Everybody's kids

Hi, I'm Hazel Sanchez. As a reporter and weekend anchor here at WBAY TV in Green Bay, I cover a lot of stories about kids, usually kids in trouble. After arresting two teens with handguns that the incident was in fact gang-related, just a few days before the shooting, I don't remember hearing stories like that when I was growing up in Kankakeel, Illinois, with my parents and brother and sisters. What's changed? Are there more troublemakers today, or do kids just get in really serious trouble now? If so, why has smoking in the restrooms and being rowdy in the halls turned into carrying guns and knives to school? Maybe most important, where do parents come into the picture? Are today's kids problems a direct result of inept, uncaring, indifferent parenting, a disintegration of families, an epidemic of immorality, a crisis of character and ethics, we found that there are no simple answers. I love children, and so I'll smile at kids, you know, and I can see the fear in their eyes.

They don't even know if it's safe to smile at a stranger. They move in a world of strangers, and they've been socialized to be afraid of strangers. Now this is very significant, because developmental psychologists know that children only thrive in a world where they feel loved, and most children do not live in a world where they feel loved. They live in a world where they are safe. The work many strangers on this street in Canca-Keele, Illinois, in the 70s and 80s, I know because this is where I grew up during those years.

The pains they lived in that blue house, the works lived right here, and in that corner house, that's where my dad's partner lived. The banoets lived in that gray house, and the brick one, that belonged to the browns. And my mom, my dad, my brother and two sisters, we lived right here. Hi, welcome to my show, how are you, the demons? I know the 70s and 80s were not a perfect time. That's when drugs, suicide, pregnancy, and violence grew into mainstream problems for teenagers. Still, the story is about kids that I saw on TV news during those years, but nearly as appalling as the stories about kids that I report on TV news today. Of course, what I thought then about kids and families and what should and should not be, came less than TV news than from TV fiction, including reruns of programs my parents' generation grew up with. Dad, is everybody at your office where suits and ties every day? Well, of course, Bieber.

After all, I wouldn't look right running a business if everyone wore sports shirts and sweaters. Yeah, I guess it would make it look too easy, hi, Dad. Such very popular 50s programs all featured well-off, happy, white, suburban families, dealing with more or less minor domestic situations. Do we have to wait for summer till five kids are? We most certainly do not, the way I feel right now I don't hear it and never eat again. Dad was the breadwinner, mom stayed at home to do the cooking and cleaning and other household chores, and the kids dealt with such critical issues as acne, slumber parties and having to stay after school for talking in class. I know it's dark, I kept promising Harry, I'd put him up, but I just never got around to it. It's all my fault. Okay, Ricky, hit the switch. Hey! We're Ricky and I did, we didn't want you and David to have all fun. How about that, a man doesn't know what those on his own house?

Money, real money anyway, as in enough to live on, was never an issue. Today as my news colleagues and I continue reporting stories of kids murdering each other or murdering for fun or even murdering their own babies, America as it looked in those vintage TV shows has for many, become a society we should strive to emulate, if not try to actually re-achieve. They look at the cleaver family and say, hey, that's the way it ought to be. Well in point of fact there were just as many Americans in the 50s who said, hey, that's the way it ought to be, because for most of them it wasn't. TV shows then, as now, were idealized, romanticized and sanitized, they presented consummate images that simultaneously appeal to and intimidated most of their viewers. Families had two general reactions, to covet and seek for themselves what they saw on TV

or to feel uncomfortably inadequate because their lives weren't, and probably never would be, like those of the cleavers, the Ryleys, or the Nelson's. And of course, like nearly all mass entertainment, these programs ignored their society's works, cars, and illnesses. So the golden age of the American family had its blemishes and hypocrisies. What it didn't have though, that we do have today, is a child being reported abused or neglected every 10 seconds, a child being arrested every 15 seconds, a baby being born

to a teen mother every 24 seconds, a child being arrested for drug offense every 4 minutes, a child being arrested for a violent crime every 5 minutes, or a child dying from neglect for abuse every 7 hours. Since 1983 in the United States, physical abuse of children has nearly doubled, sexual abuse has more than doubled, and emotional and physical neglect have become 2.5 times more prevalent. Some of those statistics are the result of today's improved reporting techniques, sure, but that doesn't mitigate the message they deliver about our society. And what is it about that society, and its parents, and its kids, or we don't mean city kids or country kids, or rich kids or poor kids, or black kids or white kids, we mean everybody's kids. We know more about human growth and development, more about human psychology, more about dealing with stress and conflict than any generation in history.

