By Theresa Vargas / The Washington Post
As the world watched Joe Biden deliver a victory speech on the night of Nov. 7, I watched my 8-year-old son.
He asked to stay up late that night because he wanted to hear what the country’s next president might say, and I agreed to let him.
I tucked him under his shark-print comforter on the top bunk of his bed, just in case sleep won out over want, and propped up an iPad in front of him. With the volume turned low, so we wouldn’t wake his younger brother, who fell asleep on the bottom bunk before the crowd could applaud for Kamala Harris, we waited together for Biden to appear on the screen.
When he did, my son turned to me with a tooth-missing grin and then watched Biden speak about how it was time for people to “see each other again, listen to each other again.”
“This is the time to heal in America,” he heard him say. “Now, this campaign is over. What is the will of the people? What is our mandate? I believe it’s this: America has called upon us to marshal the forces of decency, the forces of fairness …”
In that moment, a realization hit me: That night marked the first time my son had watched a U.S. president speak.
More than that, it marked the first time I felt comfortable letting him.
He was 4 and his brother 2 when Obama left office. Before then, there wasn’t much family screen time.
Then came Donald Trump.
The inauguration has left people across the country feeling hopeful for different reasons. For some, it’s that Biden might finally get the spread of the coronavirus under control. For others, it’s that his administration will put in place needed environmental protections. For Washingtonians, it’s having someone up high who understands why the city deserves statehood.
But for many parents of young children, the change in power has also brought a sense of relief. Relief that they no longer have to reach for the remote control or close their browser every time the president speaks.
Relief that if their children happen to hear what the president says, or what he has said, his words won’t warrant conversations about bullying or lying or “fake news.” They won’t call for explaining that most Mexicans aren’t rapists, why people shouldn’t hear their home nations described as “shithole countries” and why a man might say of a woman, “There was blood coming out of her wherever.”
America’s children can finally, without worrying their parents, listen to America’s top leader.
That seems a preposterous statement. But so, too, did much of what our Grab-them-by-the-expletive president said.
On Wednesday, the Biden administration solidified its image as family-friendly by offering, for the first time ever, an Inauguration Day broadcast geared toward children. Live-streamed from Washington, it was billed as “Our White House: An Inaugural Celebration for Young Americans.”
It was an important gesture, if only because it invited young people to be part of the day.
But even if it that hand hadn’t been extended, many parents would have undoubtedly still watched the speeches that day with their children.
Parents I spoke to in the days leading up to the inauguration were excited to do so. And online, social media posts from moms and dads vibrated with giddiness.
“I am probably going to be up super early,” wrote one parent. “And to pay my children back for Christmas, I’ll probably wake him up at like 5 AM. Be like, ‘It’s INAUGURATION DAY! Wake up wake up!’”
“Anyone else waking their children up with the Biden-Harris inauguration playlist?” wrote another.
“Even though I liked Trump, today I will watch the inauguration with my children and be proud that this is the first time a woman is vice president and a woman of color!” wrote yet another.
Parents talked about buying balloons and baking cookies.
They also, of course, shared their fears; not about what their children might hear during the inauguration, but about what they might see. Some planned to watch the speeches later, because they worried the ceremony might bring violence.
They wanted to, understandably, shield their children from bearing witness to that.
The truth is that parenting this generation has meant constantly wrestling with what to shield them from, and what to let them know is happening around them. How much do we tell them about those school drills that require them to hide in closets and bathrooms? How much do we tell them about what happened at the U.S. Capitol just weeks ago?
How much should they know about the murder of George Floyd, who also had a mother, one that he cried out for as he was dying?
Some things we can protect them from. Some things we shouldn’t. And some things we can’t.
A day before the inauguration, on the DC Areas Moms website, a woman posted about “the talk” she was planning to have with her Black 6-year-old son, a boy she describes as big for his age and capable of reeling her in “with a heart-melting, ‘I love you so much, Mama.’”
“I struggle with how to prepare him for the world without killing his spirit,” the mother wrote. “My son knows that he is black. But he knows it in the same way that he knows he has black hair and brown eyes. He doesn’t know that being black will influence how some people will view him. He doesn’t know that it will affect how some people will treat him. And that it will cause others to make assumptions about him.”
She writes about knowing what words she should use, but not how to say them to her “sweet doe-eyed boy.”
“I would change the world for my son if I could,” she writes. “But since I can’t, I will prepare my son for the world and hope that it doesn’t change him.”
It is good that this generation now has a president they can listen to and who seems open to listening to them, because his actions will greatly affect their lives.
They have lost caregivers to covid-19. They have slept under mylar blankets inside of cages. They have seen their parents cry over a man who died with a uniformed knee on his neck.
They have lost graduations and family gatherings and friendships that would have been forged if they hadn’t been forced to attend school for so many months over a screen.
The hopes are not only high for Biden, so are the stakes.
After the celebration comes the work, and this time, the children will be watching.
Theresa Vargas is a local columnist for The Washington Post. Before coming to The Post, she worked at Newsday in New York. She has degrees from Stanford University and Columbia University School of Journalism.
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