Outsourcing Parenthood

Yesterday I read an article on cbsnews.com that made me shudder. I am under the impression that parents are shirking more and more from their responsibility to take care of their children by parking them in front of the television and expecting tv broadasts and teachers to do the parenting for them.

"A lot of parents don't really get the time to teach their kids," Aresh Mohit is quoted as saying. He is a bike riding coach who claims he can teach in two hours what would take a parent weeks to do. It is fair to say that hiring a bike riding coach is certainly more convenient; however, if parents don't have time to teach their kids, why did they become parents in the first place? We all have busy lives, work challenging jobs, and now more than ever, have two breadwinners in the household.

Helping your child learn to ride a bike is something I call "quality time," and is yet another aspect of partenting that is being outsourced. Other items include talking to your kids about sex (this has been outsourced to the schools) and talking to your kids about drugs (this has been outsourced to television). Although in principle I see no problem with educating children through these means, I find it reprehensible that parents should think these are alternatives to having a candid conversation with their children.

I have seen two signs that parenthood is corroding in this country. The first was a report at the end of last year that parents were outraged that advertisements on Saturday morning television were targeting their children for the sale of candy and other junk food items. They said there should be more regulations. First of all, television commercials are made to manipulate the spectator. That is their purpose. If companies are targeting children it is because they have recognized in them a market niche for their product. I personally hate ads, and I don't particularly enjoy being manipulated. That's why I shut the television off. If parents spent some quality time with their children, say, teaching them to ride a bike on a Saturday morning, then junk food adverts wouldn't be an issue.

The second thing is also related to television. As I mentioned earlier, teaching kids about drugs has been outsourced to those terrible anti-drug spots where a teen who is experimenting with marijuana decides it’s a good idea to shoot himself in the mouth. First of all, that kind of behavior is simply inaccurate for someone under the influence of THC. Secondly, kids scoff at that kind of attempt to get to them. Scaring them off drugs doesn’t work. I was 15 once, and I felt the same way. It’s not a silly anti-drug ad directed at my demographic that’s going to solve the problem. There is a new batch of drug awareness publicity and it is directed at parents, and this, I believe, is the right approach. It urges parents to “be a parent” and talk to their kids about drugs. Our parents are the people who should care about us the most in this world, and if they never speak to us, their children, about issues such as sex, drugs, and healthy living habits, why should we care what other people think?

Parenting is difficult. I’m not a parent, but I’m a daughter, and I know how hard it was for my parents to raise me. They made many sacrifices and they also made mistakes along the way, but they never hired someone to teach me to ride a bike.