Raising boys for fun and profit

There are things parents can do to help their sons make the leap from stumbling boyhood to manhood.

Okay, I was kidding about the fun. And, I was lying about the profit. There are, however, a few things parents can do to help their sons make the leap from stumbling boyhood to manhood.

In a recent article I commented on the numerous reports of boys’ poor academic and employment performance compared with girls, and the growing concern that so many young males are trapped in what appears to be a permanent adolescent world of porn, sports and video games. Somehow, the societal landscape has shifted and the young men who tamed the West and built the nation’s robust economy are now sitting numbly in classrooms and office cubicles. The male needs to achieve, to become independent is not slaked by Fantasy Football and watching American Idol. And while it may be too late for your beer-and-bong addicted brother-in-law, there is much that can be done to save our boys.

First, however, I need to confess my modified adherence to the "Bad Seed" theory. The Bad Seed is a 1950s novel, later a movie, about a child who stops at nothing, even murder, to get her way. While the child of loving and sober parents, she appears as evil incarnate. I bring this up because while I have never encountered an evil child, I’ve known a few smart and loving parents who have borderline monster kids who seem to possess a teflon ability to reject the good influences surrounding them. In their quest for freedom or whatever, they seem to have defined their parents as the enemies they must conquer. While a few of these teenaged fiends have grown up to be self-centred ogres, a surprising number of them in their 20s and 30s make a caterpillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis that is quite astounding. In the meantime, though, their parents have been dragged through various circles of Dante’s Inferno. All of which is to say, there are no universal, guaranteed rules in child raising. Suggestions, yes. Ironclad rules, no.

New baby, new priority

First, then (and it may be an obvious point) raising a child has to be the numero uno priority -- especially in the case of a boy in today’s world. Whether the "package from Heaven" was carefully planned -- or was or an upsetting surprise -- isn’t the issue. When Junior arrives, he (like all his siblings) needs to go to the top of the list. His upbringing must leapfrog over parental career, romance, friendships and, certainly, over sport, recreation and leisure. It is not that these lesser priorities are abandoned, but that they are recast or rearranged in the face of new responsibilities.

In bygone eras, when most moms and pops were farmers or small shop owners, the total training and education of their sons was in their hands and this child-raising priority had real teeth to it. And the incentives were high. Their sons were part of their survival system and they were, de facto, the insurance policy of their old age. The stakes were high for making Junior a loyal and upright guy. In the modern world, parents have outsourced much of the education and training to schools, and camps and professional youth workers. Few children are going to pursue the vocations of their parents. Few parents can help with algebra or compete with their 13-year-olds in computer literacy.

The one area to which the schools and youth workers give a wide berth is moral training. One of the mixed blessings of a democratic and diverse society is that, in principle, "imposing ethical values", let alone a moral compass, is a social no-no. However, in the absence of a strong moral training from home, these "secondary parents" will take over.

Article by: Kevin Ryan
tags : boys, character, parenting, temperament

The spiritual world of children

News that the spiritual welfare of young children is being neglected somewhere will not surprise anyone, but the evidence adduced by a British researcher produced an eye-catching headline in the London Telegraph. “Angel sightings ‘should not be dismissed’”, it read.

Kate Adams, who lectures at an Anglican university college, interviewed 94 children who believed they had a dream with a religious connection but one third never confided in anyone. Exploring children’s belief in the unseen, Dr Adams was told by a seven-year-old girl that her parents paid no attention when she told them she saw an angel at her bedside every night.

Dr Adams said such testimonies were a saddening indictment of adults’ misunderstanding of children. She was presenting her findings to an educational research conference in the hope of encouraging teachers to take more interest in the spiritual life of children.

(It is one of the charming things about Britain that, despite being the home of atheist poster-boy Richard Dawkins, it still has legislation requiring schools to give religious education and to attend to children’s spiritual development.)

Another study to be presented to the conference, based on interview with 166 trainee teachers at eight English universities, showed that 44 per cent felt their course barely covered spiritual development.

No doubt some Britons would like to see an end to religion in schools, and yet growing numbers of religious (faith) schools are being opened across the country and more students are opting to take senior exams in religious studies.

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: children, religion, United Kingdom

Parenting pathways

If your parents were negative and harsh with you growing up, that’s the way you will be with your kids. And if they were positive and affectionate, well, lucky for your kids. That’s the assumption behind a popular theory of parenting, but researchers who have done long-term studies say it’s wrong.

Parenting styles have their effect much earlier, says David Kerr of Oregon State University, by allowing good or bad behaviour to take hold in adolescence. And this happens in two ways: by modelling good/bad ways of dealing with people, and by monitoring/not monitoring what they learn from other people.

"For instance, if you try to control your child with anger and threats, he learns to deal in this way with peers, teachers, and eventually his own children.

“If you do not track where your child is, others will take over your job of teaching him about the world. But those lessons may involve delinquency and a lifestyle that is not compatible with becoming a positive parent," Kerr pointed out.

So, the “pathway” from one generation to another is not a matter of remembering back to how your parents did it, but through the habits you have already formed. The good news is that it works in a positive sense as well.

