Good news! Homeschoolers have always known that it is far better for children to be raised by their parents and their mothers instead of by substitutes. But the rest of America is getting it, too.
The Census Bureau calls parents staying at home a growing trend (Broken link, active July 2, 2005), based on the increasing number of children who live in such households. In 2002, the Census Bureau says there were 10.6 million children with stay-at-home moms. That’s up 13 percent from eight years prior. Overall, the bureau believes about one-fourth of all U.S. kids live in such households.
Three new books might help convince the other three quarters of American parents. Mary Eberstadt’s Home-Alone America examines the hidden toll of day care, behavioral drugs, and other parent substitutes on our children. Dr. Laura recommends 7 Myths of Working Mothers: Why Children and Most Careers Just Don’t Mix; and Rick Santorum, U.S. senator and homeschooling dad, has also just released It Takes a Family, a premise in direct opposition to the one Hilary Clinton proposed in her child-rearing book, It Takes a Village.
The research is coming in on those parent substitutes. A new study shows that preschool loosens the parent-child bond. And speaking of preschool: a pet liberal project, universal preschool, is shown to not be the utopia its proponents claim. (“Universal” is a code word for “mandatory,” claimed necessary so that children learn to read better.)
Kids are busier than ever these days. Their lives are jam-packed, with every second scheduled. But, according to noted psychologist Kevin Leman, parents are substituting all kinds of activities for quality family time with them, and children are suffering because of it. There is that parent substitution thing again.
Then there is TV and video games, common parental substitutes even in households where the parents are home. Too much TV-watching can harm
children’s ability to learn, and even reduce their chances of getting a college degree, three new studies suggest (Broken link, active July 12, 2005) in the latest effort to examine the effects of television on kids. Another study confirms what many parents have long suspected: that violent TV or video games affects children’s minds, causing a rise in aggressiveness even in those children without a history of such behavior. This is so because the brain sees violent video games, not as a fantasy, but as a real life study requiring aggressive responses. This shouldn’t surprise anyone: after all, video game technology was first developed by the military to train soldiers and reduce factors (such as moral qualms) which inhibit response time.
If that isn’t enough to convince parents to pull the plug on the Playstation, a Moscow boy died after his parents allowed him to play video games for 12 hours straight as a reward for earning good grades. Apparently the exposure brought on an epileptic-type seizure in his brain resulting in hemorrhage and death. And Sony’s new handheld Playstation, the PSP, has just had [p-rn] product developed for it (scroll down) (Broken link, active July 12, 2005). Hopefully this will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back on the pervasiveness of [p-rn] in our society. Please deliver us, Lord Jesus!
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