Systemic Abandonment

"Twenty-five percent of the people polled in a recent national inquiry into American morality said that for 10 million they would abandon their entire family; a large number of people are evidently willing to do the same thing for free."
Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap


Are we abandoning our children and adolescents? In the very acts many parents to take to involve their kids in activities that will "build character," in the school systems that assign students hours and hours of homework (in addition to long sports pratices, clubs, extracirricular activites, all in the name of preparing them for the "real world"), in the fragmented family structures that have resulted from adults taking advantage of 'no-fault' divorces, in the labels we so readily assign to those kids who 'can't cut it'---'aren't athletic'---'are slow'---'are too sensitive,' in the insistence that kids find a job while still in school, in stretching them beyond their developmental capabilities to make us feel like we are really providing a great childhood and 'all the things we never had,' in all of these things and more, is society robbing kids of their childhood?

Thanks to the book Hurt, by Chap Clark, it's clear to me that so many things we do for kids may actually be for us---not them. The oversimplified result of his studies is that our act of being there: providing a safe, consistent, and loving physical presence in our kids' lives, is the best thing we can be doing.

"We have evolved to the point that where we believe driving is support, being active is love, and providing any and every opportunity is selfless nurture. We are a culture that has forgotten how to be together. Rather than being with children . . . or setting them free to enjoy semi-supervised activities such as 'play,' we as a culture have looked to outside organizations and structured agendas to fill [children's] lives. The systemic pressure on American children is immense. Too many of us actually enjoy the athletic, cultural, or artisitic baby-sitting service provided by those paid by the organizations. Even with the best of intentions, the way we raise, train, and even parent our children today exhibits attitudes and behaviors that are simply subtle forms of parental abandonment."

I think instead of conveniently changing the definition of the word family as often as we'd like to suit our dynamically selfish needs, more could be done to see to the real problem with today's youth. They feel lonely, unlistened to, and left on their own to figure out the way life is supposed to work. They feel used and manipulated by the very adults who may be behind the wheel of the minivan they are sitting in.
Ben Wilcox