Oh Parent
Where Art Thou?
By Ambra Nykol
Lodged in the mire of infinite wisdom and knowledge, is the perplexing question of why certain human beings are allowed to pro-create. That is to say that one fiery night of passion and copulation is just about the only pre-requisite these days for parenthood. There has been for some time in America, a disconcerting indifference towards child rearing. From suburbia to the projects, this brand of indifference knows no bounds.
One of the biggest mistakes we've made in examining this issue of "bad parenting" is that we've only applied it to a specific cross-section of the population. The stereotype perpetuated by the era of shows like "Rosanne" and "Married With Children" is that the lower-class uncouth citizens of the world don't know how to properly keep their households. The offspring of the welfare state are peddled as the miscreants of society. Forget the fact that every major instance of school violence in America was at the hands of a suburban white kid.
At any given time, it is easy to find scenarios of children and parenting gone horribly wrong. These stories are generally typified by some teenage boy in Podunk Suburbia whose covert operation to kill the entire football team in Steven Spielberg-style war was uncovered when someone found the one-man anti-tank missile weapon secretly stashed under his bunk bed. All of this of course, was somehow kept secret from his "watchful" parents whose faces we generally see flashed across the news screen, crying and apologetic, lamenting the words to our favorite tune of naivete, "But he's such a good kid" and "We just didn't know," and a break to the chorus of "I never noticed a change."
In light of such an off-key tune, it is befitting that we break out collective violins and underscore this ballad. As a few examples will display, America is the "land of the free" and the "home of the blame."
After losing her 18-year-old son to a drug overdose on painkillers purchased via the internet, a Los Angeles woman became a crusader for "justice," hounding the Food and Drug Administration for stricter law enforcement around drug and internet relations. Her claim? If it hadn't been so easy for her son to buy Vicodin online, he wouldn't have overdosed.
Close but no cigar.
Parents are not expected to be perfect, but there is a minimum level of awareness that one should have of the "goings on" under one's own roof. Things don't just "happen." At some point in the game, there is a warning sign or two (or six).
A young person's death is indeed tragic, but in the wake of such things, lack of accountability usually takes a front seat to our tragic tune of apathy. The first thing we often do is to blame someone else or fall back on the eternal scapegoat called "the government." And granted yes, the FDA could stand to do a better job at a lot of things, but let's face it, they're evil and useless, so attempting to police the internet - or make the "powers that be" accountable for cyber drug trafficking - is ultimately energy well-wasted when we have yet failed to dust off the trusty mirror to take peek at what it reveals.
Last September, in Clinton, Michigan, a 17-year-old boy named Andrew Osantowski nearly got away with his elaborate plans to blow up his entire high school. Were it not for threats he'd made in an internet chatroom, police may not have been tipped to the fact that Osantowski was secretly housing weapons, ammunition, bomb-making paraphernalia, Nazi flags and books on Hitler. What's more amazing is that Osantowski was able to do this under the nose of a clueless mother who later was quoted as saying, "But he has a good heart." Ted Kaczynski went to Harvard and he too "had a good heart."
Teenagers have their own mind and will, but until they are adults, parents must also foot some of that bill. Enter trouble. In our country, we abhor the words, "personal responsibility." The whole goal and aim of parenting is being distorted by a scapegoat society.
The disease of reckless parenting is no respecter of persons. It's not a wealth issue; it's a responsibility issue. Let's not be so dense as to think for one moment that deadbeat parenting is analogous with a certain echelon of people.
In some lower-class neighborhoods, working parents struggling to make ends meet, leaving the television and crappy after school drop-off centers to baby-sit their kids. As a result, gang activity, teenage pregnancy, drugs, violence, and low-test scores can almost be inevitable.
In some upper-class neighborhoods, there are parents who have subscribed to the "Jerry Springer School of Parenting" which says turn a blind eye to the drunken orgies it's "normal" teenage behavior. Buy your kid alcohol for parties under the guise of "I'd rather have them doing it around me than somewhere else." Be the child's "best friend." Buy them birth control and condoms. Respect their "privacy" and ignore the contraband under their beds.
No parent can afford to just sit back and let society raise children.
In all fairness, parenting is the hardest job on the planet. But what did everyone expect, a Sunday brunch? We are collectively entertaining illusions of grandeur if we think that steering the life of another human being isn't going to take sacrifice and blood.
Many recent surveys have shown that a good percentage of parents say they wouldn't have had children if they'd known what the job entailed. It is disgustingly evident that some people should have just gone to Toys 'R Us and bought a "Baby Feels So Real" to get that "baby-bug" out of their system. This is a rough climate, and we need some parents who are going to do their job, even if it means sacrifice. A step in that direction would be for parents to start taking more personal responsibility when it comes to the burden our society bears at the plight of wayward children.
Ambra Nykol is freelance writer, Seattle native, and member of the "rebellious" generation. Visit her website at www.nykola.com.
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