What Have We Done? Modern Society

What has this modern society become? I use the word modern loosely...Do we really have it figured out better than our grandparents did? We live in a world with two parents working, underpaid educators, and over crowed prisons. I think there might be some link to all three. So, I ask you where the future generation fits into this society.... Who is providing the much needed guidance to our children...the over worked parents, the under paid teacher that frankly has lost interest, or the soon to be newest member of the prison population? What is the driving force today that makes us believe we need the biggest and the best....or that our children need to attend the best schools and have the most expensive shoes? Is the answer envy or greed? Maybe mom and dad fill the void of their absent role as parents with material possessions. Expensive things are nice but they don't teach a child how to make crucial decisions they are going to begin facing everyday throughout their young impressionable life and most importantly material things will not comfort a crying child in the middle of the night. The most important and life forming time of a person's life is childhood. Children deserve the right to be children and worry free. We live in a society (created by the modern world) that requires families have two incomes but does not accommodate family life. Children today get themselves up and out the door alone before school only to return home to an empty house.....and what happens if the child is sick and needs to stay home from school. Mom and dad both work, employers are not always sympathetic to the needs of the child or parent, and if you can't do the job they will find someone else who can. So mom leaves for work with a sick child at home and a phone beside his bed, “Call me if you need anything, Honey, Mom has to go into work for a little bit." Mom fears she will lose her job and without two incomes the huge mortgage payment and car payment won't get made, besides that, the extravagant birthday party for a twelve year old won't be possible either. Seriously!!!! It's time to get back to the basic and the true meaning of family. Our grandparents never dreamed of a time like this, everyone had a role in society and seldom questioned it. Who's to blame for the changes....or better yet who isn't? Family dynamics have changed drastically since the 1950's, many mothers went back to work and many families are single parent families. The role of a woman has changed since the 1955 Good Housekeeping Guide to being a good Housewife, women wanted independence and education after high school understandably so since divorce has become a term common in the household. Who can blame a woman for pursuing a career, she can't always count on the man she will someday marry. She might wake up one day to find out he has been having an affair with her best friend and then what....she is now left with the choice of staying in a miserable marriage or leaving and finding a way to support her kids comfortably. If she had an education or career to fall back on financial struggle wouldn't hold her back or sway her decision. Not to discredit single fathers who also find themselves in unfamiliar water...he now must live up to the ideology of Man and Leader along with supplementing the role of caregiver, not an easy job. For that matter grandparents more and more are becoming primary caregivers to their grandchildren, imagine raising your kids and then doing it all over again. Children are impressionable and they look to us with hope and admiration, they deserve a world that embraces the security of their future. They need guidance, discipline, and unconditional love in order to grow into productive members of society. The job, the most important job, many will ever have the pleasure of enduring is the one of being a parent. I don't even feel comfortable calling it a job, the gift of being a parent. Remember when it was possible for Mom to stay home and raise the kids....Dad worked outside the home and Mom worked inside the home...she was the binding that held the family together. She had the time and attention the children needed....remember we only have a very short period of our children's lives to instill the values they need to become self-sufficient adults and parents. I am talking about a time when families depended on each other. We have all created this society; we are all in some way responsible for the changes. It's time to stop the continuous cycle that has encouraged work over family, envy over self-acceptance, and employers determining the type of parent you will be. We all think tomorrow, I will make time.... I am not at all suggesting that change is not good, I am just pointing out that amongst change we lost the value of family and have forgotten how truly important time with our children is, not expensive things but time laughing, playing, listening to their silly stories, and tucking then back in bed after a scary dream...these are the wonderful moments that can never be given back...so embrace every minute today don't wait for tomorrow. Every day the news is filled with crime and acts of violence, prisons are overcrowded and I always wonder how many of the criminals laying in their empty cells would have had different circumstances had someone loved them as a child, someone to guide their decisions and encourage their self-image...the crazy thing is many of us believe criminals come from broken homes and lives of abuse but that is not entirely true, many came from lives of privilege and wealth, the problem for them is no one took the time to teach basic values of love and respect, they are raised in a world that values things instead of people. We as a society need to step back and assess the damage created over the past few decades. It's time to set our standards higher.