10/3/14
As of right now, this is purely theory, and if this takes well I promise to back this theory up with follow up references and information and perhaps put it to the test.
Right now, everywhere in media, all you see is that our society is crumbling.
WHY!?
Of course, the media outlets have a thousand and one of their own opinions, ranging from the usual blaming of musicians, to bad teachers, to their new favorite victim - violent video games, but none of this seems to tackle the real problem. It has been said by a famous television host that, "It's the parents that suck" or "No media outlet is going to tell it's viewers that the problem...IS YOU!"
I'd like to think it isn't. Well, not exactly. I am currently 22 years old, when my mother, who is 44 years old was growing up, with two working parents they were able to own a house, support two children, and never go hungry. Today? I don't think so. With two working parent's (which, by the way, looking at statistics is rare enough) on regular to minimum pay, people are hardly able to afford renting apartments. Renting!? That's quite a jump from the 70's-80's when my mother was a child, isn't it? And of course we have all read about the real estate collapse, which happened because parents who could hardly pay rent were trying to have what their parents had - houses of their own for their children, which I believe every American should be able to achieve. That should not be some forgotten ideal of the normal American Life!
I have a newborn child of my own, and to support our house, we have the two working parents, and my mother who lives with us to help care for the baby and pay rent. That's right, rent. None of us work at minimum paying jobs, all of us are working at one skill or another, and yet we are still at this level of not only not owning a house, but still needing outside help to keep up.
This is because the minimum wage of the country, has not went up in over ten years. That is why I believe society is crumbling. Because not everyone in society has a working Dad and a working Mom, how many people can you think of that are single mothers? I know off the top of my head I can name at least five. Now, how many can you think are a working duo of parents? I can think of three, four including myself. Close, but still falls a bit behind. However, here's the kicker, all of the other three but myself, are stay at home Mom's which leaves only one person in the house working. But that also means someone truth worthy and safe is always home with their children....but what about all the single mothers in the country? What about the unfortunate mothers whom perhaps made the mistake of getting pregnant too young and their parents want nothing to do with them? Or perhaps the reason they made that mistake in the first place was because their parents were already so disfunctional and uncaring it seemed like no big deal to them? What about the mothers who do not have the luxury of outside help?
Of course, this is where the Right Wing people come in and yell about how the government is already helping these women who shouldn't have made these mistakes anyway and they don't need anymore help! Well, that's wrong. And that's wrong especially because the help these women need is not always able to be counted for in dollars and cash, although, we all must admit more money always helps, it is really a village that raises a child. I can't imagine getting through the first week of having my baby without having Daddy and my own Mother there to help every step of the way - it must be...horrible, for these mothers. Especially the ones who, unlike me, do not work at corporations that give paid time off for having a baby, rather it be Maternity Leave or Short Term Disability.
Most single mothers work minimum wage jobs, have no extra time off, and have rare helping hands. The helping hands the Right Wing loves to yell about is food stamps and free daycare, well I am here to tell you that I registered as a single mother, and those Free Day Cares, have waiting list - and more complaints then anyone really wants to speak of. It's heart chilling, really, that some women have no choice but to send their children there, because of lack of income or support.
So what we have here is a collective society of single confused parents who do not know all the tricks and are vastly underpaid to have completely competent and loving day care givers. These people work all day and are tired, and when they get home, I imagine some of them, rather because of their age or maturity, or just being overworked, do not have the mental ability to give their children the attention that the child wants or needs. So here we have children who are missing out largely on Positive Attention. This has been proven to cause children to - act out. And what is one of the biggest complaints we have now in society? That children everywhere are screaming in the cereal isle, that they aren't being spanked enough, that me and my sibling never ever acted that way! And we have these worn out parents who, to be frank, either don't care enough, or don't have the energy to handle them properly, and simply appease and appease or ignore and ignore. Neither of which is progressive.
These parents who may be so exhausted, or even the day care people in charge who are most likely over ran with kids, have on their hands a lot of children who need entertainment. Entertainment comes in about four different categories in my mind - action figures and imagination, playing outside, video games, and television. Action figures prices sky rocketed recently if anyone has taken the time to notice at the store, playing outside means losing track and if you're in charge of more than one then this could be quite challenging, video game systems are generally expensive however there is at least one in almost every home, and there is most definitely a television in every home. And that, I think, has become the true babysitter of the last generation of children. Children with overworked parents and a paid cable bill. Television isn't all bad, I am by no means saying that, but when it is being used as a baby sitter...I believe it can become bad, because it puts a total unrealistic idea of the world into the overexposed child's head, and if that child isn't interacting with the real world enough to know that that is a separate and unrealistic world in the television screen, then things begin to get messy. The child begins to play out these scenarios that should go the same way they go on TV, these actions that are handled with a slap on the wrist and a switch to the next scene, a world without consequence. And the world does not function like that, and unfortunately I believe many children do not know that until they enter school.
And in school, children are forced to interact with other children, sometimes for the first time, and as we all know, some are better than others, and some do not take that well. And for those who do not interact as well, who are bullied and shunned, I believe probably do not do so because instead of interacting with other children prior to school, they interacted largely with a TV set, and a stressed out parent. And on television, things are rarely handled realistically. And that is a large part of why I believe we have the issue we have now with bullying and the horrific reaction we are seeing from the victims, the brutal and violent ways they are deciding to express themselves. It is not the television networks fault, it may not even be exactly be the parent's fault, giving them the benefit of the doubt, our culture may have forced them to simply not know the signs or not have the mental capacity to pay enough attention, I believe it is the fault of the regular working class citizen is being paid the same amount of money as they were ten years ago, even though the dollar in itself has lost more value in the last five years then in any other time in history. These economics simply do not work, and it is literally killing our society.
My argument of how other countries in poverty and strain manage to raise perfectly healthy children just fine is this - in many other countries, there is a Honor installed unto each family. And it is regular that every adult is to care for their parents at which point their parents become elders. So, in most of these countries, it is common for a Mother, a Father, a Child, and either a Grandmother and or Grandfather to be constantly present. The most common found factor in all serial killers is that as babies they would have unanswered cries - they were not given love or attention. Attention, once again, playing a huge factor. In a household of three functioning adults, a child is bound to always have someone there to pay attention to it, and most other countries have this as a norm. They have televisions and entertainment venues, but they also have A Village, a group who constantly surround the child with attention and love. Here, in America, that is a rare occurrence. A lot of young mother's live with their parents still, but when this is the case the child is either constantly left in the care of the grandparents who are, as I stated before, incredibly worn out and stressed because they are caring for a grandchild and their child, or the child is left with a confused and young mother, who sometimes is trying their best, sometimes is not. These cultures are vastly different, and I believe we absolutely MUST make the change in ours. We have to do something, and I honestly believe getting the minimum wage higher will make a massive improvement on our entire society. Make it easier on your working families, for some reason they voted these people into office, make them do something back for us! We need it! We can't keep seeing these tragedies on the news, and even more so, letting them be blamed on such meaningless little scapegoats! Please! Let us stand for it no more!
