I’m tired of “emerging”

I was reading another one of those endless articles the other day about how we are an “emerging profession”. It annoyed me so much I threw it in the re-cycling basket without finishing it. Who knows, it might even have been a decent article if I could have got past the “emergent” apology for being who we are.

I’ve been reading about how we are emerging for the past 30 years. An “emerging profession”, an “emergent profession”. Really! Give me a break. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am tired of it. It’s like saying, “I’m trying. No really, I am trying. I’m sorry I haven’t made it yet. Please excuse me."

We either are, or we aren’t. Which shall it be? For me, we are. But, then, I’m also okay with knowing I have growing to do. Now, I am okay with some qualifiers, although I am also getting sick of excusing ourselves because “we are a young field”. What’s young? Fifty years? A hundred years? Who do you think was looking after the children in the orphanages, and in the crèches? Not doctors. Not teachers. Our ancestors in the field of Child and Youth Care.

Yes. Our ancestors. Now before you go and reject them as not Child and Youth Care Workers, let me offer you an analogy. My grandmother’s family came from Scotland. They had a different last name than me. They did different work. They were farmers and peasants. So, what should I say – that they were not really real? That they were “emerging Garfats”. The people who came before us are part of the same family. So, in the end, no family is young. And no profession is really young. Underdeveloped maybe. Unsophisticated according to modern standards, maybe. But young. I don’t think so.

As for “being a profession”, well I am not really sure that I know what that means but assuming that I do, well then can we at least start to call ourselves a developing profession, or an under-developed profession, or even an unsophisticated profession. Or even, gods forbid, an exciting profession in a stimulating period of growth. But, please, let’s stop the whining, excuse-making and apologies. It just keeps us down.

Personally, I think all this talk about “emerging” comes from one of two places – from our own incessant pre-occupation with thinking we are less than other professionals, or from other professions who want someone lower on the totem pole of development than they are. What’s wrong with standing up and saying, “this is who I am”, with no apologies, no excuses, no hesitation.

I know that the average Child and Youth Care Worker does not talk about herself as a member of an “emerging profession”. Most of the competent workers I know refer to themselves as professionals. Period. Pointe final. Next issue. But then they aren’t hung up with measuring themselves against some formal standard of which, typically, they aren’t even aware. While many in the academic world may consider us an “emerging profession”, with the accompanying inference that we are somehow “less of a professional”, I am satisfied, myself, that I am a professional, working in a respectable profession.

I’m tired of “emerging”. And I am tired of reading articles that try to tell me I still am. Let’s just stand up and say, “this is who I am”.

Thom