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"Children are from heaven" or how today children respect adults
Barbara Vogrinec
Full text (pdf) | Views: 17 | Written in Slovene. | Published: June 6, 2007
Abstract: The starting point of the text is a returning to the patriarchal, which is not simply the one that we are witnessing today, in the time of so-called postmodern, postpatriarchal society in its (until now) last form. It is a matter of returning to rules, of which the basic premise is that adults are subjects (transcendences, freedoms, activities) and children are subjects that are objects for adults (imanences, non-freedoms, pasivities), but which notwithstanding differ from the oldfashioned rules from the past. We attempted to explain this returning, following the example of rules offered by the book Children Are From Heaven – a selfhelp book, published at the end of the nineties of the 20th century, which immediately became the world's bestseller. In addition, our aim was to answer the following questions: What has happened with rules of civilization and good manners, regulating the relations between children and adults today? How have they changed and what has happened with children's or adults's relation to these rules or their performings? How has this relation changed? Considering the mentioned basic premise which implies that children respect adults, we also tried to answer the question: What has happened with the respect, or, how do children respect adults today? Disscussion is presented in the framework of lacanian psychoanalysis.
Keywords: postmodern society, postpatriarchal society, adult child relations, respect, lacanian theory, psychoanalysis
