Category Archives: Parenting

Food for the Brain

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

October 29, 2004

Garbage in…garbage out.

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.  Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips.  Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.  (Prov 4:23-25 NIV)

In September, a national Rand Corp. survey of 1,792 adolescents concluded that teens are impacted by what they watch on television.  Significantly, teens who watch a lot of sexually suggestive programs are almost twice as likely to have sex earlier than those who don’t.

This is no surprise to most parents.  They have been complaining to the entertainment industry and politicians for years and have been rebuffed as a flock of Chicken Littles.  Now parents have research reaffirming common sense, but we must face the larger problem…our collective cowardice in using the truth to guide our personal and societal actions.

Periodically, Americans are jolted to our senses.  Last year, it was Janet’s bare breast.  Last month it was the Rand Corp. survey.  And still…we allow the barrage of filth free access to our children.

Feeding their brains with pictures of vulgarity to the max, we teach our children that vulgarity and promiscuity are just a “normal” part of life in America.  The changes in the life of teens that have followed this cultural shift are shocking.

Prom night used to be a special evening of corsages, pictures, and close dancing that might end in a good night kiss.  No longer.  Now prom night has become a universal expectation for “dates” to have sex…just because.  For younger teens, the “spin the bottle” game of the 50s has evolved into the “rainbow party.”

Doctor Meg Meeker in her book Epidemic tells of her teenage patient Allyson who was traumatized when a friend took her to a rainbow party.  “After she arrived, several girls (all in the eighth grade) were given different shades of lipstick and told to perform oral sex on different boys to give them ‘rainbows.’”

These teens are simply reenacting the sexual standards we set for them in the culture at large.  And television is the great cultural medium shaking its “booty” at our children.  Research confirms what we knew all along…so…now what?

Now that we are enlightened, now that our common sense is “informed” by social research, what are we willing to do to create a society that teaches our children healthy, respectful behavior based on sexuality that honors restraint and propriety?

Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, performs microscopic surgery on free television, working to enforce limits on debauchery.  But he works with one hand tied behind his back.

Under a separate set of regulations, cable, satellite, radio and the Internet are free to assault our children, forcing entry through our homes and into their minds.  Public libraries chafe at efforts to restrict use of public funds to provide sexual material to patrons, including children.

Pollution of our culture leaves us no sanctuary or refuge; the stench wafts its way uncontrolled across our nation.  Entertainment continues to teach our children that sex is an insatiable appetite with no limits.

Rapper Eminem fuels a passion for lust married with hate and violence.  Abercrombie & Fitch promotes group sex in catalogues and stores marketing clothes to teens.  Wife swapping is reality television.  And cultural icon Nicole sexually seduces a ten-year-old on the big screen “for the sake of art.”

What good is it for us to have common sense and to have our good judgment confirmed by research if we lack the courage to change?  How will we change what our children learn if we refuse to change what we feed them for the mind?

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.  (Phil 4:8 NIV)

Food for the brain.

Food for the heart.

Food for the soul.

Garbage in…garbage out.

July 2, 2004:    Abused by Freedom

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Bringing Poppa Home

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

October 22, 2004

Nanny remembers it as “1963, the year the fifties ended, and the fathers in our town were leaving…. It was our collective great fear, that our fathers would leave us, start new families with younger and prettier children; we had seen it happen before.” A brave young girl in Anne LaMott’s All New People, she gave voice to the fears of an entire generation of children…and for the children of two successive generations.

Nanny was a prophetess.  On January 1, 1970, the first no-fault divorce law, California’s Family Law Act, became effective and eliminated the requirement to use one of seven statutory reasons for filing for divorce.  In the following decade, all other states followed California’s lead, making divorce an easy-as-pie solution to “incompatibility.”

In the past thirty-five years, as divorce has become commonplace, another statistic has been on the rise.  Unwed teen pregnancies have given birth to children whose fathers are absent from the very beginning…no divorce needed.

In just three decades, between 1960 and 1990, the percentage of children living apart from their biological fathers more than doubled, from 17 percent to 36 percent.  Poppa’s gone.

