I am the happy father of a happy toddler. Part of my job description is to shield little Jonas from the dark things of this world. Later on, I’ll have to figure out how to explain to him things like war, poison ivy, pedophiles, drugs, bullies, etc.  Since I’m new to this whole parenting thing, I haven’t yet figured out how I’m supposed to do that. But it seems, generally speaking, that parents today seem reactive, rather than proactive in dealing with the bad-things-of-life. It is very easy to help shape little imaginations to the good things of this world; it is quite another thing to shape little imaginations to be able to resist the bad things of this world.

I wonder if, perhaps, modern parents shield children from the wrong sorts of things and give them free reign in the wrong sorts of things. I’ve known parents that get angry if someone who had just recently smoked a cigarette enters into their home–afraid of some sort of “clinging” second hand smoke. Perhaps the same parents would have no problem having their little angel in the room while they watched the latest episode of “Mad Men.”

Some parents are afraid of introducing religion to their little darlings because they are afraid of influencing something so personal (and, I suppose, arbitrary) as their children’s spirituality. That would, after all, be religiously coercive. However, these parents might not be opposed to tame and generic spirituality–like baby yoga.

And so, by the witness of some parents I’ve met, smoking and religion are bad. “Mad Men” and yoga are good.

It seems that conventional wisdom has shifted. When I was a child, smoking and religion were at least tolerable (my parents weren’t religious, but they did value the baby-sitting qualities of Sunday School). Yoga and cable television were bad.

And if you go back even further, parents told their children stories of children falling down and cracking their skulls open, about poor single mothers who beat their children, and about evil, cannibalistic hags. Have you ever sat and read through old nursery rhymes and fairy tales? These stories often delve into the darker parts of our collective unconscious.

To make things interesting, these macabre tales often had a hidden meaning. In other words, it wasn’t good enough to tell your children sick, twisted stories. These stories sometimes held hidden, politically subversive messages. That way, as the children grew up, they could hate their rulers. :)

I’m not saying that folks were better parents back in those days, or that reading creepy tales to your kids will help them develop into model human beings. I bring up these dark, subversive tales to remind us of a time when parents told their children stories about dark things to prepare them for the world. And while we don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) read macabre stories and tell violent rhymes to shape our children’s imaginations, we most certainly need to think about what it means to teach our kids about the dark things of this world and, hopefully, how to resist those things.

So, how do we influence our baby radicals in their understanding of what is good or evil? Of what is beautiful and what is ugly? Of what is true and what is false? Do we let Disney tell our daughters to be attractive princesses and let Hasbro tell our sons to be militaristic hunks? If we shield our children from the nasty things of this world, instead of helping them learn how to resist them, are we simply helping our children become docile mini-subjects of Empire?

Just to lighten the mood while you ponder the serious questions I just posed, I would like to offer my own attempt at a subversive nursery rhyme. Unfortunately, mine isn’t very subtle (and I’ll probably never read it to Jonas):

The Happy Hawthorn

The Happy Hawthorn gathered up
Before the first of may
Burning in the Beltane fire
Until the break of day

Hear the Happy Hawthorn
Sing a lullaby
As all the baleful nobles
Fall down and cry

Peasant children fast asleep
While princelings toss and turn
The king and queen bellow wails
As the palace starts to burn

Hawthorn crown upon the head
Of the Holy King
The people dance ’round the fire
While their children sing

About Mark Van Steenwyk

Mark Van Steenwyk is a member of Missio Dei. He is a speaker, writer, educator, and grassroots organizer. With the support of the Central Plains Mennonite Conference, he travels to radical and intentional communities around the country to help network and offer support.