Do The Drapers Go To Church?

There was a child went forth every day, and the first object he'd look upon, that object he became, and that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day Or for many years, or stretching cycles of years. -- Walt Whitman

I, too, have been watching Mad Men, the AMC dramatic series on Sunday night.  Set in the early 1960's at an advertising agency, it dramatizes the transition from the 50's to the 60's.  Everything: drugs, the counter-culture, black liberation, the war, and feminism, especially feminism, is sneaking up on the advertising guys, who think that they have the world by the tail, but really don't a clue.  The main character is Don Draper, who is smooth, handsome, casually brilliant at what he does, and a womanizer.  If he is not an alcoholic, he sure is drunk a lot. I sometimes think of myself as Don Draper, but in reality, Don is of my father's generation, and would be in his eighties or nineties now. I could be a peer of Don's children. I was their age back in the early 1960's.  So one of the reasons why I watch the show is to jog my memory about childhood. Don and Betty, his wife, pretty much ignore their children as much as possible.  Which squares with my memory.  Don and Betty are on TV, hence rich, and they have a housekeeper, and even though Betty doesn't work, she doesn't have to take care of the kids either.  They have taught the kids how to mix drinks, so when the neighbors are over for cocktails, the little ones tend the bar. There is no clue that the Drapers ever go to church; if they did they would either sit with the kids service and pinch them frequently or, they would send them off to a Sunday School class where they would do something or another, while out of sight and out of their minds. When our generation grew up and had kids of our own, we got rid of that whole sitting quiet and pinching thing:  too much work and conflict.  Besides it was a mark of feminist progressivism that mothers always had the choice to be free of their children.  So the kids went off to do whatever at Sunday school. Now our children have grown up, and while my own have not had children (hence, our dogs) I am watching young families and their children here in the church.  Lo and Behold, the parents want to be with their children and their children want to be with their parents.   More mothers are staying home if they can.  More families are home-schooling their children.  They want to be together as a family. And church doesn't make that easy.  A family can sit in the service together.   Most services are not going to be developmentally appropriate for that kind of age range.  So, there is a lot shushing, wiggling and coloring. The family can go to Sunday School.  There the kids are split up into different classes by age.  The parents are asked to teach a lot, and they feel that they are missing the service.  So how does a family go to Church and Sunday School as a unit, together?   What does that look like?    Everything changes, usually just when you think you have it all figured out.  Ask Don Draper.  How to make this change, about families and church, is one of the questions we are working on.   We need your ideas.