We parents have the power to solve all problems in society, but nothing will happen until we take that responsibility and stop giving it to governments and programs—or the Internet. We can do this. We have to do this, or the cost will be beyond our ability to shoulder.
Timestamps:
00:00 Complains about programs that are deficient instead of individual responsibility
03:16 Effect of government program to help poor mothers with young children
06:38 Parents taking responsibility is our only hope
Transcript:
Every day I read newspaper articles to get an idea of what people are talking about around the world, to learn what’s occupying their minds.
Programs vs Individual Responsibility
The answer is disconcerting. Even though the complaints and solutions seem to be about a very wide variety of subjects, there is a theme uniting them all. Everybody is complaining about PROGRAMS or institutions that are deficient, THINGS that need to be promoted, modified, or eliminated:
Political parties
The government, at every level
Systemic racism or critical race theory
Conservatism
Liberalism
The economy
The military
Poverty programs
Social nets
Industry
International relations
Health policies
The schools
Addiction programs
Gun laws
Endless laws about everything
Religion
Middle East policy
And more
In all of these endless articles, there is NO mention of individual responsibility for attitudes, feelings, and choices.
William Golding was the Nobel-prize winning author of Lord of the Flies, and he said that he used to believe that social program could perfect mankind, “that a correct structure of society would produce goodwill, and that therefore you could remove all social ills by a reorganization of society.”
But with experience he changed his mind completely and realized that we individuals make our own choices and create our own good and evil. He said “the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable.”
That’s a great deal of wisdom. It’s a variation on a saying that was commonly spoken many years ago: “You can’t legislate or regulate morality.” It has to be taught to individuals by mothers and fathers.
Government Programs & Children
In a Newsweek article of February 23, 1998, Robert J. Samuelson said that the Comprehensive Child Development Program (CCDP) was created by Congress in 1988. The idea was to provide “intensive social services to poor mothers for the first five years of their children’s lives. They would get everything from parenting classes to job training to drug counseling.”
Young mothers received home visits every two weeks from case managers who taught parenting skills, advised on personal problems, and identified useful government services.
4,400 families were enrolled. Half received the counseling, while the other half did not. All were below the government’s poverty line, 58% were single mothers, 51% had not finished high school, 35% had their first child before age 18.
The program spent $35,000 per family per year—in today’s dollars—ONLY on the counseling and education, not food or other physical assistance. That counseling alone was equivalent to paying each family $18 per hour full-time all year.
The total cost was nearly $700 million over 9 years. A research firm concluded that “CCDP did not produce any important positive effects on participating families.” It didn’t affect rate of joblessness, weekly wages, rate of food stamps, child vocabulary, visits to doctors, or behavior problems.
The article concluded that “what people do for themselves matters more than what government tries to do for them.”
And “A society that is too free with its decency will promote dependency.”
And “The investments that truly count for children come from parents: love and security, discipline and instruction, a sense of worth.”
Parents, Not Programs
We keep debating programs and politics. When will we see how futile it has been for generations? When will we take responsibility as parents to love and teach our children, which is our ONLY hope for solving all these problems we talk about: violence, anger, whining, bitter politics, addictions, depression, suicide, children isolated from parents, anxiety, ADHD, and on and on.
We parents have the power to solve all that, but nothing will happen until we take that responsibility and stop giving it to governments and programs—or the Internet. We can do this. We have to do this, or the cost will be beyond our ability to shoulder.