Mama is left to handle the children on her own…their lunch money, their bruises and hurt feelings, their temper tantrums, fights at school, homework, dating, proms and first loves.  When children reach for a hand up and when they celebrate with a high five, they aim for one hand…the hand of their Mama.  Papa?  He’s gone.

This is no exaggeration.  About 40 percent of children in father-absent homes have not seen their father at all during the past year; 26 percent of absent fathers live in a different state than their children; and 50 percent of children living absent their father have never set foot in their father’s home.

The impact of absent fathers has proven complicit in a wide range of social problems: crime; premature sexuality and out-of-wedlock births to teenagers; deteriorating educational achievement; depression, substance abuse and alienation among adolescents; and the growing number of women and children in poverty.

How do we bring Poppa home?  The answer is being melded from many sources.  An Arizona judge requires counseling before divorce.  Legislatures are considering changes in no-fault divorce laws.  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has developed a special initiative to support and strengthen the role of fathers in families.

In the private sector, groups like the National Fatherhood Initiative and The Fatherhood Project are reaching out to dads with help on parenting, encouraging them to take an active role in the lives of their children.  And faith-based groups are taking the lead in helping to strengthen marriages and in giving couples effective strategies for dealing with conflict before it leads to divorce.

But the biggest hope in bringing Poppa home…and creating a home where he will stay…comes from a surprising group:  abstinence educators.  Abstinence education is all about placing sex in context, helping students understand that the natural result of sex is to produce children…in families…with parents…with Mamas…and Papas.

Joneen Krauth, who developed Wait Training abstinence programs, has her students begin a marriage file.  She encourages them to collect information on how to create and maintain healthy and happy relationships, and in particular, how to “marry smart”.  What are the compatibility factors that predict survival of relationships?  What are the seven warning signs of a bad relationship?  Is he/she “just a date”…or are they “my soul-mate”?

Students learn that relationships require the same planning, goals, and commitment as college educations and career plans.  They gain hope by realizing that even in a culture of divorce, they can learn how to avoid the mistakes that lead to broken relationships.

Abstinence until marriage…students learn to see sex, not in isolation, but in the full context of human life and relationships.  And in this context, where marriage is valued, students are laying the foundation for families where Papa and Mama come together…and stay together…for each other…and for their children.

October 15, 2004:    Where’s Poppa?

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Where’s Poppa?

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

October 15, 2004

Lorie and I walked to high school every morning for four years, but of all of the mornings we walked and talked, one morning stands out.  As usual, I knocked at her front door, and we walked together back toward the sidewalk.  This morning, however, she was noticeably quiet and serious.

“I guess I can finally tell everyone,” she started.  I began imagining all the possible announcements she could make to explain the pain in her voice and the hurt in her expression.  “My parents are getting divorced.”

Divorced?  Impossible! Neither of us knew anyone who lived in a home with a divorced parent.  In the 60s, divorce was frowned upon.  And it was rare. 

Leave it to another smaller child to describe with poignancy the arrival of divorce and single-parenting in modern American culture.  In Anne LaMott’s All New People, Nanny, a brave young girl, observes with remarkable clarity that suddenly she is living in “1963, the year the fifties ended, and the fathers in our town were leaving…. It was our collective great fear, that our fathers would leave us, start new families with younger and prettier children; we had seen it happen before.”

No-fault divorce.  Initially heralded in as an enlightened approach to deal with unhappy and hopeless marriages, divorce has overtaken the modern world.  The Internet gives easy access to websites calling out:  No Fault Divorce Made Easy.  In Arizona “rapidlaw.net” hustles the unhappy:  “Easy & Fast to Divorce. Great Prices – Start Here!”

Adults are free to come and go without recrimination, making and breaking bonds of “unconditional love.”  Yet, as we grownups speed out of our marriages and into happier waters, we leave pain and suffering in our wake.  David Poponoe in his book, Life Without Father, explains:

The decline of fatherhood is one of the most basic, unexpected and extraordinary trends of our time. Its dimensions can be captured in a single statistic: In just three decades, between 1960 and 1990, the percentage of children living apart from their biological fathers more than doubled, from 17 percent to 36 percent. By the turn of the century, nearly 50 percent of American children may be going to sleep each evening without being able to say good night to their dads.

