Inspiring Sustainable Behaviour by Payne Oliver;

Author:Payne, Oliver;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Those who have authority thrust upon them

Parents, usually, are authority figures. But instead of ‘authority figures’, how about defining them as ‘figures that have authority’? It’s a subtle distinction, but one that allows other members of a family to become the ‘right authority’ to ask a question.

In The Tipping Point,24 Malcolm Gladwell describes how the percentage of adults wearing seatbelts in 1960s USA languished in the low teens. For years the US government attempted to force drivers and passengers to wear their safety belts. Fines were instituted in many states, but drivers resented this – America is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, after all, and if a driver was feeling brave and wanted to be free of a safety belt, then that’s exactly what they’d do. This tendril of legislation creeping into private space was un-American. The battle lines were drawn, and remained strong, until one tweak to the legislation. Its effects were a surprise to everyone.

Child seatbelt laws were passed.

It was fairly simple – children who didn’t need baby seats or boosters were required to wear seatbelts while travelling in the rear of a car. Gladwell asserts that from this point onwards, children wearing seat belts – quite innocently – asked their parents why they weren’t wearing theirs. All of a sudden, an act of liberation and defiance was cast as an act of familial hypocrisy. As Consumerology write, our biology sets off alarm bells by making us ‘feel bad because widespread hypocrisy is a drag on the survival of the group’.25

Seatbelt use in America today is above 70%.

More anecdotally, but an equally clear picture of children-as-authority (although an authority opposing anthropogenic climate change), a tweeter told me about the challenges of creating a ‘Tropical island’ style children’s party that included turning the house temperature up: ‘On top of if all, children are being sanctimonious at me about failing to “sauve le planète”!’: familial hypocrisy compounding the stress of party preparation.

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