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Reflections on
the State of our Children
Home alone — and unhappy
Concern over problems facing the younger generation is
nothing new. A recent book, however, links juvenile difficulties with
another controversial subject: changes in family structures. Commentator
and author Mary Eberstadt, a part-time research fellow at Stanford
University's Hoover Institution, argues that for some years now there
has been an “historically unprecedented experiment in family-child
separation in which the United States and other advanced societies are
now engaged.” In her recent book, “Home-Alone America,” Eberstadt
explains that there have been two main causes of the “empty-parent
home”: the explosion in divorce and the number of children born to
single parents; and working motherhood, or what she terms the
absent-mother problem. A third factor of lesser importance is the
absence of grandparents due to geographical separation, and the reduced
number of siblings. Eberstadt sidesteps the debate over the merits or
demerits of the changes in family structures and concentrates on
examining what is happening with children and adolescents. Her thesis is
that in recent years children have spent less and less time in the
company of their parents, and simultaneously many measures of their
well-being have declined. This is no mere coincidence, she maintains.
For starters, the author analyzes day care for infants. Numerous studies
and books focus on the effects of leaving babies in child-care centers
while their mothers go off to work. Some maintain there are positive
results in terms of higher academic achievement, while others point to
emotional damage that can have dire consequences for character
development.
Sudden impact
Instead of trying to discern what may happen 20 years down the line,
Eberstadt focuses on the more immediate impact on infants. Babies left
in institutional care, for instance, are far more likely to get sick due
to being exposed to all the other children. And an increase in
aggression among children who are left in child-care centers is well
documented, she argues. Overall, Eberstadt concludes that packing
children off to day care will make them unhappy. She further contends
that parents who rationalize about this phenomenon, end up less
sensitive to their kids' needs. Teen violence is rising too. Eberstadt
pointed out that many of the most publicized cases in recent years, such
as the 1999 killings at Columbine High School and the 2003 sniper
attacks around Washington, D.C., involved adolescents who spent most of
their time without any parental contact. She quickly admits that having
two attentive parents is no ironclad guarantee of decent character, but
“not having them can turn out to be disastrous.” Substance abuse,
suicide and violent behavior are just some of the social indicators that
have dramatically worsened in recent decades, and Eberstadt points the
finger at absent parents as one of the main causes. The discipline
situation in some schools has meant that teachers are forced into the
role of virtual U.N. peacekeepers, she contends. And many of the most
feral children come from single-parent backgrounds or households where
the adults are out working all the time.
Mental health
The number of children and teen-agers diagnosed with mental disorders
has exploded in recent years, noted Eberstadt. A January 2001 report by
the U.S. surgeon general spoke of a “public crisis in mental care” this
age group. Dealing with attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity,
obsessive compulsions, along with the daily administrations of
behavior-altering drugs, is now a daily fact of life for many families.
Chaotic home environments, absent parents and trauma caused by divorce
in many cases can be factors contributing to mental health problems
suffered by children. The causes of psychological problems are complex.
But they are due in part argues Eberstadt, citing some studies — to the
emotional response of the disappearance from children's lives of
protecting parents and a stable home environment. Then, too, the “cures”
offered through pharmaceuticals such as Ritalin and Prozac bring with
them a series of side effects. And too infrequently is there talk about
the risks of over-prescribing such psychotropic medications, Eberstadt
observes.
Primal scream
In another chapter Eberstadt draws on the teen music scene to gain an
insight into adolescent concerns. Lamentations centering on divorce and
broken homes are finding an ever-more popular reception among young
listeners. Even rap singers, long known for extolling violence and
misogyny, complain about the lack of decent family life. The singer
Eminem — a target of lesbian groups, feminists and conservative family
organizations alike — is one of the clearest examples of this tendency.
Along with vulgar language and the exaltation of sex and violence, “he
returns repeatedly to the same themes that fuel other success stories in
contemporary music: parental loss, abandonment, abuse, and subsequent
child and adolescent anger, dysfunction and violence.”
Eberstadt finds here an important difference with the preceding
generation. Baby-boomer music was characterized by rebellion against
what was considered as an overly protective parental presence and
authority. By contrast, “Today's teen-agers and their music rebel
against parents because they are not parents, not nurturing, not
attentive, and often not even there.”
Teen-age sex
Other consequences of parental absence are the rise in teen sexual
activity and sexually transmitted diseases. Eberstadt notes that sexual
activity begins earlier when adolescents' lives are effectively out of
any parental control. Yet the mere presence of parents in the lives of
children isn't enough, argues another author. Kay Hymowitz, in her 2003
book, “Liberation's Children,” insists that adults must also provide
children with instruction on how to live. Hymowitz, a journalist, says
that today's adolescents have absorbed from the surrounding culture an
ethos of “nonjudgmentalism.” Too often, she notes, parents have left
aside their traditional role of instructing their offspring in values
and concentrate on being their “housemates and friends.” The
consequences are nefarious. Without any education in the limits of human
nature, teens are left to “stumble into experiences” that all too often
spiral out of their control. In the past it was assumed that children
would receive a basic moral education that was learned as part of family
life. But in recent decades many theories of child rearing espoused the
need to let kids act naturally and without any constraints.
Along with
this, many Americans have been imbued with the idea that to create an
“authentic self” complete autonomy is needed in beliefs, opinions and
choices in life. Thus, teaching children how to behave becomes forbidden
and parents are transformed from figures of authority “into
facilitators, cheerfully escorting the child's own unique self into
maturity.”
Every society, argues Hymowitz, needs to civilize its new generations by
means of some form of education. Unfortunately, the values that
predominate today are those of tolerance and open-mindedness, which,
albeit laudatory at times, “cannot help the young person to build a
self.” Liberation's children, Hymowitz notes, “live in a culture that
frees the mind and soul by emptying them.” Eberstadt, at the end of her
book, turns to the question of what can be done to remedy these
problems. She maintains that it would be much better if parents were to
spend more time with their children. Hymowitz agrees with this same
idea, but makes clear that forming children in basic moral values is
also an essential part of parenting. How to bring about these changes
remains a difficult, but urgent, task.
29 January 2005
http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=65524
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