[rosserk]

Are the problems in today's society due to poor parenting and what might some of those problems be? How can we address these issues?

[wildcatgirl]

I believe it may be a problem with both poor parenting and schooling. So many people (not everyone, but a lot) seem to let their kids get away with anything they want to do just so they can be "friends" and there is no respect in the household. Now, don't get me wrong, my nine-year-old is my best friend. But, at the same time, he also knows to respect me in what I tell him to do. Same way with school--I see teachers who either let kids do anything they want or they don't know how to get kids' respect. I think there should be a psychology class required on "how to get respect of others" for anyone who is going to be a teacher.

[NeedKarma]

Many problems but not all are indeed due to poor or neglectful parenting. In America it seems that the parents are more concerned with appearing wealthy than living within their means and spending time with their kids. This puts a great deal of stress on the parents who are laden with debt, work long hours accordingly and now have unruly children due to lack of discipline and love. Keeping up with the Joneses and addiction to consumerism is keeping the parents on the wrong path.

[Sentra]

Poor parenting is a sickening trend among many; I've seen mothers who would rather take her martial arts' friends out to dinner with her college grant money than buy her kids' new shoes, without holes in them. Parents (and non) make it a conscious choice to spend on the wrong thing, ignore the needs of their children and make the wrong things a priority. Then rely on other family members to take up the slack. Fortunately, some of these kids see the error in their parents' ways and grow up learning to stray far away from they've seen or have been through. Some of these parent's truly may need help to get on track, and they should be willing to accept it; then some of them just think they know it all, and don't care.

The children should be listened to more, pressured less and trusted to tell the truth. Proper investigation into mistreatment should be strict AND thorough AND prompt; none of this, "Well the social worker is on vacation, so in 12 days we will.......blah blah blah!"
Support groups are nil and most aren't made for the 'semi' bad mistreatment... no grey area, its either bad or good.

I have a cousin who does everything a mother shouldn't do. She has spent the last 7 years in college just to collect grant money, food stamps, health insurance and has refused every time my family and I have found steady, guaranteed work. She was denied funding for another year because she had already been in so long, without so much as a degree in General Studies (and only got it by the skin of her teeth). When her twin boys needed new shoes, winter coats, clothes for school and supplies did she ever bother to put away money for it?

No, it was her family that had to take care of her misdoings. She received at LEAST $4500 at the start of each semester, and was broke less than two weeks later. Of course, she paid her rent ahead, car insurance and her own tuition... but would show up at places with a new iPod, new clothes, shoes and purses for herself and tell us all about how she would treat friends to very pricey restuarants. Right now she is a pizza delivery driver, which is great, she has a job now but has not stopped her ways of spending. She is moving her and her boys back and forth across the county, living with friends because she cannot save a check or two for rent to a very nice place we found for her, to which she said, "It only has two bedrooms, it isn't nice enough and has no room for MY stuff."
She has Herpes and doesn't tell her numerous partners. And I do mean numerous.

I have been urged not to knock sense into her, but as a mother I can't just sit back and watch that happen.

[Sentra]

Well, I think bad parenting can leak over into the workplace, which can affect business, then the consumer and so on. Children may grow up thinking certain behaviors and actions are proper when they are not, and end up learning the hard way.

[Depressed in MO]

Bad parenting, in my opinion, can lead to things such as low self-esteem, low intelligence, and harsh criminal activity. Furthermore, it leads to many other things-laziness, non-motivation... etc.

I believe bad parenting has effected today's society in a big way, look at all the rapists, diseases, murders, con artists... etc-all because of insufficient upbringing and education from parents and schools.
Children are our future always and I believe that if bad parenting/education continues to grow (as it seems to have been doing already) then that will eventually be the end of our world.

