Ray Bradbury – The Veldt

Parents, as well as the peer group, still have the strongest influence on children. The bond between parents and their children are usually the first social experiences children have. Therefore parents have great responsibility to set a good example and enable their children to get a good education. George and Lydia Hadley, the parents in Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt”, made many bad choices that had great effect on their children’s personalities.
Since the Hadley family lives in a futuristic house that does everything for the children, Peter and Wendy, they started to grow apart from their parents. As a consequence, the children noticed they didn’t need their “real” parents any longer and developed a plan to get rid of them. Nonetheless, George and Lydia Hadley are self-responsible for their murder. George and Lydia disregarded their parental responsibility to a high degree. Instead of caring for Wendy and Peter, they had their house to care for everything and everybody. The house cooked, comforted and even played with the children. According to Lydia, the house has become “wife and mother now, and nursemaid.” It took over the role of the parents:”You’ve let this room and this house replace you and your wife in your children’s affections.” George was often too busy to spend time with his children. These examples show that George and Lydia didn’t care too much for their children and missed out on the children’s nurturing. Further, the psychological care of the children was too long handed over to the nursery. Although the nursery was supposed to help the children “work off their neuroses in a healthful way”, they developed other bad behaviors. Instead of “release” the room caused only “destructive thoughts”. In addition George and Lydia waited more than four weeks to have a psychologist take a look at the issue. Thus, George and Lydia let precious time lapse away. Finally, George and Lydia made many serious mistakes concerning the upbringing of their children. They didn’t set boundaries and said rarely “no”. Furthermore they spoiled their children greatly:”We’ve given the children everything they ever wanted.” As a result the children are disobedient, disrespectful and simply “insufferable”. They won’t obey or listen to their parents anymore and even though it’s clearly obvious, they started to lie to their parents about the veldt. The children’s behavior results in total disrespect for their parents. Peter will neither look at this parents nor call them “Mommy” and “Daddy”. He even starts threatening and insulting his father.
However, George’s and Lydia’s worst and final mistake was their inconsistency when they allowed their children to spend one last minute in the nursery. All in all, George’s and Lydia’s bad upbringing led to their children’s bad behaviors. They could have prevented the murder as a matter of fact. Instead they had Peter and Wendy find new priorities in their life:”They live for the nursery”. For those reasons I assume that they bear the responsibility of their own death.