If we're also having more trouble raising healthy, stable children than any generation in history. Why? Why was it parents in the 50s tended to raise children that were reasonably well adjusted? Most children moved through adolescence without suicide attempts, eating disorders, and so on, drug and alcohol, serious problems with drug and alcohol. And now, good parents often have children with those problems. They're trying harder, they're thinking more about parenting, they're lying awake nights, worrying more about their children. And yet their children aren't doing this well, it's harder to be a good enough parent. In her book, The Shelter of Each Other, Mary says, our culture is at war with families. What I'm talking about when I say our culture is at war with families is the idea that so many things in this culture make it harder for families. And it's because what's happening in the culture makes it more difficult for children to grow up and it makes it more difficult for parents to have the time, the energy, the resources

to parent well. According to this study by Public Agenda, a national nonprofit public opinion research group, most Americans generally acknowledge the difficulties that families face. 80% said it's much harder for parents to do their jobs today. They believe these are tough times to be a parent, drug and alcohol abuse, excessive violence and sex in the media, crime and gangs. All are serious threats to kids. Nonetheless, according to this poll, most Americans, including parents, feel parents are just not rising to meet the challenge. There's several things I think that are going on. One is we know that the average worker is working about 163 more hours a year than they did 20 years ago, and that's a lot, that's a lot. And so people have less discretionary time.

Another thing is children need more time, children need to be driven places that they used to be able to walk through or jump on their bicycles and ride through. Children need supervised women, habit because it isn't safe for them to be out alone. Because parenting has become such a complicated task, we created a television call-in series called Parent Connection to help parents share their experiences, positive and negative. We have another call, a call, are you there? Hi, you there. I am a 70-year-old man, and I worked very hard, and I didn't stay home because I was out flying around the country. And my kids grew up without me. Take that, that's it. Well, you know, this is what the show is all about in our eyes. Because he's a very popular local celebrity, because he's very good on camera talent,

and most importantly, because he's a very thoughtful, caring parent. We ask now retired Green Bay Packer Sean Jones to be our volunteer program host. As an athlete, because the time constraints are so great, you can make football what you are and not realize it's just something that you do, and then you leave your family on the back burner, or you can just put it in proper perspective and realize it's just a job. And once you get home, you have another job, which is to be a good husband, and also the most important job you can have is to be a good father and a good parent. So you have to be able to find a way in. How many parents have trouble finding a way? That's apparent from the fact that although today's kids of all ages need more time, today's parents spend on average 40% less time with their children than did parents in the 1950s. I get up at five in the morning, I have half hour to an hour to myself before I get start getting all three of them up to go.

I have to be the work creator clock, two to school by 730, Monday day care by 730, and then I come home at five if I'm lucky or I go to my other job, two or three nights a week, and it's no time. Our country is a far different place today than it was in 1950. There are 113 million more people living in it, or no longer clustered in small communities and neighborhoods, and there are more places children need and want to go. Even stay at home spouses and two parent families feel pushed. I have one who has to be to school by 20 after 7, and I have to be back to get another one on the bus at 730, and then two more in school for 9 o'clock. Then I have one coming back at 1130, one at 230, and two at 330, and dinner is usually by 5 o'clock. But when we say that on average, parents spend 40% less time with their children, it's because of work.

In the 1950s, 90% of America's two parent families, with children under 18, were headed by a husband who worked full time, and a wife who stayed home and took care of the house and kids, like the cleavers. Today, that's true for only 10% of our families. This 1955 family of four earning the median income for the year, about $4,000, would have about $20,000 today after adjusting for inflation to spend on goods and services. The median income family of four today has $35,000 to spend on goods and services. That's 75% more money, and that's inflation-adjusted money, remember, than their counterparts had in 1955. Are we really that much better off financially than the Aussie and Harriet families of the 50s? Again, it's important here to keep in mind that the median family income is only a narrow measure at best to the standard of living.

