The New York Times has an article about middle class families that have had to trim spending during the downturn. The focus of the article is on teens in those families who have for the most part been used to pandering from their parents, getting just about anything they ask for. A couple of quotes jumped out:

When Wendy Postle’s two children were younger, saying “yes” gave her great joy. Yes to all those toys. The music lessons. The blowout birthday parties.

But as her son and daughter approached adolescence, yes turned into a weary default. “Sometimes it was just easier to say, ‘O.K., whatever,’ than to have the battle of ‘no,’ ” said Mrs. Postle, a working mother who lives in Hilliard, Ohio, a middle-class suburb of Columbus.

An indulgent childhood leads to indulgent teenage years. I know how hard it is to say no to a three year old. The things they want tend to be cheap and buying is easy. But even – and especially – at a young age children need to learn that they cannot always have the things that they want. Parents, be wise. Teaching children to expect that they will always get what they want means when they become teenagers they will still expect the same.

Here are some comments about parents having to talk to their kids about the need to spend less in a time when everything is costing more but income is more unstable:

Parents hardly relish these conversations. As they sit down with their teenagers, they are agonizing over their own feelings of failure. “Parents are going to feel they’re not giving their kids everything,” said Madeline Levine, a California psychologist who writes about adolescents in her book “The Price of Privilege.” “The kids are going to be confused. They’ve never known not having what they want. And the parents are going to have to tolerate their kids’ anger.”

Allow me to be a bit harsh. Parents, then, are feeling like failures when they cannot feed the greedy appetites of their children, when they are unable to feed indulgent lifestyles. Once upon a time good parenting meant training your children to live good, well-mannered, productive lives. Today good parenting means making sure your children can live lazy, self-indulgent, Paris Hilton type lives? Something is seriously wrong.

Wendy Postle said her teenagers have become angrier and more argumentative about money. “They seem so selfish,” she said. She wondered whether the fault was hers, whether that early lavishness was a parental failing.

I wonder.

Here is something all parents should see, coming from one teenager who was talking about the way her parents bribed her with things:

And yet, she added shyly: “I love the gifts but I’d really like to spend time with him. But my parents are working harder than ever and they’re so worried. I don’t want to force him to spend time with me. I can be a real earache.”

Kids need parents. They need parents present and involved in their lives. Good parenting does not mean buying kids a bigger television. It means spending time with your kids, loving them and showing them how to live. Let’s tie in one more social ill: an abortion culture treats kids as disposables that are a matter of individual choice. Why let kids get in the way of doing the things you want to do? Earn enough money to buy them enough stuff to cover up their unhappiness and you can get back to doing what you want to do. But in the end everyone ends up indulgent and unhappy and the only solution is one that will require a great deal of pain and adjustment for everyone: sacrifice and working toward real family life.