Gloria DeGaetano - Parenting Today: The World Has Changed, Have We?

Parenting Today: The World Has Changed, Have We? (cont.)

Consider a few statistics:

According to Nielsen, more than 90 percent of U.S. homes have televisions on an average of eight hours and 40 minutes each day.
Children ages 2 – 12 average four to five hours of television viewing each day.
By age 5, the average child enters kindergarten having watched at least 6,000 hours of TV.
Sixty-seven percent of U.S. children under 12 have televisions in their bedrooms.
By the time kids graduate from high school, they have spent twice as much time in front of television screens as they have spent in front of teachers in classrooms. (1

Modern-Day Challenges

Never before in the history of parenting have we been challenged to parent alongside an industry-generated “culture” that impacts our children so profoundly. Specifically, parents are up against six challenges unique to today’s complex screen-machine world.

1. Global conglomerates influence us on an unprecedented scale.
Over the years multi-national companies have increased their hold on our kids. Judith Rubin, writing in a recent issue of Mothering,reminds us that “marketing professionals cross-reference, cross market and cross-pollinate products and entertainment. By intentionally blurring the distinctions between products, entertainment, school curricula and advertisements, marketers readily capitalize on young children’s limited ability to differentiate between them.” (2)

In the past, media companies were not nearly as influential as they are today. Twenty-five years ago as many as 50 companies owned the majority of the media. By 2001, six companies owned and controlled global media production and dissemination. (3)

2. Community standards are being eroded through the co-opting of social institutions.
We can no longer rely on the social structure around us to reiterate our values to our kids. In fact, one of our biggest challenges as parents today is that too many societal influences are corporate clones. Many public schools, for instance, beam Channel One into the classrooms. In doing so, these schools implicitly add their authority to the commercial ads for junk food and violent video games the kids see each day. Corporations seek what they can get from the people. What they give and how they give is always based on monetary profit.

3. Corporations market specifically to children and their inherent vulnerabilities with the intention of undermining parental authority and responsibility.
Corporations intentionally drive a wedge between the parent and child over a specified product. Parents who say, “No,” and strive to set boundaries are seen as stupid and unfair. Today, the child’s peer group may as well have an umbilical cord tied directly to global conglomerates, making them significant authorities in children’s lives. Parents have to develop warrior spirits to become the primary authority for their own children!

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