It's not a measure of the family's welfare in a more general sense. One has to keep in mind that the median family income is only measuring an average, and it says nothing about the distribution of income around this average. Some earners in the top 40% of the income distribution have done quite well, but people in the bottom of the income distribution have actually, when you adjust for inflation, suffered a decline. Dr. Nestlein also pointed out that some critical costs to families have risen well beyond the rate of inflation. Health care, housing, and taxes all take much higher percentages of our income than they did in the 1950s. The result has been that families are not 75% more prosperous today than they were in the 1950s. Rather, they need nearly twice the inflation-adjusted income they did in that decade to enjoy the same standard of living. It's only reasonable, then, that in 60% of today's two parent families, with children under six, both parents have jobs outside the home, like Jill and John.

We work as a team very well together, and oftentimes, Jen, maybe even cares for Jordan more than I do, because I'm working more hours at times than he does. I'm a pilot for a corporation in the Shuaigan area, and my hours change, I might work one day a week, I might work six days a week. So what we have to do is we have to be flexible with our schedules, and the hours that we work, and we're lucky to have an excellent daycare provider that's willing to work with us. In 1955, both parents worked outside the home in only 10% of the two parent families with children under six. It was just 30% in 1970, half of today's 60%. Parents who can only find low-paying work, and single parents like Connie here, and Nettie, hopefully she'll be in the day here. Have no choice but to work outside the home. Others at the skilled and professional levels, though, do have a choice. I work full-time for the school district here in Plymouth, and Rhonda stays at home with

both of our children. I have Abigail from six months here, and our oldest August just turned to. We don't make as much money as we used to. We got married and both of us were working full-time, and it was nice. We could buy whatever we pleased, and now we have to watch every penny from the bills come in. Our money is spoken for. But we knew when we got married that I would be staying home with the children. Only about 10% of today's two parent families make the same choice as Peter and Rhonda. I think the point to be made here is that some of these women have to work just to keep their family at a decent standard of living. Other women are taking advantages of the much greater job opportunities and higher incomes that are available to them, both because of the decrease in discrimination against women, and also because women today have a much higher level of education than they did back

in the 1950s. According to sociologists, Arleigh Russell-Hawkschild, each spouse not often puts in more work hours per week than husbands alone did as the sole earners in the 1950s. Through intensive firsthand research into working parents, Ms. Hawkschild discovered some common misconceptions. One is that overworked people can't afford to work fewer hours. But among working women nationwide, well-to-do new mothers are not much more likely to stay home after 13 weeks with a new baby than low-income new mothers. When asked what they look for in a job, only a third of respondents said salary came first. Money is important, but by itself, money does not explain why many people don't want to cut back hours at work. Another theory was that asking for time off or taking advantage of flex time and other employer benefits might make them vulnerable to layoffs. When Ms. Hawkschild asked employees about this, most said, no, fear for their jobs was

not the only or even main reason they worked long hours. Most made it clear that they work because they want to, because they like it better at work than at home. And research does confirm that women who do paid work feel less depressed, think better of themselves, and are more satisfied than women who stay at home. One study reported that women who work outside the home feel more valued at home than housewives do. Of course, many have no choice but work. All summer, I went to work for seven o'clock in the morning until 2 to 30 at one job, went pick kids up from sitters, what not, went to work for four o'clock until 11 o'clock that night. So, all summer, I did not see my kids, but I refused to go back on welfare. I am pushing it and I refuse, and neither job pays a lot. Whether out of economic necessity, personal choice or a combination of the two, most mothers

of very young children work outside the home, 40 percent work full time, 19 percent work part time, and 8 percent who aren't working now plan on returning to the workforce within the next six months. Also, whether they work outside the home or not, most mothers of very young children, 64 percent, also bear most of the responsibility for their day-to-day care. 25 percent of families say mothers and fathers share these duties equally, only 10 percent credit dad with most of the basic caregiving. So families need more money, most parents need to work more in order to get it, and children still need as much of their parents' time as they always have, if not more. There's obviously a conflict. I notice a lot of children are so desperate for their parents and their parents' time, and instead, what they're getting are products from guilty parents who are working 40, 50 years a week, and I don't want to condemn those parents, but what happens then is children

don't have families. They have television sets. They learn how to behave and what to value from the appliances to family yarns as opposed to real people. What's happening now is children sit alone watching the TV set, hearing stories that are about raising profits, raising money, not raising children, and I think the implications of this are enormous, because I think what happens is children learn to value all sorts of things that are not good for them, and they don't learn to value what's most important. For example, one thing that most of television teaches is just do it, don't think about it, whether it's violence, whether it's sexuality, whether it's buying products, whether it's consuming food, and so on. The message over and over again is do not tolerate frustration, or when you think about

