Someone recently told me:
“If you’re going to have a difficult life, it might as well be childhood, since it’s so short.”
I disagree. Wholeheartedly.
I think it was a supremely stupid thing to say, for a few reasons.
First, it’s the percentage of your life that is difficult that matters most, and a difficult childhood skews that percentage poorly for a long, long time.
If you have a difficult childhood, that means 100% of your life up until a certain age is difficult, and these are fundamental years upon which the foundation of our lives is often built.
This alone is exceptionally damaging.
Equally important:
It takes a long, long time for that percentage to even shift to a 50/50 split.
For example, if your life was difficult until the age of 16, you won’t attain a 50/50 split of difficult to not-so-difficult until you’re 32 years old, and that assumes none of the years between ages 17 and 32 were difficult, which is unlikely.
Even if that’s the case, you’ve now only reached a 50-50 split at the age of 32.
Half your life was hard.
Half was not.
And the hard half is still your foundation.
In this example, you’ll need to reach the age of 48 before two-thirds of your life wasn’t difficult, and 64 before three-quarters of your life wasn’t difficult, and all of this is assuming that none of the years between ages 17 and 64 are difficult, which is, of course, a ridiculous assumption.
No, if you’re going to have a difficult life, make it anything but childhood. I wish every person on the planet a childhood filled with love, joy, learning, productive struggle, and great success.
If life is then filled with hardship, at least the foundation will be solid, coping strategies will be in place, and the person experiencing the hardship will be able to lean on the memory of those childhood years with a sense of what has been and could be again.
The kind of person who thinks that if you’re going to have a difficult life, it might as well be childhood is probably someone who experienced a childhood free of hardship and has no understanding of the long-term impact a difficult childhood can have on the rest of your life.
We build homes on solid foundations, or they eventually fall.
So, too, should we be trying like hell to build a lifetime on a solid foundation, meaning investing in education, healthcare, and nutrition at an early age.
All things, for the record, that have been cut in recent years by an administration that has gutted the Department of Education, eliminated healthcare subsidies, and cut SNAP benefits.
Hurting children is always wrong, but it’s also strategically stupid. It creates larger, more expensive problems in the future, but this is how our country has treated children for a long, long time. We don’t invest nearly enough in preschool, education, paid parental leave, healthcare, and nutrition, and we end up paying for it later.
It’s short-sighted, economically stupid, and cruel.
Childhood may be short, but it shouldn’t be difficult. On the contrary, it should be the most productive and most supported time in a person’s life, helping to guarantee them the very best future possible.
