Parenting

Changes in the context of the American family likely had their largest impetus for change just after World War II.  The disruptions of the war triggered many human shifts, but the door was opened to a new pattern.  The boomer generation was born to be taken up with the future of the returning veterans of a young generation eager to take advantage of the economy recovered from the long depression of the 1930s.  Women felt they had gained in that they had taken over much of the production in the business markets during warfare, and were prepared to continue that involvement.  Some of the new leaders began doubting marriage and took consensual sexual liberation as a matter of equality.  (Some advocates remained single until late in life.  When one married she was accused of betrayal.  Her response was that marriage had changed, and children were not necessary to it.)  The children of the new age found themselves freed from some of the oversight of previous generations and began to cultivate youthful interests accented in the emergence of celebrities like Pat Boone, Elvis Presley, and the Beatles.  Collegians sometimes took over their campuses for periods of time.  (I served a Christian college in San Francisco.  Some of our students would slip over to Berkeley to watch the University of California students harass the University over a piece of land on which the university wanted to build.)  There grew a sense of freedom that included challenges to old traditions, an increase in massive movements in schools, entertainment, government, business, and political interests.  Change was in the air.  In the 21^st century some of the evolution of the influences of life, especially related to traditional values, has gained some elastic conclusions for the decades ahead.  The changes gained strength in nearly every context including the church.  Experiences now approved would not have been accepted by evangelicals in the early years of my Christian life.

Families became smaller, in the nuclear context.  Children were often nurtured only partially by their parents, and left to institutions like Baby Care and schools to provide whatever was needed to invite infants to collegians – to maturity.  Child involvements lessened in serious occupations.  The paper-boy, caddy, baby sitting, and the like assignments were eliminated or greatly reduced.  Even the home chores were lessened through a decline in parental involvement or resistance from the children who discovered their parents were a bit removed from progressive disciplinary authority.  Even the concepts of discipline were in the change patterns.  Distractions like sports were treated like professional contexts and the kids had to win or they were not well supported.  Fewer lessons were attached to learning – or loving, or losing – for personal development.  (Counselors often deal with distortions for children who needed love and time for communication of empathy and meaning, needed decades after the nurture-time events were overlooked.)

Out of all this we have, with many exceptions, an aura of change.  It shows in numerous ways.  The movement that has changed the definition of marriage from traditional family concept of male and female to undefined gender role recognition, the increased inflation and economic uncertainties shown in the growing chasm between the groupings of the haves and the have-nots, the conflicts of cultures and world tensions, the moves of education from the person to the person’s occupational privilege with greater materialism, the loss of parenting roles in the withdrawal of parents, especially fathers, and preoccupations increased for mothers, the accents of consensual sex, the oddities of entertainment (especially related to grooming, gadgets, language, life styles and the like) are forming more of our children in doubtful directions that the larger society may not control.  At this writing the authorities are trying to find out why so many young people are risking so much in terror groups, in shooting or gang escapades, in falling to debilitating habits – and the story can be played out.  Why does the adult population provide laws that will, as youth and their friends can design it, permit drug experience that is known to affect brain tissue development that reduces the competence of the individual?  The future for children is not, at this writing, looking positive for a significant segment of the population.  Such a society can lose its way for a period of time (long or short).  The permissive society is a neglectful society, especially for youthful members.