Adults are fond of claiming that children constantly “test boundaries” to see how much they can “get away with” before the adults stop them. This is untrue. Children do what they feel like doing unless some adult stops them. The boundaries are a side issue, not the goal.
Part of the reason adults say this is that it feeds their egos to imagine that they are so important to children that every action of the child’s is calculated to elicit a reaction from the adults. In fact, however, usually all adults are to children is annoyances that get in the way of their fun.
Another reason is that it is mostly women who say this. Women naturally assume that others “test boundaries” because they themselves do it constantly, mostly with men, but to a lesser extent with all humans – including, ironically, their children. Women are designed to do this to test males – prospective mates – for their fitness. A man who can’t stand up to them and their antics will not be able to protect them from saber-toothed tigers or the Neanderthals across the river.
Indeed, feminism might be said to be nothing more than an elaborate testing of men by women, and with the exception of the lesbians in the feminist movement, every feminist is deeply disappointed that men did not set boundaries for them decades ago. If you want to know why Western women today are so unhappy, it is because men stopped saying no to them decades ago.
