between spouses (or, worse, ex-spouses) are about this very thing.
As we think about the nature of choice, it is important to recognize that this parenting decision is simply the question Milgram’s subjects were asking themselves about their own behavior. When should I obey? When do I have the freedom to question? As adults, we are our own parents.
We face this issue daily in various ways and talk about it in various guises. “Go along to get along.” “Pick your battles.” “Don’t rock the boat.” Sooner or later, these norms are sufficiently internalized that it takes real courage to question authority. And when we do, authority does not always take kindly to it.
A friend of mine—let’s call him Pete—was recently in New York’s Penn Station after a night on the town with friends, waiting for a late-night train to his home in the suburbs. Pete and his buddy noticed a twentysomething woman nearby, clearly drunk. She appeared to be waiting for a train of her own, along with a couple of other young women. But the friends ambled off, leaving the first woman passed out on a bench.
If you met Pete, you’d probably want him as your friend. He’s a personable, smart, and athletic guy in his twenties who works hard and plays hard. He has a job on Wall Street, but its ethos of “me first” seems not to have seeped into him yet. He’s the kind of guy who’d return a found wallet, help an older gentleman find his glasses on the subway, or back