Jim, and thedoctor,
Some of the same issues, of many parents' abdication of responsibility for raising their children, were also raised in another topic previously:
"Why is crime sometimes appealing?" topic
http://www.robkamphausen.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=27;t=000758
Many of the same issues raised in this topic, about monitoring childrens' and teenagers' entertainment and behavior, is discussed in the above topic as well.
I think the problem is that there are SOME parents who are very good parents.
I also know some others who smoke drugs with their teenage/college-age children. And others who at least openly use drugs around their children.
But I see far more parents who are just too busy with their own activities and careers, and offer no standard for sexual or ethical behavior for their children.
Some parents rationalize that they're too busy to monitor their children properly. But I'd argue that they just haven't made raising their children a priority.
A documentary about a syphilis epidemic among teens in an upscale suburb (
Frontline on PBS: "The Children of Rockdale County") exposed the problem of upscale families with two working parents, where the kids were virtually unsupervised, watching porn, and imitating what they saw, having group sex.
And when all these kids ended up at the hospital for treatment of syphilis, and the parents were all called and the situation explained to them, and instructed to bring their kids in for medical treatment, of all the kids within a rather large circle of teenage sex partners, the kids were described
by their own parents as all giving each other high-fives in the waiting room, and laughing about it, like it was some badge of honor and coolness that they all got syphilis from reckless group sex.
I've seen other stories of this type, and talked to enough people involved in this kind of wild lifestyle to know this isn't an isolated event.
I've seen a fair amount of kids from very good families involved in drugs, gangs, and other wild and criminal behavior. And the very idea of moral restraint of any kind is generally ridiculed and dismissed as hypocritical, and even backward and parochial in our current culture.
So I guess the answer to the topic question is:
Kids play with whatever they want, and a majority of the time, no one cares.
And if anyone dares to call it immoral and depraved, then THEY, not the behavior and the parenting, are criticized. And the obvious problem that exists is dismissed as "conservative paranoia".
Kids were using marijuana and cocaine when I was in high school. Now they're also using Ecstasy, Meth, and highly addictive Crack, and God knows what else.
Group sex, in high school and younger now.
Two 17 year olds shot a home porn movie with a 15 year old girl in Boca Raton, bragged about it in school, planned to sell it on the internet, before they were caught by police. Probably not the only incident of its kind.
Beating up teachers. Again in Boca Raton, a teacher tried to make a girl put out a cigarette while on school property, and the girl beat the teacher to within an inch of her life, pounding her head on the sidewalk.
And the parent of the teen girl, was he ashamed and apologetic for his daughter's behavior? Quite the contrary, he went out and got her the most expensive lawyer he could find, to try and keep the girl from being accountable for her actions.
Shooting of teachers. (Nathanial Brazil, who shot a teacher in the face 3 years ago at age 14, was interviewed tonight on my local news. )
Kids with guns shooting as many teachers and fellow students as they could at Columbine.
And then copycat crimes for weeks afterwards by other alienated teens.
Children murdering their parents.
With bad-attitude role models in recent years for women as well, there is a sharp rise in women imprisoned for armed robbery and other violent crimes.
I think about 90% of it can be traced to bad parenting, and in many cases the total lack of a father in the picture at all.
I mean really, what evidence do we need, to say "this is a serious cultural problem" ?!
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