Gimme a hug!

First, let me say that I like the British newspaper, The Guardian.  I read it in its on-line American edition.  (It was the Manchester Guardian when I was a kid, but I digress.)  It's not as thorough or as pleasantly bland as the New York Times, but it gets breaking news on-line faster, and it has a nice outsider's viewpoint on the silliness in which our own society often indulges.  (And doesn't spare its native Britain either.)

But some of its columns sometimes bug me.  For example, a columnist's take last month on hugging.  She begins, quite reasonably, laughing at people who make a big deal over hugging or being hugged.  She agrees that kids hug un-self-consciously, and those hugs have no amorous intent.  As a child, she never much cared for adult relatives who demanded a hug, but she politely  gave them their hug.

When an elderly friend asks my kids, in a wheedling fashion, “Do you have a hug for me?”, I don’t think it will kill them to oblige.

But then a four year old boy asked her four year old daughter for a hug, and the daughter refused, rudely, and hurt the boy's feelings.  His mother complained, and our columnist replied. 

All of a sudden, everything changes.

My daughter was not put on this Earth to comfort your needy son, I thought, as if they were four-year-old players in some wild new chapter of #MeToo.   I didn’t say this. I sent a measured response.

But she exults in her ability to enable her daughter to say "No."

At that point she lost me.  She's not complaining that the boy sexually assaulted her daughter.  He just wanted a hug.  Exactly like her elderly aunt had wanted a hug from her, and probably for the same reasons.  We aren't talking about hugs as romantic acts.  We are talking about social conventions, about reassurance that we are friendly with each other.

And hugs, like handshakes, are just that -- social conventions.  When I was a kid, no one was asking for hugs from peers at the age of four, but those were different times, different places.  Physical contact with my peers until maybe the age of 8 consisted of pushing and shoving.  Then, we began walking around the playground with our arms over each other's shoulder.  This continued through seventh, and to a dwindling degree, eighth grade, supplemented with certain friends and at certain times by holding hands while walking.

I remember both forms of contact in junior high.  It didn't signify even particularly close friendship.  It was just a way of staying in contact while we walked and talked our way down a busy school corridor.  As a junior in high school, because of a schedule conflict, I had to return to the junior high for an hour each day to take second semester Spanish.  I was surprised at seeing guys holding hands in the hallway -- not shocked, just surprised that I had already forgot this junior high custom.

But back then, we didn't hug.  (Except with the dreaded elderly relative.)  But by the 1970s, we did.  Or some of us did.  There was a period of awkwardness -- which still exists to a lesser extent -- as to whether you greet a person of the same sex, or even of the opposite sex, with a hug or with a handshake.  We've learned to pick up subtle signs, as we do in so many areas of social life, about the expectation of the person we're with.  Wikipedia, as always careful in its analysis, points out that

 Unlike some other types of physical contact, a hug can be practiced publicly and privately without stigma in many countries, religions and cultures, within families, and also across age and gender lines, but is generally an indication that people are familiar with each other. Moving from a handshake (or touch-free) relationship to a hug relationship is a sign of a closer friendship such as best friends.

Well, yeah.  Sometimes.  But I've picked up "let's hug" cues from persons I've barely met, either on meeting or on parting. 

If you aren't an American, take everything I've said with a grain of salt.  The meaning and expression of hugging, like other social signs, varies.  In Latin countries, hugging is more routine, often accompanied with a kiss on one or both cheeks.  The same applies to holding hands, which is totally common among friends of the same sex -- but NOT of the opposite sex -- in Muslim countries and in India. 

Ten years ago, the New York Times reported that, in America, "the hug has become the favorite social greeting when teenagers meet or part these days."  Is that still true today?  Who can tell with those damn kids?  In southern India, a 16-year-old boy hugged a female fellow student who had won an art competition.  He was expelled, and the High Court held that the headmaster had the exclusive power to maintain "discipline and morality."  No one would blink an eye at a similarly welcomed hug of congratulations in this country. 

It's hard enough to decode the social codes in your own community -- don't try to understand those in other parts of the world.  Unless you plan to make social contacts there, in which case a little advance study would pay off.

As for me, I'm multi-cultural.  I shake an offered hand, I return an offered hug, I'll let you walk with your arm over my shoulders.  I know a French-Canadian woman who used to insist that I always remember to kiss her on alternate cheeks three times.  This was getting a little complicated for me, and I'm glad that she's become less insistent as time has passed.

If I had a pre-school daughter, which I don't, I can't really see being upset if one of her little friends asked for a hug.  Nor, of course, would I insist that she give a hug that she didn't care to give.  Growing up means learning to understand the intentions of others, and often to give others the benefit of the doubt.  I suspect that the little dust-up between the two four-year-olds featured in The Guardian's column has taught them both something about getting along. 

I'm not so sure about their respective parents.