OUR CHILDREN ARE THE FUTURE BUT HOW MUCH DO WE CARE?

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The family is the bedrock upon which cultures, communities, societies and nations are built. It is through the family that a community’s traditions, ethics, morals and standards are transmitted from one generation to the next. It is the family that in many ways shapes the future.

The moral compass that will guide the country is made up of the collective moral compasses of each of its citizens. Each one of these is being shaped, right now, in every home in this country where adults are raising children. What our society, our country will be like in the future, what its moral and ethical framework will look like, is being determined by how well these children are being parented. When you take apart all the different components that make up our country you find at the very end you are holding the family.

I point this out as a way of showing just how important good parenting is to the functioning of our societies, communities, and our country.

Even though parenting plays such an important part in shaping the future by shaping their children we pay scant attention to how well this is done. I know that we don’t believe that if you can have a baby then you can raise one but we act as if this were the case. There is little or no support for new parents even for those that want it and seek it.

40% of children born today are born to single mothers many of them not more than children themselves. If these mothers do not have a strong family to support them with the raising of their child then there is little hope that this child will have a healthy, happy and productive childhood. In light of what we know about the effect a child’s upbringing has on the adult he will become, this is just foolish.

We also speak about our children in ways that imply that we are committed to insuring that every child has a fair chance at a productive life and at becoming a contributing member of society. We speak of them as our future and our most valuable resource and yet as a sub group in our society, when allocating resources, their needs are never adequately met and in the time of fiscal challenges services to children are cut first. If we truly believed that our greatest resource was our children we would not be able to accept the current drop out rate, the increases in teen suicides (second cause of death among teens) and would not tolerate the fact the one in every 5 children goes to bed hungry. If we truly believed this and acted accordingly our prison population would not be the highest of all the developed countries including China. If we truly believed this, instead of talking about improving our schools, we would be doing it and we would be spending the money that it takes.

 We do far too little to show that we value families and children and now more than ever families need our help. You do not need to be a sociologist to realize that there is something dreadfully wrong with the way many parents, in this country, are raising their children. Yes there are a lot of parents doing a truly remarkable job raising happy and healthy children in spite of mounting pressures from the world around them and these are the true heroes of our society. But there are an increasing number of parents who are doing an inadequate job and this is not as much of a concern to society as it should be. Every one of those children will ultimately grow up and the majority will become a burden to society.

The examples of the problems that result from inadequate parenting are glaring, but rather than respond to the problems, rather than taking steps to solve the problem, we just learn to incorporate the fall out from these problems into our day to day reality as the price of doing business. We fail to see these horrific events as symptoms of a larger problem and as a result fail to look for solutions to those problems. Rather we treat the problem as though it were a condition which by definition does not have a solution.

The best, the most stupefying example of this has to be how the country has responded the tragedy that took place in 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton CO, where two students armed with automatic weapons killed 13 and injured 21of their high school classmates and their teachers. Initially the country was shocked. Counselors were sent in to help the students, crisis teams arrived to dissect what actually took place, memorial services were held all over the country, editorials were written, the student’s motives were analyzed and promises were made to correct the problems that resulted in these two young men becoming so alienated and filled with so much hate that they were able to commit this act.

It has been almost 14 years now since Columbine and the killings in our schools by our children continue. Their have been 27 major shootings in our schools since then. It happens with such regularity now that if it makes the news it is for a day or two. Most of these shooting you probably never heard of because shootings are no longer a news event outside the communities where they take place. 

What have we done to fix the problem permanently? We have instituted code 10 drills or emergency response plans in schools all over the county. These drills are reminiscent of the  air raid drills of the 50s where students were required to get under their desks as practice for a nuclear attack.

This updated drill has students sitting quietly in the corner of a locked classroom waiting for help to come. To keep potential intruders out the doors of  our schools remain locked all day (in one instance a principal threatened his staff with police action if , when they took their class outside,they left a door propped so they could get back in when needed).  

  Local police routinely lecture students about the importance of the emergency response drill. We have also stepped up security at our schools to prevent violence form happening  We have more police in the hallways and metal detectors at the doors. What have we done to insure that we produce fewer violent children?  What have we done to prevent young people from becoming so desperate and self loathing? What have we done to prevent children from abused in their homes both physically and emotionally? What have we done to attack the disease rather than treat the symptoms? Not a thing.

We have not taken time, since the Columbine tragedy to look at what it was in the experiences, of these young people, that so damaged them that violence was the only way they could find to release their rage. In James Gilligan’s book, Preventing Violence  he reports that research has led him to conclude that violence is the result of the combined feeling of shame and humiliation.  “…the psychological motive, or cause, of violent behavior is the wish to ward off or eliminate the feeling of shame and humiliation…and replace it with …the feeling of pride.” (pg29)  What experiences, in the lives of people so young, could have so damaged them psychologically that they believed that the wonton killing  of their peers with automatic weapons was the only way they could restore their pride? There is something dreadfully wrong here and we are doing precious little to fix it.

We have tragically become a society that is very adept at turning children into monsters by the age of 14 and even younger. But rather than address the problem we have adapted  to it and appear to accept that these events will continue. It is like having a leak in your and putting a bucket under it to catch the water and then rather than fix the leak you just learn to walk around the bucket.

Some time after the Columbine tragedy a student who was there was asked by a reporter, shocked that people so young could be so violent, how this could have happened. Her response, heartfelt and visceral, said more than any study could have and said it better:

         “…Let me tell you this: these questions don’t represent only me but a whole generation that is struggling to grow up and make sense of this world. People  may label us” Generation Next “ but we are more appropriately “Generation why?”

         Why did most of you lie when you made the vow of till death do us part?

         Why do you fool yourselves into believing that divorce is better for the kids in the long run?

Why do so many of you divorced parents spend more time with your new boy friends or girl friends than with your own children?

Why did you ever fall victim to the notion that kids are just as well off being raised by a complete stranger than by their own mother of father?

Why do you look down on parents who decide to stay home to raise their own children?

Why do you let us watch violent movies but expect us to maintain some type of childlike innocence?

Why do you allow us to spend unlimited amounts of time on the internet but still are shocked about our knowledge of how to build a bomb? 

Why are you afraid to tell us no sometimes?

Call us what you want to, but you will be surprised how we fail to fit you’re your neat little category….Now is the time to reap what you have sown. You might not think so, but I can guarantee that Littleton will look like a drop in the bucket compared to what might occur when a neglected “Generation Why” comes to power.(epidemic pg. 69)

I do not know the girl I have just quoted, but I wish I did, as she has touched on some of the major assumptions that parents make about raising their children that are just wrong. They make self serving decisions that damage their child and their relationship with their child and then try to spin it in a way that makes these decisions appear magnanimous and in the child's best interest. The point that this girl makes is striking in that she saw beyond what had just happened and considered the root of the problem.  She laid the blame for the tragedy not on the students responsible but on the fact that some parents are not invested enough in the job of parenting to do it right. Columbine represented for her what can happen as a result of inadequate parenting, what a toll it can take on a community. She then asks a very provocative question.  If we continue to set the same example that we have for this generation, what will happen when they are the people in power?  

An interesting question to think about once you think about it.