concepts of children

Diana writes:

“I just came across your ‘concepts of children’ post. As a child, I anticipated an adulthood in which it would be important to remain constantly aware of the dangers of quicksand. Everyone came up against it: Tarzan, Lawrence of Arabia… absolutely everyone.

But I don’t think it’s a childhood mytheme anymore. Maybe children worry about asteroids now, which were a non-starter in my childhood.”

Yes, quicksand was on the list! Thanks for the reminder.

The second part of Diana’s message also reminds us that childhood mythemes evolve just like everything else. This already came up years ago when I ran the “concepts of children” past my parents. One of their mythemes, fairly meaningless to me, was “blood brothers.” Namely, two boys went through some sort of ceremony where they each nicked their fingers with a knife and mixed a few drops of blood to become lifelong friends. It sounds like it came from some sort of Native American scene in the the then-ubiquitous cowboy movies (this would have been the 1950’s). But the blood brothers ceremony did not replicate itself in future American generations, as far as I am aware.

Oh yeah, another concept of children… your boss jabbing a finger at you and intoning “You’re fired!” I’ve never heard of that actually happening.

Obviously, many of these are culturally specific as well, and perhaps even regionally so.