Requesting Honesty
An old Bloom County Sunday cartoon has Cutter John in his wheelchair dressed as Santa, asking "And what would you like this year?" to Roland-Ann in his lap:
Truth. I’d like a little truth. Openness .. Forthrightness … Directness. For once, I’d just like a couple of those.
Childhood seems to be one long series of adult deceptions. Lies … Myths … Half-truths … Fibs. Yesterday I asked my father what a "libido" is. He said it’s a kid of guinea pig.
So I think it would be nice, this Christmas, to get just a little, simple, adult honesty for once. Yes. It really would.
Anyway … Thanks for listening, mister Santa Claus. Please give my best to Mrs Claus, all the elves, and give Rudolph a big kidss just for me. Good bye!"
By this point, John has his face in his hand, ashamed, and in the next panel says "I quit!"
This raises the obvious question: why don’t kids ask adults for more honesty, once they see that adults often lie?
Keith said:"demanding something of a parent invites additional demands from the parent."
I recognise that effect, and had forgotten it. To ask your parent to yield or reform themselves in some way makes them feel as if you are getting something for nothing, and they try to counterbalance this by extracting some concession in return. Children's attempts to criticise their parents are discouraged by this atmosphere of score-keeping, in which the status quo counts as nil-nil. Telling your parent you don't like their behaviour is one thing, but getting them to swallow the idea that they ought to change for moral reasons, with no balance on the score sheet, is a rhetorical task beyond the ability of most children.
So, the answer to the question "why don't kids ask" is "because it's too difficult to be persuasive".
That is the challenge of adolecence: to figure out which things your parents forbade you that you can do without consequences when you're out of their sight, and which things your parents forbade you when they were speaking as a conduit for the values of the society you live in.