it, a real adult knows how to tolerate frustration. That's one of the marks of an adult, and yet we're socializing the whole generation of children to not tolerate frustration, so it creates a very bizarre culture where parents say, in therapy, all the time, things like, well where did my child get these ideas? We didn't try to teach him this set of values, well they're getting that set of values, that set of ideas from who they spend the most time with, which is television persons. According to one recent poll, the average American family today spends seven to eight hours a day, 40% of their time watching TV. In his book, sociologist Stephen Carl Rubin says, don't make the mistake of thinking for a moment that television has no impact on your children's moral education or the quality of the ethical decisions that they make as they grow into adolescence and early adulthood. The moral education, the ethical decisions they make.

I thought it was horrible, it was so much disrespect for the dad. When the teenager's guilty of this $100,000 in vandalism were arrested, one said something to the effect of, we didn't mean to hurt anybody, it's just what kids do, I guess. Well, it's not what most adults think kids used to do, but it's the kind of behavior they've come to expect of today's kids. Today we have problems of drugs, teen pregnancy, school dropout rate, violence and crime. In other words, we have a crisis of character in our nation that can only be solved by getting back to the basic values of our American heritage. Such values as honesty, responsibility, respect and caring. From that conviction, Mr. McDonald helped establish the personal responsibility education project called PREP for short.

It's only one of many such local and national groups established in the last decade to help foster directly or indirectly the development of moral character and civic virtue in young people. Why do we need character education programs? We had a lot more respect in 20 some musical. Because as this public agenda study, we mentioned earlier points out, most Americans feel that the failure of young people to learn such values as honesty, respect and responsibility is a very serious problem. Because it lost respect for a lot of different things, they don't respect each other, you know. 90% say the failure to learn such values is widespread, not mainly a problem with kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, and people don't respect their children, they learn disrespect. 63% say it's common for parents to have children before they're ready to take responsibility for them. If they're drug addicts, if they're lying, cheating, stealing, you know, I wouldn't respect them then.

51% of parents say it's very common for parents to equate buying things for their children with caring for them. And I think the most important thing is teach them how to be able to deal with society, respect each other and love them. Only 19% of parents think parents are usually good role models and teach kids right from wrong. You have to discipline a child, you have to make sure that they do do the right things and that's part of the values. One of the findings of the public agenda poll is that most parents say parents who fail to discipline their children are very common. We had calls from both ends of the spectrum on this subject. You have to raise children nowadays to respect you and everyone else and there's only one way to do that. I would never advocate beating or injuring a child, but a child nowadays certainly and absolutely needs to be spread.

I believe that anyone who does bake a child, teaching that child violence, they're also teaching them that I'm bigger than you are and I consistently hurt you there for you need to do what I say or follow the rule. The basic thing I tell parents is to be a good parent in terms of discipline. You need to always be saying two things to your children. You need to be saying I love you and I have expectations for families to work well. Parents need to be empathic and you have to expect to count them up. He doesn't always agree with me and he doesn't always like the things that I tell him in my opinions but I love him. He makes it very difficult sometimes but I do love him, he's my son and I just want what's best for him but there's a lot of forgiving, a lot. I believe my parents were great, they were great parents because they made sure we had

the significant things. We had food, clothing, shelter, great education. We had that do not film in town and you couldn't participate in sports unless you did your schoolwork and there was no compromise. You can't have better parents than I had, I mean we've produced and we've got a doctor in the family, a lawyer in the family and I'm a bum, I'm a football player and everybody is going to college and graduated and I don't think you can ask for much more of my parents have made significant sacrifices to get us to where we are but I think you'll be remiss if you couldn't look back and say well what would I do a little bit differently? I think that's what I'll try to do a little bit differently. I'll probably try to make sure my son understands that not only am I going to do the things I'm necessary to be a good parent to him but hopefully after 18 years he'll look back and say you know that was my friend awesome. When I grew up on this street in the 1970s and 80s my brother and sisters and I were held to different expectations than our friends were. My parents, these two people right here grew up in the 1950s but they didn't live anywhere

