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Instead of being an icon of homegrown terrorism, John Walker Lindh may go down in history as a poster child for baby-boomer parenting—the legacy of a generation that could not just say no. Lindh grew up in Marin County, California, home of great wealth and great liberalism. Jeff Jacoby wrote in The Boston Globe how again and again Lindhs's parents "affirmed" his decisions: at 14, when he collected the nastiest hip-hop cds; at 16, when he decided to drop out of his alternative high school; and finally, when he became a Muslim after reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, "grew a beard, and took to wearing long white robes and an oversized skullcap." Indeed, Jacoby writes, "his father was 'proud of John for pursuing an alternative course' and his mother told friends that it was 'good for a child to find a passion.'" The Lindhs even paid for John to move to Yemen to learn "pure" Arabic and then to Pakistan to join a madrassah of radical Muslims.
"Even when it was clear that their son was sinking into Islamist fanaticism," Jacoby writes,
they wouldn't pull back on the reins. When Osama bin Laden's terrorists bombed the USS Cole and killed 17 American servicemen, Walker e-mailed his father that the attack had been justified, since by docking the ship in Yemen, the United States had committed "an act of war." Lindh now says that the message "raised my concerns"—but that didn't stop him from wiring Walker another $1,200. After all, says Dad, "my days of molding him were over."
The Lindhs represent an extreme version of the baby-boomer permissiveness that is coming home to roost in a generation of teenagers and young adults who seem more troubled, more lost than previous generations. The case of John Walker Lindh raises the question of parental responsibility: to what extent are parents to blame when their children commit crimes, beat up their classmates, or turn away from the family's faith? It's the same question we asked after the shootings at Columbine High School. It's the same question we whisper to each other when we find out a friend's teenage daughter is pregnant.
The question is more complex than it seems. Parents can do all the "right" things and still end up with prodigal children. And for all the years social scientists have carried on the nature vs. nurture debate, we are no closer to a definitive answer. In the last ten years alone, research has suggested that peers, not parents, are the major influence on a child's moral development; that violent video games are the primary cause of school shootings; that passing out condoms in schools has led to a higher rate of sexual activity in teens. Blaming parents for the ills of our youth may seem too obvious and too easy a target, but just because a target is easy to hit doesn't always mean it's the wrong one.
Harsh reality TVLast summer, my husband and I got hooked on a rerun of the 13-part pbs documentary series American High. The series followed a group of suburban Chicago high school students for a year to get a glimpse of the real life of today's teenagers and their interaction with their families. For us as parents, the insights were sobering.
My favorite kid was 17-year-old Morgan—who, I must admit, is the sort of guy I would tell my teenage daughter to avoid, if I had a teenage daughter. Morgan is loud, hyper, obnoxious, sarcastic, and hysterical. (In one episode, his dad inquires about Morgan's girlfriend. Morgan replies, "Come on. You're supposed to be this dysfunctional family who doesn't care about me.") On the surface, he looks and acts like he couldn't care less about anyone but himself. But behind the super-gelled hair, the enormous jeans, the attitude of complete disdain for life in general, Morgan is an intelligent, thoughtful boy who aches when he's no longer allowed to see his girlfriend, who teaches gymnastics to kids with Down Syndrome, who actually talks with his parents on a regular basis—and that is not true for most of these kids.
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