The case in Steubenville greatly saddened me. It boiled down to youth, inexperience, and poor judgment. I’m not going to argue one way or the other if those teenage boys were guilty or not. What they did was wrong. While I feel sorry for that young lady, she was clearly somewhere she shouldn’t have been, in a state she should not have been. But one thing that I have not heard discussed was the parents’ responsibility.
People on the outside looking in considered my parents strict. I wouldn’t say they were the strictest but they weren’t any pushovers. As I look back on it they were two people on the same team when it came to parenting. They were Jordan and Pippen. When a decision was made I knew it came from the both of them. I feared them and not in a Michael Jackson/Joe Jackson kind of way. I feared disappointing them.
My parents fell in love as two young inner city kids in Pittsburgh, PA. My father never knew his father and lived in foster care or with relatives the majority of his life. He grew up apart from his siblings. His mother, my grandmother, was a heroin addict. My mother was raised in a single parent home where her mother worked third shift. She had the responsibility of watching over her younger siblings. The summer before their senior year in high school I was conceived. I was born two months before they would graduate high school and subsequently get married. Life was not easy for them. Their personal experience and eventual spiritual enlightenment caused them to be a little stricter than most.
Well strict in the eyes of the kids in my neighborhood. We had to be in front of the house before the streetlight across the street from our home came on. There was to be absolutely no people in the house if they were not home. I didn’t attend many parties in high school. The parties I attended were often chaperoned. No rated R movies as a teenager, no cursing, no violent video games, had to be home by 7 (even when I was 16 and driving unless I was working), and you ask permission for everything. The biggest NO of all was dating in high school. I quite frequently remember my parents saying they saw nothing cute about teenage dating (they would know). Most kids thought my parents were unreasonably strict and mean. But looking back on it they just wanted to ensure their three BLACK sons avoided the same tragedies and hardships that had already plagued our family.
They were successful for the most part. I mean we weren’t perfect kids and we broke the occasional rule and suffered the consequences. But they helped us to avoid imprisonment, teenage pregnancy, habitual drug use, and sullied reputations. The Williams’ boys were well known and liked in the community. All three of us live on our own and have jobs. Two out of the three of us are married. Our family is still close knit. My brothers and I respect our parents dearly. The perceived limited freedom we experienced as teenagers allowed us to be freer as adults today. I couldn’t imagine being 18 with a child like my parents. My parents loved each other but that is not always the case when you are so young. That predicament would have limited my ability to go to school, meet new friends, travel to multiple countries, and eventually find a woman that I love unconditionally.
We could have chosen to openly defy our parents. But the respect was too great. What we noticed with our parents is they never set a rule they themselves didn’t hold themselves too. They set the example for us on what was reasonable behavior. For instance, I know my parents like a drink now and again. But I’ve never seen them drunk and belligerent. I’ve never seen them curse anyone out. I remember them not allowing our cousin to spend the night in our house with his live-in girlfriend because they weren’t an example for us. I realized that just like me they lived a life that wasn’t necessarily popular with their peers. But they had their respect. Also they never kept their failures a secret from us. They made bad decisions and they helped us to understand why they were so costly. They were never too proud to apologize for a mistake.
Steubenville is an unfortunate case. If only those parents had known, right? But how did they not know what would happen when you allow youth to be on the loose. Kids are in fear of no one these days. Sadly too many parents are leaving the schools, police, and courts to discipline their children. Often by time it gets to that point it is far too late. Then we have something like Steubenville happen and people are outraged. I’m neither outraged nor shocked. But based on this “new” style of parenting I expect to see a lot more of this. Parents want to be friends with their kids. That’s funny I don’t think my dad and I were officially “friends” until I moved out. He’s a cool dude too.
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