Who is teaching your child values?
Pop culture is usually available, especially for passive parents. But these lessons are never neutral. Consider comic book icons. Their values usually resonate with our children because they beat the bad guys, triumph over evil, save the world, and look cool doing it! Innocent minds absorb the fantasy. Boys and girls tie on terry-cloth capes and save weaklings from evildoers.
WeathersSo we can be grateful that we can mostly count on the comics, especially the superheroes, to reflect the common core of character values that most parents agree on for their children, including clear distinctions between good and bad, right and wrong. And when these comic superheroes are transferred to the big screen, as with this summer’s hit, “The Avengers,” we can usually assume the kids will get a good dose of moral responsibility.
But cultural values are shifting. In 2009, Batwoman’s alter-ego, Katherine “Kate” Kane, came out as a “lesbian socialite.” In the 1980s, Marvel Comics introduced Northstar as an openly-gay member of the X-Men team, and Northstar “married” his partner in June’s storyline, inspiring gay “weddings” at comic book stores across the nation. Also in June, a long-standing character in Green Lantern series, Alan Scott, came out as gay. Since the 1940s, Scott has not reflected any sexual preference other than implied heterosexuality. But the writer for the Green Lantern series, James Robinson, retooled the hero to reflect his own moral agenda. He said, “The Alan Scott I’m doing now is that same dynamic, brave, honorable man,” he added. “A man that you’d want guarding your welfare, your children, your life, your home. He’s willing to give his life for the world. He’s everything you want in a hero. And he happens to be gay.”
So who is teaching values to your children? When Moses said, “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up,” he was instilling in parents a fundamental truth. Never be passive about your child’s moral education (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)
Because if you are not teaching them values, someone else is.