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Louise Thomas
Editor
There are some things that parents can’t help but pass on to their kids. A distinctive nose, perhaps, or a deathly allergy to walnuts. Philip Larkin famously wrote that “misery” was handed down between the generations – an inheritance that “deepens like a coastal shelf”. It’s not all doom and gloom, of course: we also inherit things such as empathy, money (if you’re lucky), and table manners. But what about taste?
The question of whether – and how – parents should inflict their cultural taste on their sprogs remains a divisive one. Over the weekend, Gene Gallagher, the musician son of ex-Oasis singer Liam Gallagher, revealed that his father had “forced The Who and The Beatles” on him and his siblings. “None of us grew up with pop,” he told The Sunday Times. “[Liam] didn’t want us listening to Justin Bieber or One Direction, none of that malarkey.” It’s surely something many people can relate to – a parent pushing their own artistic predilections as gospel. Whether it’s chilling with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers or steeling them for Steely Dan, the idea of a parent culturally indoctrinating their child is as widespread as it is cringe-inducing. But that doesn’t mean they’re wrong to do it. Sharing your taste with your children isn’t just OK – it might just be a moral imperative.
Why is it so important? Art is fundamentally a means of human connection. Listening to music together, watching a film together, going to a museum together: these are shared experiences. A shared taste can be a way of bonding, of better understanding other people. When it comes from a parent, it can be a gift – a way of saying, “here’s something that made my life richer. Let’s see if it can make yours richer too.” As a teenager, I myself was introduced to many of my formative obsessions through my parents’ endorsement: TV shows such as Six Feet Under, The Wire, Deadwood; musicians such as Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, John Prine. It’s obviously unlikely that I would have gone my whole life oblivious to these things, but the memory of first encountering them – of not just discovering them but being led to them, experiencing them alongside my parents – is something I treasure.
For many people, the sharing of taste can also be a way of connecting with your roots. People’s cultural opinions do not simply materialise overnight. They are a patchwork of a lifetime of exposures and influences. There are things that I like – music, films, books – that have been passed down through generations, things my grandparents were passionate about, and introduced to my parents, who then, in turn, introduced them to me. It creates a vital sense of intergenerational continuity. This may, admittedly, have been more stark in my family than most. My paternal grandfather was a jazz musician and biographer; the culture of music – playing it, listening to it, discussing it – would have transcended what is normal in most households. But the passing down of culture is a universal experience.
We live in a society that worships newness at the expense of all else – a zeitgeist that’s constantly refreshing, as if some giant cultural deity were spamming the F5 button on their celestial MacBook. If it weren’t for parents imposing their taste on their children, then old and algorithm-repellent works of genius – the films of Laurel and Hardy, for instance, or the music of Bessie Smith – would have no way of reaching even the meagre younger audiences they manage today. It’s no hyperbole to suggest that sharing your tastes with your children is an act of cultural preservation.
The flip side of this argument – and where, I would aver, Gallagher erred in his parenting – lies in his dictum that his children shouldn’t listen to pop, to the music of Bieber or Harry Styles. As much as it’s healthy and enriching to share great art with your kids, it won’t ever represent the totality of their interests: some things are always going to be for them and their peers. Sharing one’s taste needs to be about opening doors, not wedging them shut.
“Teaching is a sacred profession,” the late musical theatre composer Stephen Sondheim once said. “And art is a form of teaching.” And what are parents if not teachers, in the biggest and most significant sense? While it may be a little much to suggest you should “force” your child to enjoy something – to, say, withhold supper until they finish both sides of Hunky Dory – it’s important that children be introduced to the arts, to the things that parents feel are important. It is a means of teaching them about the world and about yourself. Whether they accept the lesson or reject it as a body would a botched organ transplant hardly matters. For people like Gene Gallagher, now the frontman of his own rock band Villanelle, there’ll be no looking back in anger – just gratitude.
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