More disasters of secular modern rationalism
From The (London) Times:
Children never had it so good
By Rosemary Bennett
The new generation of 'super parents' is providing the best possible start in life
The Seventies were an idyllic time for family life, just one long round of happy family dinners, family walks and fun family games, while today’s children are a generation of latchkey kids growing up emotionally deprived and dysfunctional, right? Er . . . wrong, actually.
Far from being self-serving workaholics with no time for their children, modern parents spend four times as much time with them as the mothers and fathers of 30 years ago.
The have become a generation of super-parents who devote almost all their time away from work to their offspring, according to research. Typically parents today spend 99 minutes a day with children under 16, compared with just 25 minutes in 1975.
The research, by the Future Foundation think-tank, gives an upbeat assessment of modern childhood, with children’s views being taken into account in the household and parents aspiring to do a better job than their parents did.
As a result, children enjoy more “quality time” with their parents, who organise and take part in their sporting, cultural and social activities.
It contrasts with the bleak picture painted by other recent reports that have declared a “crisis in childhood” thanks to a “love deficit” between parents and children.
Last month the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said that he believed a generation of “infant adults” was growing up violent and dysfunctional because they were deprived of a caring childhood.
The Changing Face of Childhood, which combines survey evidence with sociological research, agrees that children enjoy far less independence than they did 30 years ago, as a result of anxious parents ferrying their children to school and after school activities. The average age at which children are allowed outside the home by themselves has gone up from seven to eight years old during the period, it found. But that is made up for by the “quality time” that children now enjoy with their parents.
Although the experience of childhood 30 years ago is often romanticised, the reality was different....
Come on everybody...Can I get a 'Hell'? Can I get a 'Handcart'?
Children never had it so good
By Rosemary Bennett
The new generation of 'super parents' is providing the best possible start in life
The Seventies were an idyllic time for family life, just one long round of happy family dinners, family walks and fun family games, while today’s children are a generation of latchkey kids growing up emotionally deprived and dysfunctional, right? Er . . . wrong, actually.
Far from being self-serving workaholics with no time for their children, modern parents spend four times as much time with them as the mothers and fathers of 30 years ago.
The have become a generation of super-parents who devote almost all their time away from work to their offspring, according to research. Typically parents today spend 99 minutes a day with children under 16, compared with just 25 minutes in 1975.
The research, by the Future Foundation think-tank, gives an upbeat assessment of modern childhood, with children’s views being taken into account in the household and parents aspiring to do a better job than their parents did.
As a result, children enjoy more “quality time” with their parents, who organise and take part in their sporting, cultural and social activities.
It contrasts with the bleak picture painted by other recent reports that have declared a “crisis in childhood” thanks to a “love deficit” between parents and children.
Last month the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said that he believed a generation of “infant adults” was growing up violent and dysfunctional because they were deprived of a caring childhood.
The Changing Face of Childhood, which combines survey evidence with sociological research, agrees that children enjoy far less independence than they did 30 years ago, as a result of anxious parents ferrying their children to school and after school activities. The average age at which children are allowed outside the home by themselves has gone up from seven to eight years old during the period, it found. But that is made up for by the “quality time” that children now enjoy with their parents.
Although the experience of childhood 30 years ago is often romanticised, the reality was different....
Come on everybody...Can I get a 'Hell'? Can I get a 'Handcart'?
posted by Brit at 3:38 AM
3 Comments:
I suspected that might be your tack. They're not being neglectful, so they're all over-protective Soccer Moms who will stunt junior's development by giving him too much misguided fuss-ery.
All roads lead to Hell.
Here's my philosophy of the cultural commentary lark:
Pretty much everything is bad at the extremes. eg. very neglectful parents who let the kids play with the traffic willy-nilly are bad, and over-zealous parents who wrap them in so much cotton wool that they are unable to use a toaster without fear of death are bad.
Hell in a handcart and slippery slope arguments are great tools for bashing extremes of behaviour, but we shouldn't pretend that they are prescient predictions about how things will turn out in the future.
Predicting the future is utterly and completely beyound human intellectual ability. Which doesn't mean that we should stop, cos it's fun, but Hell in a Handcartists do need to be careful not to fall into the hysteria trap (it's a slippery slope, this slippery slope business).
We just assumed that abandoning religion and traditional morality would result in everyone laying around in the grass strumming guitars and collecting welfare.
Speaking as an American, when did the abandonment of religion occur?
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