No one predicted this trend; few researchers or government agencies have monitored it; and it is not widely discussed, even today. But the decline of fatherhood is a major force behind many of the most disturbing problems that plague American society: crime; premature sexuality and out-of-wedlock births to teenagers; deteriorating educational achievement; depression, substance abuse and alienation among adolescents; and the growing number of women and children in poverty.

Little did we expect in the 60s that no-fault divorce would be only the beginning.  Today, our willingness to abandon marital vows has evolved into an aversion to marital vows in the first place…and to a movement to redefine marriage to mean anything but.

While counselor Joann Condie doesn’t recommend women stay in abusive marriages, she warns that the pain of divorce is significant.  “It’s interesting to me as a marriage therapist,” she tells Citizenlink, “to find out that divorce is hurtful to the children even if they are adult children.”

Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, asks the obvious question.  “If the effects of family breakdown are indisputably calamitous, why are we so intent on accelerating the breakdown?  Whether it’s the refusal to treat two-parent families as normative in textbooks, an increasing problem, or the deconstruction of marriage inherent in the campaign for same-sex ‘marriage,’ the effect is the same.”  Marriages fracture…and children suffer.

Children suffer…yes.  And for so many children the common unhappiness flowing from the breakdown of marriage is the absence of their father…daddy…poppa.

Poppa?  A fortress of strength we all long to hug…he’s gone the way of a marriage abandoned, a temporary fortress built of sand.  The current debate over marriage is controlled by adults:  legislators, gay activists, psychologists, all of them championing their special path to adult happiness inside…and out…of traditional marriage.  But where are the voices of our children?

In all the debate about marriage, there is a tragic absence of attention to the most significant problem facing us today.  There is no greater question deserving our attention as we talk about marriage than the question coming from our children…where’s Poppa?

The Power of a Father

June 18, 2004:  Me Jane, You Tarzan

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Cutting Crime

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

September 17, 2004

The expiration this week of a ten year ban on assault weapons has kicked up a debate on American crime rates and how to cut them.

Fighting crime has become a way of life for Americans.  We build more prisons.  We enact new tougher laws with mandatory sentencing.  We hire more police, put gates around our communities, and install metal detectors in our schools.  And we tell the unrepentant criminal, “Three strikes, you’re out.”

Many of us can remember a time when life in America was safer.  In 1960 your risk of being a victim of crime in the United States was 1.89%, and of a violent crime 0.161%.  In 1996 nearly forty years later, your risk of being a crime victim was 5.079%, and of a violent crime 0.634%.

The United States Crime Index Rates Per 100,000 Inhabitants went from 1,887.2 in 1960 to 5,897.8 in 1996. By 1996 the crime rate was 313% the 1960 crime rate. Crime in the United States accounts for more death, injuries and loss of property than all Natural Disasters combined.

It’s tempting to think of guns and gates and laws in an effort to protect ourselves and our families from crime.  But there is a better way.

We each hold the key to the primary method of cutting crime.  Rather than dealing with the aftermath of crime and relying on punishment to deter, this method cuts crime off at the very beginning where it starts, in the heart and soul of a young person who needs guidance to keep him or her on the path to success.

The method?  The key?  Our families and our fathers.

In his book Life Without Father David Popenoe explains another statistical trend that has followed the trend in crime through the past forty years:

The decline of fatherhood is one of the most basic, unexpected and extraordinary trends of our time. Its dimensions can be captured in a single statistic: In just three decades, between 1960 and 1990, the percentage of children living apart from their biological fathers more than doubled, from 17 percent to 36 percent. By the turn of the century, nearly 50 percent of American children may be going to sleep each evening without being able to say good night to their dads.

Why does this matter?  The subject of families may seem a private matter that we should back away from when looking for the solutions to our crime problems and creating public policy.  But Popenoe says otherwise.

[T]he decline of fatherhood is a major force behind many of the most disturbing problems that plague American society: crime; premature sexuality and out-of-wedlock births to teenagers; deteriorating educational achievement; depression, substance abuse and alienation among adolescents; and the growing number of women and children in poverty.

What about the young people you know?  Do you see their hearts aching for a strong and healthy relationship with their fathers?  Do you see their eyes light up at the sight of dad in the audience at their band concert, of dad in the stands at their football games?  Statistics speak to the issue.  But our children and their hearts prove the truth.  Dads count.

