What is a Normal Childhood?

Many people routinely nag about never having a normal childhood in order to explain eccentricities. At criminal trials, one of the main tactics that defense attorneys like to use is the ol’ he-didn’t-have-a-normal-childhood defense to gain sympathy from a judge and jury.

Many celebrities, like Jodie Foster, Lindsay Lohan, Janet Jackson, Kim Fields and Olsen twins, who have all been in show business literally since the day they spoke their first words may be well-inclined to say that they didn’t have a normal childhood. Oh, yeah! I almost forgot – Michael Jackson likes to use his lack of a normal childhood as an excuse for his odd lifestyle.

So, here’s the question. What exactly defines a normal childhood? Yes, I have a fair idea what the experts might say but even then, there could still be different variations of normal here. And let’s not forget that normal will also vary from country to country.

Does having a normal childhood mean growing up with two youthful parents, a sibling, living in a modest three-bedroom house in a bedroom community and taking the school bus to school everyday and having dinner with the whole family at the table every night? Forty years ago, this would have been the vision of the perfectly normal American nuclear family.

However, the definition of a normal childhood is no longer as cut and dry as it was back in 1970. Today, about thirty percent of all American children live with only one parent. About twenty-six percent of all America children were born out of wedlock. A growing number of children are living in homes with unmarried parents. Are their lives any less normal than children who live with both parents?

And then what of children living in cramped two-bedroom inner-city apartments and relying on public transportation to get to school? Are their childhoods any less normal? Moreover, how do they know whether or not it is normal? It may be perfectly normal to them? Who are the experts to say that these children aren’t having normal, loving childhoods?

And what about the increasing number of children being born to teenaged mothers? Now, I am in no way condoning teenaged pregnancy but if the child is still living with a loving and supportive parent and being well-fed and educated, what makes this child’s life any less normal than that of a child who’s parents were in their 20’s when he/she was born?

And, then, what of the children of the increasing number of people who are waiting until as late age 45 to conceive and whose parents will be nearing 60 when they become teenagers?

Is there any longer a real concept on normal childhood? Today, only about sixty percent of all American children have what the experts might call a normal childhood. Just sixty percent. That’s not a big enough majority to be considered the norm. In the age of sperm donation and vitro fertilization, making it easier for women to conceive without being in a relationship, what is considered “normal” will continue to shrink.

There never really has been a single definition of a normal childhood. A normal childhood can have different meanings to each of us. Growing up in small southern town can be considerably different from growing up in a big northern city. There is no definition of a “normal” childhood.