"The most important role models should and could be parents and teachers. But that said, once you're a teenager you've probably gotten as much of an example from your parents as you're going to"
About this Quote
Shue’s line lands with the weary clarity of someone who’s watched the “be a good example” lecture bounce off a locked teenage door. He starts by paying the expected respect to parents and teachers - the official mascots of role-model talk - then pivots to the uncomfortable truth most adults would rather soften: by adolescence, the modeling window is narrowing fast. The bluntness (“you’ve probably gotten as much... as you’re going to”) isn’t anti-parent; it’s a reality check on timing, attention, and influence.
The subtext is about competition. Adults like to imagine they’re the primary authors of a teen’s values, but teenagers are already living in a crowded marketplace of identity: friends, older kids, coaches, celebrity culture, music, whatever the algorithm serves next. Shue’s phrasing quietly shifts responsibility from “keep lecturing” to “start earlier - and accept limits.” It implies that parenting is less a late-game persuasion campaign than years of accumulated tone-setting: how conflict is handled, what respect looks like, whether kindness is performative or practiced.
Coming from an actor - a profession that often gets drafted into “role model” debates whether it wants the job or not - the remark also reads as self-defense. It suggests that when public figures are blamed for teen behavior, we’re ignoring the more mundane but decisive forces that shaped a kid long before a movie or show did. It’s not nihilism; it’s triage. If you want to matter to a teenager, you don’t just tell them what’s right. You become, earlier than you think, the kind of adult they’ll still be willing to hear.
The subtext is about competition. Adults like to imagine they’re the primary authors of a teen’s values, but teenagers are already living in a crowded marketplace of identity: friends, older kids, coaches, celebrity culture, music, whatever the algorithm serves next. Shue’s phrasing quietly shifts responsibility from “keep lecturing” to “start earlier - and accept limits.” It implies that parenting is less a late-game persuasion campaign than years of accumulated tone-setting: how conflict is handled, what respect looks like, whether kindness is performative or practiced.
Coming from an actor - a profession that often gets drafted into “role model” debates whether it wants the job or not - the remark also reads as self-defense. It suggests that when public figures are blamed for teen behavior, we’re ignoring the more mundane but decisive forces that shaped a kid long before a movie or show did. It’s not nihilism; it’s triage. If you want to matter to a teenager, you don’t just tell them what’s right. You become, earlier than you think, the kind of adult they’ll still be willing to hear.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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