[talaniman]

Not to sound out of touch or old but as I remember it, My wife and I sat down and talked when we got pregnant, about how we where gong about raising this child. We both worked and were fairly happy in what we were doing. She wanted to be there while our son was young and see him through school and be there when he came home. That was a relief as the other alternative was a baby sitter. ( not a lot of child care back then). We had to rearrange the way we lived and where we lived as we went from two to one income. 30 years later we see the wisdom of those sacrifices now, just watching my kids and grand kids growing happy and strong was worth not having the big house in the burbs or new car, or other entrapment's of the American dream. Debt yes, but not overwhelming. The positive is we were there and knew everyone our children were in contact with from school, to friends. ( trust me they where not angels, but active, very active) and if I seem prideful, I am as both of mine are hard working well adjusted and very independent and seem to handle what life throws at them, no drugs, great well-raised kids. Yes I swell with pride. Don't get me wrong, people make their own choices but, The way I see the youngsters jumping into debt so early and deeply puts a lot of pressure on the family unit to succeed, at the expense of that quality time with each other. If you are not there to influence and guide as a parent then who is raising your children? Who do they talk to? Who do they listen to? Material things are great, but if you trust the school system to teach your children what they need to know to survive and prosper, maybe you should look at it a little more closely and be more involved in the time your children are growing up. It goes by more quick than you think and once its gone... too late for regrets.

[valinors_sorrow]

I think there is a bigger picture to be viewed here about changes---- in society and in parenting both. Parenting has changed because people have changed. It used to be that people kept more to themselves as individuals-- fifty years ago or more. Emotions were viewed as very private things and restraint was a big part of who they were as people. Not healthy but certainly more civilised within a family and within society too. Now we are collectively letting loose of those restraints (the most noticeable loosening occurred in the 60's here in the US) and learning how to handle the incumbunt freedom and naturally swinging the pendulum too far the other way -- to disastrous results too.

So individual emotions tend to rule the day and with much havoc-producing effect too LOL. Individual concerns, like the sort Karma mentions, come first and not just addiction to consumerism either. Its only natural that we are handling this badly, its still so new. This has impacted society greatly (crime is only the beginning of what is impacted - frankly everything is). This new freedom is spreading the havoc culturally too. BUT it may be a necessary step on the way to better things. I consider it no accident that we are socially, economically, spiritually entering into the Age of Information-- a significant thing really! This may allow ourselve to eventually temper the individual "I wanna's" with the needs of the group, i.e. family, neighborhood, city, culture, nation, etc. But its going to take a while... maybe even a long while before a great many people learn that while freedom is a good thing, because we are all in the boat together (ie planet Earth) it must come with conscience too, conscience about others and how we impact each other. Then we will be better able to solve what is going wrong. Its like some philosopher (who I can't remember) said: you cannot solve today's problems with today's mind, since it was today's mind that created them.

[wildcatgirl]

rosserk agrees: I agree and thanks for the prompt response but what problems does poor parenting lead to in society any ideas?

I do have an answer on this, but I wanted to go more into the details of my previous post. I believe that even children with poor parenting can still become upstanding individuals. What they need is a decent roll model. Children look to the influential adult in their lives and mold their own personalities around that. I hate to say it, because I love computers, but I believe the internet has made us all somewhat "closed out" from each other also. There has always been bad parenting and bad teachers, but now we are so closed off from each other, we are also running out of good role models. I mean, sometimes I would rather e mail someone then stop by their house or call them on the phone even if they live across the street just because it's more convienent.

As far as the society goes, we are already beginning to see the signs for that. The average FICO credit score has dropped by a huge margin in the past 5 years according to the NADA. If people don't have respect for creditors, they just don't pay their bills. Without respectful individuals in this world, you will see a rapid decline in the economy as the bankruptcy and repossession rates go up, causing interest rates to rise as the banks and federal reserve will be at a higher risk. Crime will go up as individuals begin selling more drugs to make money. Murder rates will rise. Riots could break out. The country's economy will eventually hemorrage. Now, some of you think I may be taking this a little too far, but I is something that I happen to care a lot about. Respect and caring for others is the base of what all people need--it starts at home. If children can't learn it from home, sometimes they get it from other roll models in their life. But, they have to get it from somewhere to become upstanding adults.

[isabelle]

The age old question... Genes or environment ? I have seen poor( not money) parents have upstanding children and I do agree that there seems to be much more poor parents skills, BUT I have also seem upstanding parents have children who commit crimes and do drugs etc.
I don't have an answer , if I did I would write a book and make a million dollars.

