Suffer

Question

I would like to know the meaning of the next sentence.It's always the childen who suffer.I wonder why he thinks it's always the children who suffer. (missing image)

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

Among adults there is a stereotypical way of viewing families that are having a lot of troubles. Maybe the parents are unemployed. Maybe they are in poverty. Maybe they don't get along. Maybe they are going through a divorce. Whenever bad things like this happen people say, "It's always the children who suffer", which is a natural thing to say because the children can't do anything to help, but when there is no money or when the parents are arguing a lot, the children may not have enough to eat, and they have to listen to all that arguing, which upsets them. So people say, "It's always the children who suffer".

Of course, children hear the adults around them use various phrases all the time that are not very meaningful for the children. The children are not old enough to understand the true meaning of these things, so they may invent their own meanings for such sayings.

The child in the comic strip is merely quoting something he has heard his parents or other adults say. Even though the meaning for adults has to do with children who are truly suffering - as from hunger, abuse, or neglect - the meaning for this comic-strip child is just any kind of suffering - even the trivial suffering of being deprived of the remote control for a TV set for a day.

So the humor has to do with seeing how children can, in their very self-centered way, greatly exaggerate their own suffering because they are too young to have developed a broader perspective on the world. If you think about it, there are even adults who act the same as this child does in the comic strip.

CJ

Suffer

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