I quite often get phrases stuck in my head, like songs, looping around themselves. At the moment it’s “Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won’t drown”, which if you don’t know it is a truly stellar bit of Awful Parenting Presented As Fine in classic British literature.
#i forget how fucked up swallows and amazons is
wait what’s wrong with Swallows and Amazons
as a general proponent of laissez-faire parenting (which I think I have in common with this area of tumblr?) I always thought Swallows and Amazons was an example of awesome parenting
like if your kids want to go live on an island by themselves for the summer, why not tbh
There’s “if your kids want to go and live on an island for the summer, let them, because some risks are worth taking.” Which I agree with. Letting the kids on the island is not the problem.
But this isn’t that. This is “if your kids make any mistakes doing something dangerous, they deserve to die and you should celebrate their deaths.” That’s horrifying.
Like, you’ve just made it impossible to ever ask for help for anything. Because asking for help proves you deserve to die.
fair, I wasn’t really thinking through the literal meaning of “better drowned than duffers” and I of course strongly disagree with that sentiment