in your Aussie and Harriet, tell us where you grew up and what it was like. We come from the Philippines, raising a family here is completely different. Children there in the Philippines were expected to listen and heed whatever the parents say. So then coming here to the United States knowing what you knew growing up and how you were raised, what was that like for you to see the way parents were raised in their kids here? It was a shock to me because I could see children talking back at their parents you know when they're told to do something in which we did not do when we were growing up. It was different and I could not accept the way they were doing. The experts and parents we've researched generally agree that positive discipline is a process of defining clear expectations for children and spelling out the respective

rewards and consequences attended to meeting or failing to meet those expectations. But in the focus groups we've convened while planning this program many parents expressed concern about just how far they could go in enforcing consequences. Pung Win who came here with his parents from Vietnam in 1982 sees the same kind of cultural disparity my mom and dad found when they arrived from the Philippines. You don't have the authority that you would have if you were back in the old country. You're the set of values that most Asian men have back in the old country flying the face of the values here in the United States and so you don't have the authority to discipline to instill in the young child of the values that I think both culture embrace. You've taken away the authority of the father to discipline to teach their kids about

these things. I started getting into trouble a lot more. I started hanging out with the wrong crowd so me and my parents started fighting more and I didn't live at home for quite a bit and then I'd come back and I'd leave again. I put my parents through a lot of stuff, I don't do a lot. I hated them for a while but it wasn't them who was me. I wasn't doing all the things and it wasn't their fault. From the very moment that you see that child you have to start thinking well in order from that child to respect me, I have to have some kind of respect for him. If there's anything that I'm going to try to teach my son or try to impress upon him is that I will raise you with a do not fail mentality. I will give you unlimited, your boundaries will be unlimited but do not fail because we have that mutual respect for one another.

That I'm not going to cross that boundary where I fail you and you can't cross that boundary where you fail me. I think there's so many parents and I believe this respect thing is just one way and that's why we find so many kids that are very often attached in. Even if you do all those things, it doesn't mean you're going to raise a perfect child but I think without it you're guaranteed that you're going to have a kid that finds some derelict ways of doing things. A lot of parents don't respect you though. They say that you have to respect them like with the line, this is my house and you have to go by my rules, I'm sure everybody's heard that one. Yeah, everybody's heard that one. It's one of those expressions kids have been hearing from parents or as long as there have been kids in parents. One school principal recently surveyed 600 of his students about what they think of such expressions. In ascending order, here are the five most hated lines parents use with kids. Number five, when I was your age, number four, if everyone else jumped off the cliff, would you do the same?

Number three, what part of no, don't you understand? Number two, no one ever said life is fair. And number one, the parental expression these kids hated the most was because I said so. These hackney responses are so tired that they've not only lost whatever impact they may at some ancient point in time have had but now they deliver a quite different message. I don't really care. I was never pleased when my parents disapproved of something I did or wanted to do. But I always felt better when they made an effort to explain their point of view in terms of my situation. I'm sure a lot of today's parents feel that it doesn't really make any difference because once kids become adolescents, they don't pay any attention to what their parents say anyway. This study involving 12,7 through 12th graders actually disproved that commonly held theory. Some carefully documented research found that the more teenagers feel loved by their parents and comfortable in their schools, the less likely they are to become promiscuous, drink,

smoke, use drugs, or commit violence or suicide. The researchers found that when parents expected reasonably sound levels of achievement and respectability, those expectations had a very strong influence on the kids' behavior. All the way through 12th grade, regardless of family income, race, or single or dual parent status. At the other end of the spectrum on that subject is parents who have few, if any, expectations of their teenagers. In this recent book based on the study of 20,000 high school students, Dr. Lawrence Steinberg found such parents all too common and all too damaging. At least one in four parents of children in the study were passive, preoccupied, or negligent. Only one in three of the teens reported having daily conversations with their parents. And half the parents said they didn't know their children's friends, what their children did after school, or where they went at night.

Not surprisingly, the teens in the study tended to live up to their parents' low expectations. Traditional wisdom has always held that what children become is determined partly by nature, the qualities they're born with, and partly by nurture, the environment they grow up in. Now doctors and scientists at research centers and universities all over the country have proven beyond any doubt what nurture means to a child's healthy development. We now know for a fact that the care babies get has a dramatic impact on how well they will eventually learn, think, cope, and react to the world around them. Dr. Bruce Perry of the Baylor College of Medicine explains. But the infant needs is touch. The infant needs face-to-face, conversational language, touch, cooling. They need music, they need singing, that's the kind of stuff they need them. It's these experiences of face-to-face contact, emotional connection that help build in the

parts of the brain involved in what we call empathy. If a child doesn't develop empathy for other people, which in many ways is really the glue that keeps together individuals and keeps together groups, then they really are losing on some of the richest parts of being a human being. In fact, they will not have the essentially gradients that are required for creating a healthy community. Because in the end, in order for us to stay together as a community, we need to have some concern about other people, we need to be empathic. And this neurobiologically-mediated capability, again, goes back to those early life connections of eye contact, intimate, relational interactions that build in the biological capacity to be attached. It is the essential ingredients of a healthy community.

