Parenting is one of the hardest jobs out. These days it is made even harder by so many marriages breaking up and ending in divorce and re-marriages that create blended families. The other reason parenting is hard these days is because there are more cases of both parents working outside the home. That need or perceived need for both parents to work leads to many problems, some of which Andrea touches on her blog. It leads to bored children and teenagers, with too much time on their hands and lack of supervision.
Another factor is that parents have either by choice or necessity abdicated their responsibility for parenting to pre-schools, childcare centers, and before and after school care centers and teachers. Many of the jobs parents used to do have been taken over by teachers and others, because the parents are simply not there to parent and when they are around they are often too tired to take the firm line or to discipline. It’s easier to give in. Easier definitely, but not helpful in the long run, not to their children or to society.
The truth is nothing we do happens in isolation. It has a domino effect. One of the quotes that struck a chord with me from A Writer’s Commonplace Book is, ‘Aristotle’s famous view that if children did not love their parents and family members they would love no-one but themselves, is one of the most important statements ever made about the relation between family and society,’ Brigitte Berger.
The home is where they will they learn most about love. Hopefully, from their parents as they interact with each other in their marriage and in the family. They will learn from their father how to treat a woman and from their mother how to treat a man. They will learn hopefully that love means sacrificing your wants sometimes for the good of others. They will learn that marriage and relationships need to be worked on and nurtured. If they don’t learn it at home where else will they learn it?
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