I was listening to the Small Town Murder podcast because I need a bit of comedy with my true crime. I have roughly five episodes of Small Town Murder that I haven’t listened to yet. I landed on an episode about the Stockdale Family. The Stockdale family was featured on an episode of Wife Swap. Wife Swap, not to be confused with Bradley Cooper’s “Sex With Your Wife” on SNL, shows how the lives of two families can change by simply swapping their wives and instituting new rules for the household to follow. I assume. I’ve never actually seen the show.

The Stockdale family was interesting because the mother’s mission statement revolved around keeping the dangers of society away from the children. However, this was always expressed in the mindset of preparing her children for how the world works. These are two opposing ideas. How can you prepare someone for the real world if they don’t fully grasp what the real world will throw at them?

Here are some examples of what this entails. I’m writing this based on what I remember being said on the podcast. So, if I get some of this wrong, I apologize.

• The children (all boys) can’t date until they are ready to get married—or think they have found someone worth marrying.
• The boys generally don’t interact with girls, I assume, out of fear that girls may tempt them.
• The mother must approve any music or other forms of entertainment the boys consume.
• They only eat organic food that they grow and prepare themselves.
• The boys work hard for tokens that can then be used for favors.
• A part of learning how to interact socially is debating one another.
• The boys were part of a Bluegrass Band, so I assume they mostly socialized with older people outside the home.

I found all of this fascinating even before the “murder” part of Small Town Murder gets involved. My girlfriend and I are conversing more about children and possibly starting a family. It’s not something we are considering doing any time soon. Still, we are generally on the same page with our parenting styles.

Living abroad in China, there is always a broadly defined “air” of curbing behavior and protecting citizens from the more problematic parts of the world by restricting access to said parts. To be clear, it doesn’t work. I teach university students, and they have varying levels of awareness about what the world and (their) society have in store for them. Still, no matter how well it does or doesn’t work, the attempt is there.

All of this makes me question two things related to raising a child: to what level should we restrict certain things, and how does one adequately prepare their children for the world?

I guess now would be the right time to spoil how the family ended up being the subject of the podcast. One of the sons, Jacob, murdered his mother, Kathy, and younger brother, James. To my knowledge, Jacob has never explained why he murdered his family. It should be noted that the two other (older) sons had moved out of the family home and began building lives for themselves before the murders happened.

I don’t want to speculate on why Jacob killed his family. But hearing their story made me reflect on Kathy’s parenting style and the type of parent I want to be. For clarity, I’m not suggesting that Jacob’s upbringing directly led to him killing his family or that our kids will kill us if we don’t give them enough freedom. I feel Kathy’s parenting style was over-protective and overreaching.

Teaching has influenced my views on raising children. A parent’s job is to prepare their children for a world outside the environment the parents are providing. That should involve creating an environment that loosely simulates the world’s workings and establishing values through rules and restrictions, all the while giving children the room to learn and make mistakes without the consequences being as dire as the consequences of said world they are preparing for.

My students will enter a world where they have to work to keep themselves afloat and make some effort to attain the things they want. They will have to protect themselves because their parents won’t always be around to do the protecting for them. They will have to navigate their lives under the values they choose, whether right or wrong, good or bad.

Admittedly, I was too chill and protective during my first year of teaching. Those students moved on to the next level and struggled to adjust. So, this year, I switched things up. I instituted rules and an environment that mirrors the working world. They know the effort required to pass and the effort needed to excel beyond passing. I don’t hide the difficult (and sometimes outright bad) parts of our society from them. I push them to learn how to deal with it and, in the process, learn more about their society from them. We go over the consequences of having particular values, even when those values are generally accepted or seen as good. I guide them on how to excel on tasks. Still, once they have all the necessary information, they must independently apply what they’ve learned.

I correlate all of this to raising children. And yes, I know that teaching a class and raising a whole child isn’t the same. What I do five days a week is different from a lifelong responsibility. However, it does influence my philosophy on raising kids. Parents should prepare their kids for the world and protect them, not baby them. There is a point where parents must let go of their kids’ hands and trust they will do well with what’s been taught.

What are the odds of my child finding the right partner if I never allow them to learn how people fit into their lives through dating? What are the odds my child will know how to handle themself socially if they’re not given a natural environment to learn how to socialize? What happens if I shield my child from so much that they can’t manage life alone or find life too overwhelming?

There was a part of the Wife Swap episode where Jacob apparently broke down after being asked to talk to a girl. Jacob thought he would go to hell for doing so. And sure, he may be misinterpreting something his mother told him. Perhaps, in actuality, she said frolicking with girls can lead to temptations that God frowns upon. Nonetheless, his reaction made me question his ability to handle life in general.

You can’t prepare children for the world by hiding it from them. You prepare them by giving them the tools necessary to let them manage things on their own. Dating doesn’t have to lead to pregnancy. Watching certain movies doesn’t turn everyone into heathens. Socializing with mom won’t prepare kids to socialize with people who won’t emotionally protect them. Rules and restrictions are needed. Bubbles are not.

I don’t know that I’m ready to raise children, though everyone tells me no one is ever truly ready to raise children. I am confident that I can provide my child with an environment to help them grow into functioning adults who can manage life’s ups and downs, twists and turns. It won’t always be perfect or ideal, but I’ll be able to see my kids make moves in the world and say they got this.