In the first three years of life, 85% of the size of the brain is developed. And for the remainder of your childhood, you continue to have tremendous malleability in your brain. The importance of the zero to three period, however, is that it is during this period that the organizational templates for all of these other systems, all the systems in your brain are laid down. These templates can be modified and changed from experience, but when you lay down those templates, you're basically putting in place what will in the absence of intervening experience become the way your brain functions through the majority of your life. The studies Dr. Perry conducted showed that children who, as infants, had chances to play often and held and touched and talked to often, actually developed physically larger brains than the children who received less attention and care.

You never learned the real content of spoken language unless it's face-to-face conversational. And in face-to-face conversational talk, even though you can't talk back as an infant, what happens is your brain makes a connection between those words and those smiles and those behaviors and its repetitive and its pattern and its predictable and pretty soon. When you say the words, I love you, it has meaning. It means, oh, I love you is touching and cooling and sounds and smells. That's nice. On the other hand, if a child is in a setting where they're not responded to or when they are responded to, they get an unpredictable response. Sometimes they get food, sometimes they get hit. Sometimes they're in this environment and they hear all this screaming and fighting between these care givers that are supposed to be taking care of them. This overwhelming sense of threat causes their brains and their stress response systems and their brains to activate and because of brain changes in a used dependent way, if

the stress response, fear response system is on and persistently activated, these kids literally organize their brains as if the world is a persistently fearful place. The results of this new research should be extremely helpful to parents in evaluating specifically the effectiveness of their particular child care arrangements, at home and day care, their school care and school care. Knowing what their children need, they can now determine how well those needs are being met and act accordingly. On the other hand, there is a large number of parents for whom these new findings will mean only further distress. With no fiscal resources and few if any job skills, they must leave their children for given periods of time to do low paying work, with little choice but to accept whatever child care they are able to find. Making support from extended family members that would have to be the cheapest child care they can find, which has serious implications for the children in these circumstances and

for our society if we ignore the situation. And all of this brain research, all of this child development research means that we need to be absolutely scrupulous about the training and the interpersonal skills of our day care providers. We need to understand children and they need to care about children and they need to be skilled at what they do. My parents have been divorced for at least three years and it's really hard seeing them still fight and my sister felt like it was her fault. But they were fighting and we just went to another room and sat there crying. The opinion poll by public agenda we cited earlier found that most parents say couples today break up their marriages too easily, rather than trying to stay together for their kids.

Well, first of all, divorce is enormously complicated and I am not judgmental of people who get divorces. On the other hand, divorce for the culture is a bad thing because the culture does better when people live in families, when fathers stay with their children and when there's one solid security unit for children. And we know that generally children do poorly for a while after a divorce, no matter how well it's handled. Children do poorly for a long time after a divorce, at least according to a new report by psychologist and divorce research expert, Judith Wallerstein and psychology professor Julia Lewis. They trust the long-term effects divorce had over a 25-year period on 60-middle and upper middle-class families in Marin County, California. The results were in direct conflict with commonly held theories that after the initial impact, the effects of divorce on children fade quicker with time. In fact, the research shows that the emotional pains and scars influence attitudes, behavior, and relationships well into adulthood.

Many of the children's studies became seriously involved with alcohol and other drugs, became sexually active early in adolescence, and are still very leery of marriage and serious relationships. Says Wallerstein, there was no transition, no cushioning of the blow. Their loneliness, their sense that no one was there to take care of them, was overwhelming. Along those same lines, Barbara DeFoe Whitehead in her new book The Divorce Culture points out that children of divorce are two to three times as likely as those in intact families to have emotional and behavioral problems. When my mom dared to divorce, I ran out of my room and yelled, you'll stop because I didn't want them to. I didn't want my death go away. The other thing that happens though in this country is I think many people divorce because they don't know what's going wrong. I compare my grandparents' family who were ranchers in the 1920s in Eastern Colorado with the 1990s therapy family.

