Doomsday Parenting

Every morning, as I drive my carbon dioxide emitting vehicle into work, I spend my time listening to Adam Corolla. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Corolla’s morning show, he’s Stern’s replacement on Free FM, and is most well known for the 10 or so years he did on Love Line with Dr. Drew.

What bothered me about him on Love Line I love about him on his morning shows. Quite often when someone else is talking he’ll pick up a word or a phrase that reminds him of something he hates and launch into a fifteen minute rant about that topic. His rants are glorious in how he phrases his complaints, and genious in the points he makes. Most times I’m in my car nodding my head with everything he says. You can listen to his top rants this week at the “This Week in Rage” section of his website: http://adam.freefm.com/ (warning: some strong language).  I think the nurse one is the best myself, and I’m a little surprised that my favorite rant of the week didn’t make the top 5: his rant about how his childhood was ruined by his mother’s doomsday apocalypic fears.

His mom fell victim to the 1970s hippy mindset that we were all going to destroy ourselves in a nuclear war. When he was a kid he had to listen to his mom and her friends talk about how horrible it is to bring a child into this world. He was old enough to realize hey, wait a minute… you just brought ME into this world! What were you thinking? I don’t want to be here! He grew up thinking that by the time he was 30 he would either A. be dead or B. be living underground in a post apocalyptic future.

As I listened to this rant, I really felt bad for him growing up in that environment. I was also releaved that I didn’t grow up with parents who shared his mother’s sentiments (thanks mom and dad). Then, it hit me… we have an entire generation growing up the same way he did. The global warming doomsdayists are no different from the hippy nuclear war disaster doomdayists. I really wonder how it is going to effect the children born today as they are growing up thinking that they are going to die from horrific natural disasters or the rising of the sea or the melting of the ice caps or the extinction of the species etc, etc, etc. Honestly people, they are kids. Let them have their childhoods and don’t worry them about this stuff. And if you really feel that this is going to happen, then as Adam’s mother would say, what are you thinking bringing a child into this world?