Let the children take up arms!

It's beautiful here, just a few metres above the sea of fog on the Üetliberg in Zurich. Those who were previously freezing and silently trudging through the forest are now shedding their jackets and showing off their hoodies or functional shirts. I sit on a bench and study the brand names of the men walking past: «Under Armour, Alpha Industries, Boxeur des Rues ...». Manufacturers who don't hide the fact that they produce for the military or use street fighting for marketing. «It's pretty tragic,» I say to myself indignantly and immediately realise that last night I could hardly wait until I could watch another episode of Vikings. A series in which Vikings bash in the heads of Anglosaxes or, if that's not enough, slit their carotid arteries.

We men are fascinated by violence. We are fascinated by killing.
But only a few of us are confronted with brute force. We don't fight wars ourselves and pub brawls are no longer a social phenomenon.

And yet: many of us men are violent. According to statistics from Germany published in 2019 by the Association of Public Broadcasters in the Federal Republic of Germany(ARD), a woman is injured or attacked by her partner every 45 minutes. In Switzerland, the proportion of women affected by violence is just under 80 per cent according to the Federal Office for Gender Equality(FOGE).

Unfortunately, we can't get rid of this fact with a funny joke. Although many commentators on social media still try to do so.

What should parents do?

The question for us parents now is: What can we do to ensure that our children, and boys in particular, do not tend towards violence? What can we do to send a new generation on its way?

When my boys start fighting again, I often find myself saying: "We don't do that here". But why do I say that?

After all, I also tried to beat up Ivo Frischknecht in the playground at primary school in Herisau. The others were simply not in my weight class.

Our upbringing often reflects this need to be able to completely eradicate violence from our society. As a result, children are first deprived of toy weapons, then films depicting violence and later consoles in the hope that depriving them of fictional violence could also lead to a distance from real physical violence.
Or you give them the toy weapons and say: "But you're not allowed to aim them at people." The child naturally thinks: What good would a toy weapon do me if I can't aim it at people?

I don't see why we shouldn't let our children play with fictional violence. The fictional world, in which violence is possible to the bitter end, has a special fascination. It's a game where everything can be won and everything can be lost. It's about life and death. We are magically drawn to it. How else can you explain the fact that calm, level-headed men and women talk about the relaxing effect of a first-person shooter game or action film? Fairy tales and other scary stories also play on the fear phenomenon.

When my son recently heard that bicycles had been stolen in the neighbourhood, he and a friend decided to blow up the bike thief. If you have now googled my address and the number of the KESB, then I would advise you to distinguish fiction from reality. This is exactly the skill we should be teaching our children. They should shoot, they should blow up, they should go after the "bad guys". They do this in their fantasy world and not in reality.
Unfortunately, «You shouldn't do that» doesn't solve the problem - after all, Punch and Judy already brings the bike thief to the boss. But how exactly? With a clever trick and a safe handover to the police. And we should talk to our children about this and ask them whether an explosion is really the right way or what alternatives there are. I try to immerse myself and my children in this fictitious world where you can lose everything and win everything.

And what if the boys do get into a fight? Boys who fight don't need therapy, they need enough space to let off steam. And they need to realise that we men not only have deficits, but also a lot of resources. We can listen, we can show our feelings and we can talk about them. We need to strengthen these skills in our boys. Anyone who characterises these attributes as specifically female is falling into the gender trap, just like claiming that girls can't play football. My boys should learn that it can be very satisfying to listen to someone else: that it is liberating to cry sometimes, or that losing is part of life and should be understood as part of a game. They also had to realise that the bike thief could not be caught in reality. Life often doesn't have a happy ending.

And in corona times?

In times of corona, people are no longer hugging. Not even on the Üetliberg. Given the number of cases, this is certainly the right thing to do. Yet it is precisely these hugs that we men have discovered as a very special form of closeness for us. That moment when the weapons of "under armour" fall and an encounter between two guys takes on a softness that is soothing.

Read more about children and weapons:

• Bang, you're dead now!
  Almost all boys arm themselves at some point. Why parents should be relaxed about it and why most girls show no interest in weapons.

• Army: Left, two, three - NO!
  Only a short while ago, the toddler with the wooden rifle was making the garden unsafe. Now the Swiss army is calling. Blogger Irma Aregger's son wants to get a taste of military life - or does he?

• Brutal games do something to the child's soul
  When children and teenagers play first-person shooters, parents are usually worried. Our columnist explains why these worries are often unfounded, what the so-called fear factor is all about and why caution is still advised.