My grandparents' family's enemies were external to the family, the locusts, the dust bowl, low corn prices, and so on, and they knew who the enemy was. Whereas the modern family doesn't quite know what's hitting them. They don't understand what's going on. They're not happy as people and they tend to blame their mate and think, well, if I'm not happy, it's probably because I'm who I'm married to. I don't like it when my mom dared to divorce because then when some things want to talk to your mom, but you had your danceos, and it really bummed you. On average, kids from intact two parent families have a better chance according to statistics of growing up relatively trouble-free than do kids from divided parent families, single parent families, and blended families. But the real difference is not the composition of the family, it's the quality of the family. I have some of the most well-nurtured, beautiful children with single parent families because

that adult has dedicated their person's life to caring for the child and others that are really very successful people in town that you see those kids not getting the time, the loving time, the quality time. Children who have at least one adult they love and trust, who they know, love and cares for them deeply, who will be there to guide them, support them, and teach them right from wrong, these children are, by far, the most likely to have the fewest difficulties as they grow into stable, productive adults. And high school graduate Solomon Ayers, excellent student, athlete, musician, and roly at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, is the youngest of three children and a family headed by his mother. The food and shelter is pretty important, but the discipline and love, I guess, shows, you know, I mean, if I didn't have anybody to love me, then I would have had a really hard childhood.

Poor Wang is the sole supporter of his single parent household, headed by his grandmother, who speaks only the wrong language. She teach me what's right and what's wrong, and what's the best for me, because I have no parents, so she's doing other, you know, teaching for me, you know, she told me what's right and what's wrong. So I tried really hard to study, even if I had to work and support my family too, but I started trying my best in school, and that's what I do, but I don't know what, for kids that don't have parents, and they can't do like me, maybe because they get so, so much help that, you know, they don't have worry like me, you know, they're born in this country, and they have too much freedom that they could do anything they want. So they don't think that they have, they don't have a goal like me, all they think is

have fun, you know, eat and sleep. Tunisha Daniels is a team mother and adopted daughter of a single mother. I'm really glad that I have, well, most of all, my mother, I'm glad that I have her here for me, because she was here for me, and it'd be real hard because she's always on my side all the time. Sometimes me and her disagree about things, but I'm glad she's here for me, and I'm glad my grandmother's here, and that she's healthy, and she can't help me watch my baby and my friends and my family. Well, I thought a lot about this definition of family, because it's very political how you define family in this country, and I don't have a perfect definition, but the major dimension for me of family are commitment and inclusiveness. Families are the people who stick with you when it's not convenient. My name is Kelly Kajava.

I have a brother, Christopher, a mom, Peggy, and my dad is Tom. Kelly Kujava, seen here working at her summer job, is now a sophomore at Grip in College. Before accepting her four-year full scholarship from that school, she was Miss Wisconsin National Teenager, a Badger Girl State representative, listed among who's who among American high school students, and a member of the 1994 American All-Star Dance Team. In high school, she was a standout in soccer, track, softball, cheerleading, and choir, and assumed leadership roles through dare, student council, and community volunteer work. When we asked her how she was able to accomplish so much as a teenager, she quickly turned the discussion to her parents. I've always confided in them, they've always been there for me, they have, you know, made healthy choices in raising me, and I just respect them for all of their ability to do so and just raising me and my brother.

And there was a lot more family involved. My grandmother lives next door to us, and my great grandparents are also living there right now. I have an aunt and an uncle who live kitty corner from last, and another aunt and uncle who live just down the street from them. Everybody lives basically pretty close. On my mother's side, I have 13 cousins, and on my father's side, I have 11. What I see is the major cause of problems for families is loss of community. And all over America, communities have disappeared, not just in rural areas, but in urban areas. The friends I have that grew up in New York City or Chicago say 30, 40 years ago, they knew all the people on their block, they knew the people that lived in their apartment buildings and that ran the delis and so on and so on. Same van is the oldest child from a large, long family in Green Bay. His parents emigrated to the United States in 1979 when they were driven out of Laos. And the Vietnamese would have just totally murdered, you know, my entire family and grandparents