"We knew that these negative pathways can be very strong," Kerr said. "What surprised us is how strong positive parenting pathways are as well. Positive parenting is not just the absence of negative influences, but involves taking an active role in a child's life."

The researchers found that children who had parents who monitored their behavior, were consistent with rules and were warm and affectionate were more likely to have close relationships with their peers, be more engaged in school, and have better self-esteem.

"So part of what good parenting does is not only protect you against negative behaviors but instill positive connections with others during adolescence that then impact how you relate with your partner and your own child as an adult," Kerr said

The study, by the way, was done with 206 boys considered at risk for delinquency, from the age of 9 to 33. Whatever those risks were (and the full study is to be published in the journal Developmental Psychology this month) they were clearly less critical than what the parents actually did. And that seems to be another argument for parent education.

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: adolescence, habits, parenting

The UN’s sex-ed plan for kids

Some years ago I saw a cartoon whose subject becomes more real by the day. It showed a Brave-New-Wold nursery in which newborns were being instructed via a loudspeaker: “Today you will be going home, but before you go, here is your first sex education lesson...” I was reminded of it by a Fox News report of a new universal sex-ed curriculum from UNESCO.

The UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has decided that, “in a world affected by HIV and AIDS”, it is “imperative” to teach children as young as 5 about masturbation as well as “gender roles, stereotypes and gender-based violence”.

By the time they're 9 years old, they'll learn about "positive and negative effects of 'aphrodisiacs," and wrestle with the ideas of "homophobia, transphobia and abuse of power."

At 12, they'll learn the "reasons for" abortions — but they'll already have known about their safety for three years. When they're 15, they'll be exposed to direct "advocacy to promote the right to and access to safe abortion."

Not sure what’s left for 15 to 18-year-olds: maybe they’ll be getting work experience in a clinic.

The scheme, with its surrounding material – including long lists of experts consulted, studies “rigorously reviewed” and footnoted, and various rationalisations -- runs to 98 pages. The authors are Douglas Kirby, the elder statesman of comprehensive sex-ed research and advocacy in the United States, and Nanette Ecker, employed at the time by SIECUS – the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the US.

Mark Richmond, director of UNESCO’s Division for the Co-ordination of UN Priorities for Education (wonder how many staff he has...), was asked to justify the curriculum (which it is up to governments to accept or not):

Richmond defended teaching about masturbation as "age-appropriate" because even in early childhood, "children are known to be curious about their bodies." Their lessons, he added, would hopefully help kids "develop a more complex understanding of sexual behaviour" as they grow into adults.

For "complex" read "perverted". One doesn’t like to bash the UN, but really, doesn’t this sort of thing illustrate that it is trying to do far too much and that its brief should be severely curtailed?

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: abortion, AIDS, sex education, United Nations

Calling all monogamous men

Family scholar Patrick Fagan has come up with an elegant schema contrasting “monogamous” culture with other kinds of sexual culture which he calls, collectively, “polyamorous”. Speaking at the World Congress of Families recently in Amsterdam, he highlighted the gulf that exists between the two cultures in terms of values and practical consequences. And he proposed a solution.

Fagan, who is with the Family Research Council, argued that these cultures can only co-exist in once society if parents in both are given control over the programs that cause conflict: education, adolescent health and sex education.

At present, he said, the polyamorous culture is expanding through its control of these three areas by means of the public bureaucracy, snatching children away from their parents by drawing them into sexual activity. Each time this happens, the polyamorists have won several “victories”:

* The adolescent has been initiated into the polyamorous culture (albeit without knowledge of what is at stake) by having his first sexual experience outside of marriage;

* With the out of wedlock births or abortions that follow they have broken the family before it has started, solidifying the polyamorous stature of the adolescent or young adult;

* And, especially, they have pulled the young person away from participating in the sacred because formerly religious teenagers who begin to engage regularly in sex outside of marriage tend to stop worshipping God.

They -- the polys -- even fight any attempt by monos to defend their kids, through abstinence education, for example, or home schooling. And all this while the poly culture is being subsidised by the mono through tax funded welfare. As Fagan says, it’s simply unjust; the polys should have to pay their own way.

One way to progress in this direction and to make the behavioral bureaucracy to serve both cultures is to give all parents, parents of both cultures, and control over the program money set aside for their children. That is giving parents vouchers, in one form or another for all three program areas

The social welfare safety net will still be in place but the parents (be they monogamous or polyamorous) will choose who holds the net in place for their children.

Fagan admits it will require a huge political effort. And this is where the monogamous men come in. It’s their job, above all, to protect the family, he says.

Monogamy men will be expected to fight for control over is what is his and his family’s just due, what his taxes fund, and what he can use in raising his children: control over the three big programs of childhood education, sex education and adolescent health programs, so that they can be carried out in a way that supports the norms of monogamy culture. In this rearrangement polyamory parents have the same control to do as they wish for their children.

Posted by: Carolyn Moynihan

tags: education, family, men, monogamy,