Like an onion.

As humanity has managed to shuffle in to 2012, lets have a quick check.
Onion layers of problems.
Got the theme?
Limited scope here, I'm just going for one aspect in onion land...

Boundaries. A main purpose of being a parent is setting and sticking to boundaries.
This is how kids know right from wrong, how you eventually get a good nights sleep, and why your kid isn't still breast feeding at age 6.
Mother's are traditionally bad at this, don't shoot your mouth off and call that a fault. Mother's will also kill a grizzly bear that attacks the kids for the exact same reason. Like everything, caring too much is good and bad. To some extent this is why having a Dad is important. They tend to be the one's that say "No! They can't keep creeping in to our bed!" and set some boundaries out where mum would tend to let things slip a little out of love.

Yup that's the short version. Many hole's can be picked in it. But fundamentally, this is why a loving couple (male / male. female / female, male / female I don't care!), are better at kid rearing than a single parent. In a couple, one person sets rules the other doesn't, and kids need rules! Right?

[Later Edit: Occurs to me months later I left a case out here. Single parents. I'm not anti single parents at all, it's a fact of life these days that there are many of them. I just think they have a much harder time bringing up children. I'd even go as far as to say those single parents that do bring up loving balanced kids are true heroes of the modern world.]

Hello onion.

Why? .. What? ... Why rules? Uhm .. kids need boundaries to be socially acceptable and not end up in prison in later life. Uh huh. And?

Many of the boundaries, and the act of being the authority (the parent) that imposes those limits, reinforces the messed up boundaries and limits of the politicians and law makers of this world.

Step back a little. How many millionaires got there by respecting all boundaries in the world? Very few indeed. If you want your kid to have a chance in this messed up world, you have to teach them to disrespect the boundaries they can get away with.

WOAH! Hang on. How am I supposed to instill boundaries in my children and yet teach them to be rebellious at just the right times?

You can't.

Onion layers bites back.

In this 2012 messed up world. The true path to fiscal success is to cheat and ignore rules. You can't teach that to your kid unless you have the power and money to bail them out again and again, then give them a job with a friend of Dad that gives them a leg up to keep cheating. The rest of us proles? Kinda screwed. You let the kid loose and it's a vandal with a criminal record and you're a bad parent. You teach them rules and respect? And they are stuck living the tax payer life for eternity who never rocks the boat.

Ah noooo way .. I'm exaggerating! I am?

Take a working / lower class kid. Let them go trash a restaurant, or dress up as a Nazi and sing racist songs for a night out. Result's aren't good are they? Criminal record? Nice! Ok now lets try that at the rich end of the scale. Call it the Bullingdon Club. Trash a few restaurants and throw cash at the owner, go for the Nazi themed party and oh noes! The public school / University might say your social club isn't recognised by them ... But it's ok ... You can still become Mayor of London, Prime Minister, hell you can even run the entire country's finances if you like.

You can pause there and spend a few minutes trying to reconcile it all in your mind if you like. But it doesn't fit. There are very basic structural problems of unfairness in society that if anything are getting worse not better, and there's no solution. No political party that even recognises the problem. There isn't even a current philosophical position on what's right and what's wrong in the above.

You're on your own kids in an impossible position. That's life. What do you want to do about it?