While acknowledging the step marking the passage of toddler into adolescence is triggered partially by physical changes, Pipher says two sociological changes, “the rapid entry of mothers of young children into the work place and the large number of broken families have catapulted elementary-schoolaged children out of childhood and into adolescence.” “Child care was once home-based; now children are placed in institutionalized care while still infants,” she says. When children are deemed old enough, they are often left alone and told to play their video game or watch the television. “Also, many children of single parents are exposed to dating or cohabiting parents. This close view of inappropriate supervision and intimacy erodes childhood’s innocence.” (Pipher, 1999).
Even time itself -- or the lack of it -- has proved to be an enemy of childhood, as children return to empty homes and family dinners fall victim to overscheduling. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild points out how, for many people, home and office have changed places. Home has become a frantic exercise in “beat the clock,” with family members having fifteen minutes to eat before rushing off to a soccer game, and trying to bond in the half hour before bed so they don’t waste time. To get away from the hustle of family life Hochschild suggests that parents welcome the refuge in the workplace, where they can socialize and relax. She writes, “In this new model of family-and-work life, a tired parent flees a world of unresolved quarrels and unwashed laundry for the reliable orderliness, harmony, and managed cheer of work.”
But even the most attentive parents cannot slow his or her child’s physical maturity. Parents, educators and physicians long have observed that girls are reaching puberty earlier than ever. Marcia Herman-Gidden, a physician and associate professor of public health at the University of North Carolina, last year confirmed that girls are reaching puberty as young as the age of eight. In a study of 17,000 girls seen by pediatricians during a fourteen-month period, she reported that white girls started puberty (meaning that they developed breast buds and pubic hair) at an average age of 9 years, 9 months, and black girls at 8 years, 6 months. The reason for the difference between races is unclear, although some scientists have speculated that many black hair products contain estrogen. The on-set of menarche, the time of a girl’s first menstrual cycle has remained unchanged at 12.5 since the 1950’s, but better nutrition and health care led to a precipitous five-year drop in the 100 years previous to that (Tanner, 1991).
Over the past thirty years the situation for families has changed powerfully and dramatically. Consider the following information provided by the U.S. Department of Justice:
√ Illegitimate birth rates have increased more than 400 percent.
√ The percentage of families headed by a single parent has more than tripled.
√ The divorce rate has more than doubled. Many project that about half of all new marriages will end in divorce.
√ Teenage suicide has increased almost 300 percent.
√ Scholastic Aptitude Test scores among all students have dropped 73 points.
√ The number one health problem for American women today is domestic violence. Four million women are beaten each year by their partners.
√ One-fourth of all adolescents contract sexually transmitted disease before they graduate (U.S. Department of Justice, 1992)
Since 1940 the top disciplinary problems in public school have changed from chewing gum and running in the halls to teen pregnancy, rape and assault (Berry, 1993).
In the midst of all this, the percentage of families with one parent at home with the children during the day dropped from 66.7 to 16.9 percent (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1994). And the average age child spends seven hours a day watching television. By the end of grade school he’s seen over eight thousand murders and one hundred thousand acts of violence (Berry, 1993).
Is it realistic to think that children are going to be impervious to the murder and killing and cruelty they watch seven hours a day on TV? (Berry, 1993). Can we really believe the TV program directors who claim there is no hard scientific evidence to show a correlation between violence and immorality in our society and the graphic scenes they choose to show on the television screen -- and then quote hard scientific evidence to show how much a twenty second advertisement will impact the behavior of the viewers? Is it reasonable to think that young adults exposed to a visual and emotional TV diet of sexual pleasuring can grow up with anywhere near a realistic or holistic sense of the principles that create a good, enduring relationships and a happy life? (Berry, 1996).
“It’s a process of gradual desensitization,” according to Berry. “These powerful cultural forces fundamentally alter our moral or ethical sense of what is in fact, right. People begin to think of social values as principles and call ‘bad’ and ‘good’ ‘bad.’ The airwaves get polluted with filth. The static makes it difficult to get a clear message from radio control.”
In a 1992 statement, the U.S. Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Department summarized literally hundreds of research studies of environmental changes over recent years:
Unfortunately, economic circumstances, cultural norms, and federal legislation in the last two decades have helped to create an environment that is less supportive to strong, stable families. . [and] at the same time these economic changes have occurred, the extended family support system has eroded.
Changes in technology have accelerated the erosion of the extended family support system. In addition to global communication and instant access to vast sources of valuable information, today’s technology also provides immediate, graphic, and often unfiltered access to a full spectrum of highly impactful visual images --including pornography and vivid scenes of bloodshed and violence. Supported by and saturated with advertising, technology glamorizes materialism. It has caused a revolution in expectations. Certainly it increases our ability to reach out to others, including family members, and establish connections to people around the globe. But it also diverts and keeps families from interacting in their own homes.
In a recent newspaper article of the Tribune Star called, “America’s Latest Addiction,” reported, “Whether it is chatting on-line, surfing for information or playing interactive computer games against on-line opponents, Internet addiction exists.” “Internet time can lead some to disregard social and family activities.” ISU professor of psychology Jean Kristeller says, there are similar compulsive habits attributed to Internet addiction that is more commonly associated with overeating and excessive gambling.
In a major historical study, one of the world’s greatest historians, Edward Gibbon, identified five main causes of the decline and fall of the Roman civilization:
1. the breakdown of the family structure
2. the weakening of a sense of individual responsibility
3. excessive taxes and government control and intervention
4. seeking pleasures that became increasingly hedonistic, violent, and immoral
5. the decline of religion.
His conclusions offer a provocative and insightful perspective through which we might look at our culture today. Historians clearly affirm that family is the foundation of society. It is the building block of every nation. It is the glue by which everything is held together.
Critique
Traditional family situations and the old family structures are gone. Today it must be understood that, more than at any other time in history, the role of parenting in absolutely vital and irreplaceable. Today technology has begun to take a role which until recently has been the role of the family in our society, namely to shape our system of values, and express our cultural essence. Listeners and viewers are being treated as commodities rather than as persons. This shift from a family center to a technological one is ominous. Video games and television have become baby-sitters, they provide instantaneous sensations, but with no genuine experiences of learning from failure or successes. As this trend becomes more pronounced, the information which is necessary for people to make the kind of informed decisions which could reverse this trend, is becoming increasingly scarce, so that eventually, the mass media will be able to provide circuses for the masses, who embrace it gladly, and no longer can tell what they are missing.
References
Berry, Wendell. (1993). Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community: Eight Essays. New York: Pantheon Books
Doherty, William. (1997). The Intentional Family: How to Build Family Ties in Our Modern World. New York: Addison-Wesley.
Gibbbon, Edward. (1990). The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, In Great Works of the Western World, vol. 37-38 Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990).
Herman-Gidden, Marcia (1999). The Loss of Innocence [Online]. Available: Proquest @ www. Indstate.edu.com
Hochschild, Arlie. (1997). The Time Bind. New York: Metropolitan Books
Kristeller, Jean. (1999). America’s Latest Addiction. Terre Haute Tribune Star, pp. C1.
Pipher, Mary. (1996). The Shelter of Each Other. New York; Gosset / Putnam Books.
Tanner, James M. (1991). Growth Spurt, Adolescent. In Richard M. Lerner, Ann C. Peterson, &
Brooks-Gun (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Adolescence (vol.1) New York: Garland.
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. (1994). Current Population Reports.
U.S. Department of Justice, Strengthening America’s Families. (1992). Promising Parenting and Family Strategies for Delinquency Prevention. Office of Justice Programs.