[JoeCanada76]

It all stems down to discipline. No one is aloud to use any kind of discipline anymore or they could find themselves being accused of abuse. Many parents have different ways of discipline, which creates inconsistancies which will intern cause problems as well.

Joe

[mr.yet]

Where we are the supposed smartest on the planet, yet we are the dumpest in offspring raising. We don't teach the children, respect, honor, caring, loving, or just plain common sense.

The other species are ahead of us.

Just my opinion.

[talaniman]

Thanks I agree there has to be some form of discipline but every child is different and they all respond differently what works for one might not work for another.

If you don't pay attention to your children then how can you tell what they need? When I was growing up all the neighbors kept an eye on All the kids and it was nothing for one adult to communicate to another to keep us in line. We couldn't get a way with anything. Nowadays the children raise themselves basically and have cars, and phones in high school, and answer to no one.

[winnieandgracie]

I would like to say that this topic is one I hold close to my heart. I am a first grade teacher.

To the user that feels that teachers ought to attend some psychology classes prior to teaching... WE DO!

To all of you that have children in today's society here is a good luck to you! And for all of you out there like me just trying to instill some knowledge into these young minds in hopes that they too will someday grow to be parts of a productive society good luck! Both jobs are HARD.

Do we put blame on one or the other? Parents vs. teachers (schools)?

I stand in a room of first graders daily not just teaching reading, writing, math, science and social studies. Now it seems I have the demand to teach respect, kindness, fairness, truthfulness, and many other morals to these children. The accountability level a teacher has for each some odd 25-35 students is amazing. Can you imagine being accountable for 25-35 children daily? If you are a parent maybe you are accountable for 3-4 children some 5-6, but have you ever if not a teacher been accountable head to toe and morning to afternoon been accountable for a group of that many children? Add that up with all that we must do in a day with the children it is a wonder the teachers do not collapse. It is hard for me to hear parents criticize education. I understand you get bad apples in education. They are far and few between. A job like teaching is not one a that a lazy person or one that is under-motivated to do would stick around in. Especially not with the high accountability we as teacher face now a days.

[elelmhorst]

Improvement in Schooling will follow naturally with proper discipline.

[elelmhorst]

Ahh the societal effects of poor parenting... where do I begin on such a complex issue? Surely there is not enough time in one day to discuss all of the circumferential issues involved so I will pick here or there but in no wise will my answer prove sufficient.

A very crucial characteristic of poor parenting is the issue of discipline. Punishment and Discipline have been subject to all manner of semantics, as each side butts heads in an eternal war of ideologies, so unless we come up with a clearly defined view of each we cannot ever hope to advance in our understanding. So, for clarity, I will use Webster as my reference. Punishment is the act of inflicting undesirable things upon a person as a causal means of persuading a change of behavior, or "retribution". Discipline is training that is meant to correct, mold, or perfect mental faculties or moral behavior. By definition Punishment is a form of Discipline, but Discipline is not a form of Punishment. The two are most definitely not mutually exclusive because Punishment is a sub-category of Discipline, however BOTH are vitally important and the absence of either one renders the desired effect null.

Having said these things, we can conclude that, when considering the issue of poor parenting and the children that are being produced these days, Discipline, and thus Punishment, must be either severely lacking or being executed in a hopelessly ineffective manner. Then we must consider, "has our idea of discipline changed at all recently?" The answer is that indeed it has! Modern ideologies of punishment and discipline are ever-increasingly becoming more liberal and "New-Age" as we erroneously associate physical punishment with abuse, without ever defining where the boundaries are, and try all manner of dead ends to try to reconcile our newly discovered myths! Of course there will always be those individuals who will act rather reductionistly and simply reject my argument out of hand as being religiously motivated rubbish, so we must be wary of these overly-simplistic blowhards as they only serve to side track our progress of understanding. I have begun to formulate the hypothesis that one of the many reasons parents these days do not discipline as needed is that they fear what other people might think of them. They are afraid that someone else might foolishly judge them as being abusive if they choose to punish their child in a more traditional manner. The result of this fear is a perpetuation of the fallacy and a child that is not properly disciplined. More people need to realize that punishment is a vital aspect of discipline and that they do not need to be concerned with what a fool thinks of them, as indeed the well-being of their child is far more important than social standing. There are many ways to punish children for their behavior. The possibilities are endless when held relative to the situation.

