Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Troubled Teen Industry

Could This Be Part of The Problem?

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spots:
Annette Lareua, professor of sociology at Temple University, wrote this op ed piece for the NY Times last week.  She was speaking to her interest, which is a difference in class and how that affects families and children, but we should also wonder if this essay explains how our behavior modification parents came to such a sorry way of parenting.

"As parents and children around the country gather with relatives to celebrate the holidays, our national conversation often focuses on common experiences.  Families from different economic backgrounds repeat rituals of shopping, opening gifts and sharing meals.

If middle-class people do pause to recognize the diferences in the way we celebrate the season, they often emphasize what poor and working-class children may be missing.  What these people fail to realize is that their own children could benefit from some of what children from low-income families experience.  For during this holiday season, poor and working-class children will celebrate with relatives who know them because they share daily pleasures and disappointments.  They talk on the phone frequently and visit during the week.

For many working-class and poor families, extended-family visits are the organizing principle of social life.  According to the 2002 General Social Survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, 41 percent of poor and working-class people spend a social evening with their relatives often, from once a week to daily.  

For many middle-class children, however, visits with relatives are infrequent.  Instead of spending time with aunts, uncles and cousins, hectic schedules of soccer games, piano lessons, basketball practice and other activities are the organizing force of daily life.  According to the General Social Survey, about half of middle-class people see their relatives for social evenings once a month or less.  Clearly, some have moved away from their relatives or, with today's smaller families, simply have fewer cousins.  But for many, it's a matter of no time.  

In my own research, I have watched parents rush home from work, urge children to hurry up and change into a sports uniform, race to get one child to a baseball practice at 6:45 and another child to a soccer game at 7:15, all the while contending with tired younger siblings who must trail along.  Weekends can mean traveling far from home to compete in tournaments.  Indeed, this situation is probably familiar to many middle-class parents.

As a result, their children are deprived of the pleasure - and sometimes the burden - of spending time interacting with their extended families.  They do not share food, rides or companionship with their cousins.  They are not routinely disciplined by their aunts and grandparents.  They do not see their cousins so often that they come to be like brothers or sisters.  Instead, they see their relatives only in their holiday clothes, using their holiday manners and maintaining their holiday syle of interacting.  

There are other drawbacks.  The demands of many of these so-called leisure activities are akin to the rigors of school, as children are given directives, told to hush, evaluated publicly and instructed in how to improve their performance.  On the other hand, children with fewer formal activities tend to have less pressure placed on performance and more time for informal play and simply being a child.

There are undeniable advantages for children born into the middle class, especially when it comes to educational success, health care and housing.  But while these benefits are powerful, and the costs of being poor and working-class are formidable, we still make a mistake when we presume that being middle class is uniformly better.

Social class has an invisible, but potent, impact on aspects of American life.  Too often, the better-off view those who have less than they do only in terms of what they can offer, or even teach, the poor.  During this holiday season, it would do many Americans good to consider what they can learn from the poor and working class about family, connection, and taking time to be."

Deborah:
Thanks Spots. I appreciate this post, the most thoughtful thing I've seen posted in days. I do think it's much easier for middle class folks (generally speaking) to ship a child off to strangers due to the lack of familial connections.

I have many friends who were sent to traditional boarding schools/ military academies in the 50s and 60s, who resent their parents to this day. And they weren't tortured or "therapied" to death, just isolated from their families. I don't know how the parents feel about the resentment, but it doesn't seem to effect them. It's as if they see their only role being to get the kid through school and financially independent asap. I loved the Harrison Ford movie, "Henry", I believe was the name.

I can not read Struggling Teens long at all. It's too painful when they speak of their kids as if they were inanimate objects, or strangers that they had not been living with for 15/16 years. Without the middle class the industry would wither on the vine.

Anonymous:
Values and Beliefs.

Why do mostly white, middle-to-upper-class parents see nothing wrong with replacing one set of V&B's (theirs?) with those of veritable strangers?  

Guess we can thank Hillary Clinton and her "it takes a village to raise children" mentality for weakening the role parents play in teaching their kids respect for God, Family and Country. That and the zero-tolerance-for-non-compliance with BIG BROTHER movement that is turning our homes, schools and community into a totalitarian nightmare.

 :wave:

Anonymous:
Wake up Spots - of course this is part of the "problem", but it goes much deeper, much, much deeper than that.  Even connected families are experiencing breakdowns - If you want to read something that really gets to the root of what it takes to be a successful family you might want to read Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Successful Families - it explains very well why there is such an epidemic of breakdown in this generation.

This article is just a very thin layer of it.

Anonymous:
Personally, I think the problem with the middle class disconnect is time presure and the assocated idea that things can make up for a lack of family relationships. Pretty much just what the artical says.
My Dad's family has always been good about getting together and staying in touch. As a result, I know my aunts and uncles and cousin's pretty well, and am close to several of them. I even know a number of family members from the "old country."
My Mom's family was not so good about this - and on the rare occassion they get together - I don't know half their names. My cousins I know somewhat better; but have never been very close to them. The "old country" relitives have long been forgotten.
As a result, even tho Dad's family is quirky and difficult in ways; and one often has to overlook fairly rude comments; I love them and am glad to have them in my life. They are my family. On the other hand, on Mom's side - they are just a bunch of people I have met a few times and feel no connection with at all.
How bleak my life would be without Dad's family!
As for more modern times - My husband has a fairly large family. A brother and two sisters and some neices and a nephew. Getting them all together is pretty much impossible. Everyone is so busy. Working all the time, b/c they need the overtime, to pay for lots of things. Also, they have the kids in so many after school activities. There isn't a day of the week, for months on end, when their isn't some place they have to be; and the notion of skipping an activity for a family get together is not considered. After all, they have Paid for all this and beisdes, they need the exercise.  
So, my kids have no cousins they think of as friends and barely know their aunts and uncles - and I think this is a very sad thing. At this point, neither of my kids really have any intrest is seeing these people and even seem uncomfertable around them when they do. I do wonder how different things might have been if they had had aunts and uncles and cousins they could turn to and confide in.
In case you wonder, I have no brothers or sisters; my younger brother was killed when we were teens.

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