A Generation of Wimps

Everyone wants what's best for their child, and rightfully so. However, society's view on what's "right" seems to have become tainted. What society has become accustomed to viewing as favorable for a child, has proven to be more detrimental. This perspective of what is best for a child is that of protection. Unfortunately, there is such a fine line between showing excessive amounts of protection and not showing enough protection. While it is crucial that parents and guardians take care of their children, if they are not cautious, society's future is one full of wimps.

The argument is not about who can win a fist fight, but more of who proves to have more maturity and who can survive on their own. A child graduates high school and goes off to college at a fairly young age. Well, it at least seems like a young age through the eyes of today's world. However, could that be because by the time a kid goes to college, he is still impotent to performing even the easiest of tasks? Will college students in the future even know how to get food? After all, there are countless numbers of high school students who still have their moms make their lunches, make phone calls for them, or even come to job interviews with them. Even at young ages, parents can show excessive overprotection of their children. In a Boston middle school, students attended a party over the weekend and came to school the next week wearing t-shirts specifically from that party. Clearly, not all kids were invited to the party and, as a result, feelings were hurt and parents reacted. The school went on to ban the t-shirts from the school because it excluded the kids who did not have the shirts. How will any of this behavior create a generation able to succeed on its own without feelings being "hurt"?

New rules and laws made to "protect" children have only taken away any common sense parents and other leaders have on the topic of raising children. It seems as if abducting children and wearing t-shirts that not all kids possess have fallen under far too similar categories. Yes, parents need to respond to matters such as child abuse, however, if their kid scrapes his knee, there is no need to rush to the Emergency Room. If America continues practically wrapping its kids in bubble wrap and a helmet just to go somewhere such as school, it will find itself in the midst of a truly helpless generation.

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"Why don't you go on west to California? There's work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange. Why, there's always some kind of crop to work in. Why don't you go there?" (Chapter 5, pg. 34)

In The Grapes of Wrath, California is more than just a place. It is an idea and symbol of hope. Early in the book, California is portrayed as the "Promised Land". It provides hope and a goal in which the tenants can set their sights. As the Bible story goes, after wandering in the desert for 40 years, God provides the Israelites with the much anticipated promised land. Steinbeck treats California much like it is the Promised land that will be warm and welcoming to the farmers, solving all their problems.