As we hear politicians talk tough on crime, we must listen for the cures they offer us.  And at the top of their list, we need to expect a plan to strengthen families by helping mothers and fathers raise children inside of healthy marriages.  This is good for children, good for parents and, most of all, good for America.

Cutting crime at the most basic level has less to do with subtracting guns and adding prisons.  And it has everything to do with how we raise our children.

If we want children to walk away from a life of crime, we would do well to make sure our fathers are leading the way.

THE POWER OF A FATHER

June 18, 2004:   Me Jane, You Tarzan

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Duh

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

September 10, 2004

It’s big news on NBC’s TODAY Show.  Matt is worried.  He is worried about Katie and her two daughters.  Are they watching television?  And how much?

Matt wants Katie to know.  A research study has just proven that the more kids watch “it,” the more likely kids are to “do it.”  Sex, that is.  “Katie,” Matt insists, “this study proves that television can influence teens to have sex.”  Katie barely lets him finish before responding.

“Duh!” she chides.

Matt tries again.  Does she know watching sex can be a negative influence on her two girls?  Katie interrupts him.

“Duh! Like I didn’t know that?”

It’s a lead story for NBC’s TODAY Show.  A very expensive year-long research study by the Rand Corp. has come to the following conclusion.  “(A)dolescents who watched the most television with sexual content were twice as likely to initiate sexual intercourse over the next year as adolescents who watched the least amount of TV with sexual content.”

“Duh?”

Isn’t this what right-wing, idiotic, moralistic, radical, in-your-face, Bible-thumping, puritanical, fundamentalists have been saying for years?  If we could wrangle a fundamentalist to the ground and force him to quote scripture, he might moralize with a Proverb.  Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.  Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips.  Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.  (Prov 4:23-25 NIV)

Oh, that we had heeded their pious, mean-spirited, fear-inducing, prurient advice in the 1970s and taken steps to control the sexual content of our culture.  Oh, that we would refuse to let shows like Friends and Sex in the City pander to our children in prime time.  Oh, that we would force MTV to become a pay-for-view station just like Playboy.

Instead, we wait thirty years for promiscuous sex to capture the hearts of a generation of teens, for the number of unwed teen pregnancies to skyrocket, and for an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases to plague us.  Then we hire a research firm to tell us what got us to this point.

Rebecca Collins is the lead RAND psychologist who directed the study of nearly 1800 adolescents aged 12 to 17.  They were asked about their television viewing habits and their sexual behavior.   One year later they were surveyed again.

The RAND study results were published in the September issue of “Pediatrics.”  Not only does watching television impact our teens, but according to Collins, “The impact of television viewing is so large that even a moderate shift in the sexual content of adolescent TV watching could have a substantial effect on their sexual behavior.”

In fact the impact of television is even greater than the average person might suspect.  It makes little difference whether the TV show presents people talking about sex or engaging in sex.  Explaining this, Collins says, “Both affect adolescents’ perceptions of what is normal sexual behavior and propels their own sexual behavior.”

Duh!

Methinks I hear another fundamentalist whispering in my ear.  Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.  (Phil 4:8 NIV)

“We found that we could predict whether the kids went from being virgins to having had sex over the course of that year using the information about which shows that they watched,” Collins told NBC’s Stephanie Stanton.

Duh!

Collins continues, “It’s not just visuals…it’s the talk about sex, it’s the idea that TV shows are always talking, and thinking, and acting sexually, and that that’s what works its way into kids’ consciousness.”

Duh!

To be fair, we owe Collins a debt of gratitude for putting common sense on the radar screen for academicians and politicians who run from any hint of fundamentalist morality, no matter how many centuries those morals have served mankind.  Collins and her colleagues have given parents a reason to trust their own good judgment and take a stand for the noble things of life…good clean television, where whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is admirable…those are the things…

we must talk about…

think about…

and do.

No duh.

FOR MORE ON AMERICAN ENTERTAINMENT

April 9, 2004:    Dear Paul

May 7, 2004:    Thank You, Janet

July 9, 2004:    Why Johnny Can’t Read…or Write…or Count