Monthly Archives: February 2014

Encouraging Independence: The Humanism of Philanthropy Versus the Culture of Dependency. How Much Help Is Too Much?

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handsIf you’re a parent or you work with kids, you’re probably familiar with the dilemma of independence versus dependence. On one hand you want to encourage children to be as independent as possible for their ages, making decisions and trying new experiences. On the other hand, you want to protect them from the apparently endless bad things that can happen to them. Some of these issue from the society around them; some result from taking risks beyond their capabilities. 

Fast forward to an individual of legal age. It’s nice to think that adults can handle the challenges as well as the benefits of maturity. But if someone experiences a run of bad luck, should we help? I know if my children or grands came down with a catastrophic illness or lost their jobs or had a major expenditure for education or travel, I’d jump right in. 

Still, at some point, would I be doing them a disservice by discouraging them from taking responsibility for themselves?  Various friends and relatives face this issue. A daughter’s employer bottoms up, and she can’t find another position. . .for years. A son’s plumbing must be replaced, and he borrows thousands. . .and never is able to repay the loan. Depression and other emotional challenges can accompany the situation, making action or planning for changes even more difficult. 

Some of my acquaintances seem to take great pride in their support. Other times they express their frustration as well as worry about the situation. They report tip-toeing around the needy person to avoid making them feel like failures. 

Would a swift kick in the butt help? Perhaps. People’s drive for independence, their ability to meet challenges differs greatly. My kids were determined to stand on their own two feet from the time they could walk, probably to escape me. But not everyone’s like this. 

If our ultimate goal is a self-sustaining adult, we should be looking at the help we offer and evaluating if it’s really the help that’s needed. In a crisis, sure, we rush to do all we can. But after weeks or months or years, shouldn’t we discourage dependence? While emotional difficulties aggravate the process, they shouldn’t be a get-home-free card. Getting active mentally or physically can help. Composer Pyotre Tchaikovsky had bouts of severe depression, but his work actually helped him get through those. 

Politics doesn’t clarify the matter, neither do experts. Our attitudes haven’t changed much over 60 years. In West Side Story’s song “Dear Officer Krumpke,” written in the 50s, a gang of punks recite the numerous sociological and psychological reasons why they should be helped, rather than punished for their crimes and wrong-doing; and nothing changes them. The same pop-reasoning still holds sway. 

Rather get caught in that tired old debate of “one answer fits all,” in which political leanings seem to dictate an extreme either-or approach to helping people, we as parents/friends/voters might aim for a broad swath across the middle.  Help people in a crisis, then gradually wean them off both the public dole and the private handout. They’ll gain pride as well as self-sufficiency.

*  For one point of view about welfare and dependency, which, by the way, I don’t agree with, see “Why the U.S. has a culture of dependency,” a CNN opinion piece, by Matthew Spalding, 

Have we been fooling ourselves all these years? Failure may hold more meaning and value than success because we learn more from it.

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failureWe usually define “success” as achieving some sort of goal. A sports team wins a competition. A job search results in an offer from the company of our choice. A contest awards a prize. And life in general, we gain more money or a bigger house or greater fame than others.

I’m starting to realize that I’ve learned the most from projects that I initially labeled as “failures.” This perspective probably is grounded in the decades I’ve spent trying to get published. I wanted to be a writer since I was ten years old. For about 30 years, I slowly but steadily published articles, nonfiction pieces in a variety of local and regional outlets, capped by a how-to book about recruiting and managing volunteers in libraries. Hardly the stuff of a Pulitzer or National Book Award. Since I always wanted to publish fiction, if I’d been asked about my writing success during those years, I would have rated myself as a failure.

At the same time I usually held down a full-time job in communications and public relations. It was during some stints writing applications for grants, then evaluating projects based on the final criteria, that I realized the expectation always was that we’d achieve every objective we’d listed in the original proposal. That defined “success.” This wasn’t always possible or even desirable. Surely if the people involved in the project learned about impacts, that was more important that claiming we’d met objectives. An example—if we hosted an art workshop for kids, and our objective was for each child to create three clay pots, surely it was more important that we leaned those children preferred paints to clay than that every child made his allotted number.

Evaluations with goals and objectives also are common in work plans. In fact as a government employee, I became accustomed to dreaming up annual evaluation methods, which usually changed according to agency fiat every few years, ungrounded in any kind of reality. And again, I seemed to learn more from ostensible “failures” than successes.

This same approach can be applied to raising children. Before mine were well launched into adolescence, I agreed with the theory that good parenting showed up in children who never got in trouble and did well in school. My eyes were opened to the independence of a young human when one of mine always had to learn the hard way. If my sole criterion had been my original standards, I would have written off the parent-child relationship as irretrievably broken. Fortunately I held on and realized both of us had learned and grown through the ill-defined “failure.”

Bob Dylan wrote, “There’s no success like failure. . .failure’s no success at all.” I’m inclined nowadays to apply this Zen-like approach. Arbitrary standards for success may be applied by others, but as the person on my own voyage through life, I’m trying to enjoy and learn from the process, not the result. Perhaps others can benefit from this perspective, too.