More Hands and More Voices to the "Parenting Industry"
Amitai Etzioni
...While the shift from consumerism and careerism to an emphasis on children is largely one of values, it has some rewarding payoffs. Corporations keep complaining, correctly, that the young workers who present themselves on their doorsteps are undertrained. A large part of what they mean is a deficiency of character and an inability to control impulses, defer gratification and commit to the task at hand. If businesses would co-operate with parents to make it easier for them to earn a living and attend to their children, the corporate payoffs would be more than approbation: They would gain a labour force that is much better able to perform. The community, too, would benefit, by having members who are not merely more sensitive to one another and more caring but also more likely to contribute to the commonweal. Last, but not least, parents would discover that while there are some failures despite the best intentions and strongest dedication, and while there are no guarantees or refunds in bringing up children, by and large you reap what you sow. If people dedicate a part of their lives to their kids, they are likely to have sons and daughters who will make them proud and fill their old age with love.
The community - that is, all of us - suffers the ill effects of absentee parenting. According to a study by social scientist Jean Richardson and her colleagues, for example, eighth grade students who took care of themselves for 11 or more hours a week were twice as likely to be abusers of controlled substances (that is, to smoke marijuana or tobacco or to drink alcohol) as those who were actively cared for by adults. "The increased risk appeared no matter what the sex, race or socioeconomic status of the children," Richardson and her associates noted. And students who took care of themselves for 11 or more hours per week were one-and-a-half to two times more likely "to score high on risk-taking, anger, family conflict and stress" than those who did not care for themselves, a later study by Richardson and her colleagues found.
Travis Hirschi reports in Causes of Delinquency that the number of delinquent acts, as reported by the children themselves, was powerfully influenced by the children's attachment to the parents. The closer the mother's supervision of the child, the more intimate the child's communication with the father, and the greater the affection between child and parents, the less the delinquency. Even when the father held a low-status job, the stronger the child's attachment to him, the less the delinquency. Other factors also contributed to delinquency, such as whether the child did well in and liked school, but these factors were themselves affected by family conditions.
Other studies point to the same conclusions.
Gang warfare in the streets, massive drug abuse, and poorly committed work force, and a strong sense of entitlement and a weak sense of responsibility are, to a large extent, the product of poor parenting. True, economic and social factors play a role. But a lack of effective parenting is a major cause, and the other factors could be handled more readily if we remained committed to the importance of the upbringing of the young. The fact is, in poor neighbourhoods one finds decent and hardworking youngsters right next to antisocial ones. Likewise, in affluent suburbs one finds antisocial youngsters right next to decent, hardworking ones. The difference is often a reflection of the homes they come from.
What we need now, first of all, is to return more hands and above all, more voices to the "parenting industry"...
Excerpted from The Spirit of the Community:Rights,Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda.
Copyright ©1993 by Amitai Etzioni. Crown Publishers Inc.