Seventeenth in an ongoing series
RISHON LEZION, Israel — So I was buying a bottle of soda at a local kiosk, a convenience store, when three ten-year-old boys walked in and asked the owner for some plastic cups. (Kiosks routinely offer them for free whenever someone purchases a bottle of something to drink, but these children just wanted some cups.) The owner told them “no,” and then the ten-year-olds started arguing with him.
But it was more than that. When these kids were arguing, they were just as confident, blunt, and aggressive as Israeli adults. The only difference was that their voices were higher. (The whole argument was both cute and impressive at the same time.) I was sure that they could out-haggle me if I were trying to buy something from them. After five minutes of shouting and gesturing, the children left without the cups. Then the owner handed them, along with the bottle of Coke, to me.
Out of all the cultural differences between Israel and the United States, one of the most significant is the way in which children are raised. For better and for worse, young Israelis are generally worldly, cynical, confident, and tough while young Americans, at least compared to Israelis, are more innocent, naive, optimistic, and soft. These are good and bad sides to each culture’s view of childhood.
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Young Israelis
On my second vacation to Israel in 2007, I was waiting at a Tel Aviv bus stop with a friend of mine while we were on our way back to Rishon Lezion — forty minutes away. She pointed out the fact that an eleven-year-old girl was also waiting for the same bus — alone. “Kids take buses all over the country all the time here,” my friend told me. I was surprised. Few parents in America, if any, would let a child do that.
From the time that children here are young, people treat them just like adults. Students ride public buses to school every morning, sometimes to private, religious ones in far-off towns and cities, along with adults who are commuting to work. As I wrote in a prior letter, people have frank-and-vulgar jokes and discussions about sex in front of children. No one is coddled. Children and their parents argue and yell all the time. Schools are very casual, and students are on a first-name basis with their teachers. Israelis also grow up to be worldly cynics because they have endured war, terrorism, and rockets throughout much of their lives.
From what I have observed in bars (the best place to observe a society and talk to people about their country), teenagers and everyone else, no matter their ages, generally interact with each other like equal adults. An Israeli at eighteen is probably more mature than I was at twenty-five. Teenage girls here date guys who are much older, and — more significantly — their parents do not mind at all (as long as the guy is good). In addition to the fact that children and teenagers are treated like adults, Israeli parents, just as the Jewish stereotype goes, put tremendous pressure on their children to date, get married, and have children as soon as possible.
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Regardless of the ages of the people involved, parents generally do not mind if their childrens’ dates or significant others — or even their one-night stands! — sleep over. (Of course, this occurs only in secular families, not religious ones.) One common anecdote: a mother, after knowing that a girl had slept over, will knock on her son’s bedroom door in the morning and ask whether she should prepare an additional breakfast. (Parents have also told me they would rather their children be safe at home than doing who-knows-what who-knows-where. In addition, many adult children live with their families until they can finally afford their own apartment or get married.)
The drinking age in Israel is eighteen, but most bars, for several reasons, usually allow teenagers as young as sixteen to enter. One time, I saw a sixteen-year-old girl run into her teacher in the same bar. The teacher was not very happy, but she did nothing. Israelis of a given age are generally more mature than Americans of the same age, so high-schoolers here drink more responsibly. Bar owners, of course, want more money. Cities never check bars for underage people, but they do send patrols to fine bars who let people smoke indoors (which is most of them) because they want the money from tickets. Israelis can have a high level of disrespect for the law and a dog-eat-dog mentality for reasons I’ve explained elsewhere.
Parents usually give teenagers free reign to have fun in their lives because they know that their children will be doing mandatory military service after high school. They will be able to have little fun for two or three years, and sadly, some of them will never return. In addition, parents make sure that their children are as tough, mature, and independent as possible so that they will be able to endure the time in the military. In general, Israeli society produces people who are tough because naive “friarim” (suckers) do not survive in the Middle East.
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Young Americans
I have no children of my own, and I had little contact with them while living in Boston during college and five years afterward. So I cannot offer any personal anecdotes of the lives of modern children and teenagers in America. I can only base my general observations on the multitudes of news stories that I have read on the modern lives of young people in the United States. Of course, the media tend to overgeneralize and sensationalize, but since so many articles have had the same, underlying theme, I believe that my conclusions are accurate. (If anyone, especially parents, has any thoughts, please feel free to post a comment.)
The articles that I read — in various media outlets of all types and viewpoints — on childhood in America are disturbing. Some teachers are using purple pens to correct homework rather than red ones because they do not want students to feel bad. For the same reason, more and more sports teams are giving trophies to everyone (or no one at all) from first to last place (and some leagues do not even keep score). Many parents are contacting teachers every day through e-mail and text messages to discuss their children. Schools are banning games like tag and dodge ball because they might lower self-esteem or cause injury. Children are told by teachers that violence is never acceptable, even in self-defense. A nine-year-old Connecticut boy was banned from Little League because he was a pitcher who threw too fast for the hitters. Out of an exaggerated fear of strangers and predators as well as increasingly-hectic schedules, children are increasingly having “play dates” rather than being, allowed to run loose throughout the neighborhood (much less miles away like in Israel). A coach of a Texas high-school girls’ basketball team was fired after not softening the blow of his team’s 100–0 victory against another school. Nearly one-third of the seniors at a Long Island high school are members of at least one honor society. I could go on.
Young people in college and afterward are acting less and less independently. So-called “Helicopter Parents” talk to college professors and administrators on their child’s behalf whenever he receives a bad grade, when he does not get a class he wants, or when he has a problem with his roommate. In response to parental pressure, some universities have installed webcams in cafeterias and dormitories so parents can keep tabs on their children. (Acquaintences of mine who work in higher education have confirmed these published reports.) In the work world, these parents increasingly try to call a manager when their child does not receive a job following an interview, or they try to negotiate a salary-and-benefits package with the boss after the
child receives a position.
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The Middle Ground?
Of course, it is extremely difficult to generalize about a country’s children and how they are raised. But it seems that Israelis and Americans are doing things that are polar opposites. There are good and bad qualities to each. Israeli parents raise kids with the intention of making them as tough, independent, and self-reliant as possible, but many are also spoiled because many of their parents let them do whatever they want. Young Israelis are worldly and knowledgeable, but they also become cynical early on. Americans seem to raise children by keeping them as safe as possible, but then they become soft and have fewer opportunities to learn and prepare for
adulthood by taking risks, engaging in competition, making mistakes, and facing occasional failure. American children may be more naive, but they do retain their innocent childhoods for much longer.
Out of these two extremes, I do not know which one of these attitudes is better. I would be curious to hear what my readers think. Like in many things, the middle ground is probably the best — but I cannot imagine what exactly that would be.
Prior Letter: Me and the Israeli Arab.
