Re: The why questions- I am both a child therapist and the mother of jimrandomh. I don't remember him ever doing that and the children I work with ( I see about 18 on a regular basis) never do it to me. I think tetsuo55 is right in his observation that children tend to do it when they are being ignored. As an only child of older parents, jimrandomh was virtually never ignored, and, of course, the children I see for individual therapy sessions already have my attention.
Re: "Good parents"- A few observations- The age of puberty has been dropping, the average age of marriage (or settling into committed relationships) has been rising. Not too long ago people got married shortly after they reached puberty.
There were no birth control pills until the 1960's. The early birth control pills were of higher doses and had more side effects. Condoms existed but were not as reliable as they are today. Abortions were not legal in the U.S. until the early 1970's. Aid to Families of Dependent Children, otherwise known as welfare, now modified into Transitional Assistance, didn't exist in most states until the 1960's. In other words, prior to the late 1960's, the chances were good that if you were sexually active, you would get pregnant. If you did, your options were much more limited.
Then came the sexual revolution. There were birth control pills. Abortions became legal. Visitation restrictions in dorms were eliminated. Herpes Simplex 2 was pretty much unknown until the late 1970's, AIDS was first identified in the U.S. in 1981. I had the good fortune to turn 18 in 1970- except for the Vietnam War, it was a great time and I had fun.
Parents today, however, worry about their teens not only getting pregnant, but AIDS, herpes and other venereal diseases that weren't around in my youth. In addition, with younger puberty, the worries come at a younger age, when teens are less able to handle it. (I had a 12 year old girl tell me that she was thinking of having sex with her boyfriend, a Caucasian 4th or 5th generation American girl from a working class community.) I don't think it's just to conform to the societal archetype of Good Parent, there are real things to worry about.
Topic the First - Asking "Why?"
There is a certain cliche of a young child asking "why?", getting an answer, asking "why?" to that, and so on until the adult finally dismisses them out of frustration. And we all smile and laugh at how ignorant the child is and pat ourselves on the back for being so grown up.
But I don't think this story is very funny. This story, told in countless variations, has the rather repugnant moral that it is rude and childish to ask that most important of questions. "Why?"
So why do parents near-universally admonish their children when they persist with the questions? What is motivating parents all over the world to teach their children not to ask "why?"? Do parents simply not want to admit to their ignorance? I thought so at first, but I suspect it is deeper than that.
It seems more likely to me, that this practice is a defense against acknowledging that one's answers are mysterious. It is easier for a parent to attribute a young child's lack of understanding to a lack of intelligence, than to comprehend that their own answer is a curiosity stopper and not an answer at all.
In essence, children are being trained to accept curiosity-stoppers without hesitation, by being reprimanded for continuing to ask "why?" I find this more than a little alarming; it would seem that for parents in particular, it is especially dangerous not to notice when they're confused.
Topic the Second - The Behavior of Hope
Is tenuous hope more emotionally taxing than certain doom?
I wouldn't think so, but whenever the subject of death comes up (among those who don't believe in an afterlife) I've noticed a very curious pattern.
I have only a guess, but it seems possible that when doom is certain, when there's no escape for you or anyone, it is easier to numb the emotions. Accepting the possibility of escape makes the doom not-certain, which forces fear of the doom to the surface.
Topic the Third - Abuse of the word "Love"
On another site I happened to be perusing, someone posted a bit of a rant about teenagers not knowing the difference between love and lust, to which I gave this response:
* I define "real love" as the state of valuing another's quality of life more than your own quality of life.
Topic the Fourth - A "Good" Parent
Let's take a moment to think about how modern parents are generally expected to treat the subject of their offspring's sexuality. This is one of those things that I firmly believe any good future for humanity will look back on in horror.
With alarming commonality, adults with maturing offspring go out of their way to stunt their children's sociosexual development, due primarily, I think, to a desire to conform to the current societal archetype of Good Parent. Despite ambiguous-at-best psychological evidence, parents fight to keep kids ignorant, unequipped, and chaste due to the social consensus that having sexually active children makes one a Bad Parent.
I would even go so far as to call such deliberate impediment of sociosexual development a form of abuse, despite its extreme prevalence and acceptableness in today's world.