Now the methods of punishment are learned from the previous generation, i.e. mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers, and what they have progressively found to be effective through the years. If this vital information is not heeded or learned then poor parenting is almost an inevitable outcome. Now, a necessary aspect of learning these methods is having the time to be taught them, which requires quality parent child interaction and communication time. This time is being progressively eroded and being replaced by other more frivolous things that are products of our modern culture. Modern parents occupy their time with television watching, working long hours at jobs that are progressively paying less because of the flourishing nature of greed and human stupidity. If you solve the greed problem and the reliance of our modern culture on the Darwinist mentality of a dog eat dog approach to money and replace it with a more traditional aspect of a "sense of community" "charity" and "loving Giving" then these inherent problems slowly subside. How do you fix the greed problem so that we put less emphasis on monetary power and thus reduce the necessity of occupying our time with jobs and sacrificing the well-being of our children? I have, and will always advocate the power of a divine being that many people seem to desire to reject, and what He has to tell us. It is clear to me that these problems have already been dealt with by the ancients, and if we would only listen to what they have to say instead of dismissing them away as being primitive and therefore of lesser ability than ourselves, then we will begin to see a positive change.

Learning the necessary behaviors for life from our parents requires a respect for them and what they know and believe. If this respect is not obtained then learning is hopelessly and severely disabled, as it is then up to the individual to "raise" themselves. This respect is learned by the child as they are disciplined by their parent so we can see how a lack of discipline can perpetuate itself through the generations. A parent that wants to discipline their child correctly wants such out of love for their child, so Love is also a vital aspect of discipline.

So we have logically deduced that societal problems are the result of the behaviors of the people in the society. The people in the society are a product of their parents. Thus societal harmony relies upon the individuals behavior, which relies upon their discipline, which relies upon the parents disciplining properly, which relies upon what they have learned from their parents as proper discipline, which relies upon a sense of love and respect to communicate them down through the ages, which also relies upon the time to communicate these things. Truly this is a complex matrix but every facet is crucially important to understanding the big picture. Anyone who fails to understand one aspect is doomed to be "stuck in a rut" and never progress. Therefore we must actively commit ourselves to understanding this most important and inclusive issue as it effects every aspect of life.

I will, however, not leave you on that note. Let us further consider that what our parents thought was important effected their choices and thus also their choice of methods of discipline and frequency of discipline. What determines what a person thinks is important? The answer is their world-view is the object upon which they base their understanding of what is important. What then is a "world-view". Well a "World-View" is a set of arbitrarily chosen beliefs, that exhibit a certain plasticity to experience. Examples of world-views are the Christian or the Atheist perspectives. Choose your side in this war.

[bonobo]

Poor parenting results from the environment. People who are wondering if it's nature or nurture can rest easy knowing genes are a result of environment, and since we humans are makers of our environment, we can change our environment and therefore our genes. If we build an environment where there is free and plenty access to food and other energy, a lot of people will have more time to bond and build better relationships with one another. The genes that support bonding will flourish and the genes that support selfishness will die out. At the moment a lot of people compete to survive, even with their own children.

[noorli]

We are chasing over power, money, and high standard of living until we have forgotten our responsibility as a parents. Living in developed country when life can be so stressful with lots of high expectation from the community and competition among each other, we wanted to be the best. Children has been living in this environment and pressure from peers as well, they wanted to shine up, having branded stuff, driving sporty cars and having luxuries life with lots of fun. Since the parents are there to provide the stuff they required it been spoiled them, when the need is not been accomplish they become rebellious,agitated, not respecting their parents, vandalism and so on. Failure and stress in life can lead to alcoholism, drug abuse, HIV and many more.