Return of the underminer.......

[dreadedcandiru2]

You can't read the strip for as long as I have without noticing something that howtheduck picked up on years ago; he noticed that Lynn believes in a strict segregation between adult and child behavior. In her world, adults should act like adults and children like children. This is, of course, why Elly is in a blind panic about the prospect of being a stay-at-home mother; she clearly seems to have dreaded violating the laws of Foob and Whatever-God-the-Pattersons-believe-in by taking an interest in the things her children do and how they think. The 'proper' role of a parent is to sit back and stare at her children while they do whatever useless, boring, not-at-all-interesting-or-worth-parental-attention things they do; intervention is only permitted if they distract mother's attention from busywork. Lynn likes to contrast good parents like Elly, adult Michael and adult Deanna with a bad parent to show us how we are to live; beforehand, we had Mira as the (designated) cautionary example; as we know, the 'misguided', 'overly-indulgent' woman delighted in trying to undermine Deanna's authority by interacting with Meredith and Robin as if they were worth paying attention to and their concerns worth acknowledging; since someone with an axe to grind is trying to make herself feel better about how she missed out on her children's growing up because of the demands of her career, the result was to turn them into a pair of hellions who spent their days dreaming up new ways to annoy their parents. Now that we're in the new-ruin era, John, who has Mike and Lizzie eat cookies for dinner and who plays with them is, of course, trying to ensure that they become spoiled, demanding and tyrannical to undermine Elly and make work for her. This is so they can join the Nichols children in turning out wrong because Annie paid them attention and thought their activities worth her interest.

Comments

[hoppytoad79.livejournal.com]

Remind me, what is 'acting like an adult' and 'acting like a child'? There seems to be a lot of emphasis on this in society, and I can't get past the fact that acting like an adult is supposed to involve being serious and staid and boring and treating having fun and laughing and running through the grass barefoot like a bad thing to do and if you must indulge, do it in secret where no one else can see you acting immature/like a child. I totally reject that concept because, dude, it's totally bogus. Life totally blows and is just a major drag if you don't act silly and goofy and play in the rain.

[dreadedcandiru2.livejournal.com]

Lynn, sadly, does not see things that way; in her stuffy world-view, Elly has to be a dreary, boring, nagging killjoy who let the part of her that enjoys life and sympathizes with the small ones and offsprings wither and die so she can have credibility and be an adult. The same process is taking place with John; in short order, he will sincerely believe that Mike and Lizzie are in debt to him because he feeds, clothes and houses them and must, as an adult, respond with blinding violence when this ludicrous theory is questioned.