What is happening to our kids?

[Roy Christensen]

We now have to put ads on TV telling our kids to go outside and play. Do kids need to be told to turn off the TV and play instead. Is the TV the means which we need to communicate with our children. Another ad urges kids to eat fruit and vegetables. Where are parents. Are we raising a generation of obese children who are astute at hanging out in front of the tv.

 

[Section2]

Parents have been replaced by government bureaucrats.

 

[UpnorthGo4]

Roy, congratulations to you for finally waking up from your decades long coma. Too much TV and too little exercise for kids has been a growing problem since Captain Kangaroo ruled on Saturday mornings. The primary culprit is the disintegration of the traditional family unit.

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Globally, one-quarter to one-third of all families are headed by single mothers, calling into question the normativeness of couple headed families. Developed countries, in particular, are experiencing an increase in single-parent families as divorce becomes more common. The United States has the highest percentage of single-parent families (34% in 1998) among developed countries, followed by Canada (22%), Australia (20%), and Denmark (19%).

There was a dramatic increase in single-parent families in the United States in the last three decades of the twentieth century; only 13 percent of families were headed by a single parent in 1970. Over one-fourth of children in the United States lived with a single parent in 1996, double the proportion in 1970. Approximately 84 percent of these families are headed by women. Of all single-parent families, the most common are those headed by divorced or separated mothers (58%) followed by never-married mothers (24%). There is racial variation in the proportion of families headed by a single parent: 22 percent for white, 57 percent for black, and 33 percent for Hispanic families.

Read more: Single-Parent Families - Demographic Trends - Poverty, Family, Women, Percent, Births, Divorce, United, and Children http://family.jrank.org/pages/1574/Single-Parent-Families-Demographic-Trends.html#ixzz19uMMJFpV

 

[diehard]

I agree with Upper that this is a considerable part of the problem. I also agree with 2 that we have unintentionally replaced a parent with government. It will be difficult to reverse this, but we must find a way to do so without crippling many with the transition to self reliance/family support. It won't be easy.