Thursday Literary Interlude: Why Adults Need Children

Love and Squalor

My last post was a bit of a downer, so please allow me this rare mid-week attempt to lift your spirits. On Monday, I wrote about the Bible’s celebration of children. Today, I would like to share a modern literary glimpse of why childhood matters so much to all of us.

We see today many examples of adults trying to destroy childhood, trying to impose their adult cares – their sex lives, their climate worries, their race politics – on children. Perhaps no 20^th century American writer was more aware of the dangers of such adult intrusions into childhood than JD Salinger. I’m not the biggest Salinger fan, I think a little goes a long way with him, and sometimes he gets things backwards. We should not, as he sometimes does, let our regret for lost childhood innocence fatally corrupt our view of adulthood. Yet, in one perfect story, he redeems himself.

For Esmé, With Love and Squalor is about the correct relationship between adults and children. We should not be imposing our grown-up problems on our young, but instead should do all we can to cultivate the joys of childhood. The bright, wonder-filled light shining from those joys may be all that we have to illuminate our adult world. We have all already been saved by a baby, and sometimes the not-so-divine babies in our daily lives can remind us of that.

The simple story – about a WWII soldier losing his faculties until an encounter with a young friend – is very short and very popular, I’m sure many of you have read it before, but on the chance you haven’t, I hope you enjoy.  

If you’d rather spend the hour playing with your kids or grandkids, I applaud the decision. Thank you for reading and have a wonderful rest of your week!