How Was "Overbearing Parent" Depicted in Cuneiform?

The Times had a front-page story Saturday that is always good for a guffaw: impossibly controlling parents who want to know everything about what their kids are doing -- and give them pointers on how best to do it! -- even when they're X hundred miles away at summer camp. And now they're aided by 21st-century communication tools! The Globe had the same one a few weeks ago; same placement on A1, in fact.

Now, these stories are fairly entertaining; always good for eye-rolls and astonished laughs; a nice glimpse into the good-intentioned but wayward parenting skills of the wealthy("Why choose which cell phone to take to camp? Take both! Who cares if they're prohibited?"); and help define class lines and resentment. And, yes, it's now a lot easier for these parents to exasperatingly intervene, thanks to e-mail, etc.

But these two factors do not make a trend. Reporters, too often when writing a trend story (and I've been culpable of this before) have an inkling of something happening, find a few examples and quickly have 25 inches of copy. Or, as in the case of these stories, they fail to realize the concept of overbearing parents is nothing new, cell phones or none.

Fussy, high-maintenance parents will be fussy and high-maintenance no matter the technology at their fingertips. While I'm sure I was oblivious to it during my five years at sleepaway camp, there is no doubt it happened at a nearly equal level as today. (Who knew how much my parents were the source? They certainly have it in them, and my overly long, detailed letters probably didn't help [while everyone else wrote three sentences just to be admitted to dinner, I'd write three pages], but in retrospect, they might not have been as domineering as I used to think they are. Whatever, let's stop the pscyhoanalysis.)

I'm sure when Socrates and his kids hopped off the boat in Crete in July to start camp and he started using his patented method on the counselors to see how they'd get his kids to shower at least every third day, the counselors would be none too excited. OK, bad example; Socrates didn't have kids, and who knows how often people showered in Ancient Greece. How about Ramses! I doubt any counselor wanted to see his kids mosey into their bunk. First unhappy tablet home and the counselors' limbs would be torn apart!

Update: Writing about this made me incredibly nostalgic for my sleepaway camp.