and stuff so they had those their only choice. We asked the recent high school graduate about his plans for the future. I plan to, in fact, I'm already enlisted in the Army and my shipping date is the 23rd of July. I'll be enlisted for two years. After that, I will transfer over to Colorado State and probably get a major in engineering and a minor in psychology. He visited him and his family at their home just a few days before he was to leave for his stint in the U.S. military. That's my uncle Long, that's my brother Kong, that is my other brother Zong, that's two, that's Chen, that's my sister Go, yeah, that's my sister Go, yeah, that's true food, that's all that sister is so far, that's my little brother Zoo, that's my mother, Me Choo, that's my father, Triang, and this is my other sister, Lia, and my other brother, Ne, is not here

because he's at school right now. Every single day when I come home and when I wake up, my parents would always give me the talk of today, you know, come home, do your homework, do something to help my father would say, do something to help your mom, you know, get a job, study from, when I was two to six, my mom would work with me at school because she was also in school, so she'd do her homework and then she'd help me with letters, the alphabet, greeting bugs, I mean, I can't explain what my parents have done, it's very sunny, but our field psychology, I think, has had a very negative view of family, starting with story, that healthy adults are people who've totally broken some of their family that don't need their parents and so on. Well, that's not my own statement about family. I thought family love was enough, I never thought of money, you know, he's just had enough

or if we didn't, I never knew, and there was always enough family around us that would, you know, do a number of things that would just make us happy and money was never an issue, I never thought of money. If you're invested in your family, if you want to spend time with your family, that isn't necessarily a sign that you're dependent, codependent, immature, or anything else, it may be a sign of health. We always, we argue a lot, but then there are just certain times where the whole family can just sit and talk about a movie, or just sit around and play some Nintendo, and it's just, that's so strange how a family can be so different, yet so close. You know, Sundays for ball day, and, you know, we'll all get ready and head out to the game.

When we try to do things with other families, like our annual Apple picking, that will go up to Dark County and you do, you will all try to get together a few times in the summer to make it down to the drag races in Kekana, just doing a lot of things that we all like to do. The things Kelly's referring to are called by those who give names to such events, rituals, very good physical, emotional, and intellectual care for a child, like the involvement of as much extended family as possible in a child's life, and like the security a child finds in knowing unconditional love, rituals have always been fundamental to healthy families, going to church together, outings to favorite family places, birthday and holiday celebrations, all our traditional family rituals, as is gathering around the dinner table. Family meals are original. One of the things that's happening in this culture is people don't eat meals with their children.

In fact, many families never eat a meal together, ever, and Francine de Plexus Grace says family meals are the core curriculum in the school of civilized discourse. That's where children learn something. They've been learning from meals for four million years, which is how to interpret the world, how to process their experience, how to behave properly, what to believe in and value, how to diffuse anxiety by joking around, by talking about upsetting things, and so on. And when families don't have meals, that work does not get done for children. Even really kids today, yes, unloved, not at all. Despite the horror stories that surface about abuse, neglect, and general incompetence, the vast majority of America's parents, according to our research, still cherish their children as much as the parents of any generation have.

They want only what's best for their kids, and try their hardest to help them get it. Doing what's best, though, is not as simple as it used to be, because now, for the first time in history, the job of being a parent must be studied and examined, lessons learned, lands drawn and follow. The process of attending the needs of children and families changed drastically in the 1990s. New designs and strategies are still on the drawing board, and new discoveries, like the birth to three findings, are still emerging. In the threatening climate that is our society at this time, raising stable, respectful, and responsible children, is a task at which only the informed and dedicated, or very, very lucky, can succeed. Ozzie and Harriet wouldn't have a chance. Two job families, divorce, working single parents, omnipresent communications technology, and a highly mobile population are here to stay. What doesn't have to stay are collapsed communities, prime ridden streets, irresponsible media,

and parents who simply fail to understand what their children need. The family of the 1950s, in terms of the roles each of its members played, and exactly how the needs of its members will met, is very likely gone forever as a staple in our society. But the family, in terms of its role as a central stabilizing force in the lives of its members, according to all we've read, heard, and seen in producing this program, will prevail. The only question is, who will be the first to step forward, who will bring a new sense of ownership to the neighborhood, to shut off the TV, and go outside to meet the people across or down the street, to insist on higher standards from daycare centers and decent pay for their workers, to correct the behavior of someone else's child, to sacrifice the product of a paying job, for time to spend with offspring, who will step forward. So.