Child Rearing. Government Support? Or is it enforcing one's morality on others?

Great Debates
1

This is in response to comments made in a thread that can be viewed here. I also skimmed through this thread and found it could be helpful in this debate.

A few Caveats debate, though, and that is this is not a debate on teaching children about sexaulity whether it be homosexuality, or just sexuality in general. I realize that both of the other threads have dealt with that, but I would like to have this one deal with the power of parents and societal influences/support. I also would like to try to limit this debate on what is better parenting. In the other thread it was mentioned that you could teach your child about nudity, instead of forcing others to keep their clothes on. I would like to try to keep this thread from becoming “what is proper parenting,” but I do submit that it might eventually get to that, and it plays a lot of relevance on this debate. I would just prefer it not focus on that.

I included the link to the thread about the nickelodean special because it does mention parenting and choices parents make in raising their children. The question I’m presenting is, should parents have more government support through laws in raising their children, or is that enforcing one’s views or morality onto another?

On one hand, definately yes. If a large group of people wanted to ban a telivision show because of the influence it could have on their children, then that would be rightfully interpreted as forcing others to submit to their views. Why should the government or anyone say, “you’re right, so we won’t let anyone watch it,” when a lot of others could see the program as a tool for teaching tolerance. On the other hand, IMHO, no. If I wished to protect my child from things seen in public, I should have government support in doing so, WITHOUT using the excuse that I want to make society change so you I have to bother raising them at all. I can make choices I view appropiate to raising my children, but if I no longer have the ability to do that, then I should have some sort of governmental support. (Not necessarily Federal government, though.)

If I view wearing a low cut shirt or a mini skirt as immodest, the government would not be able to ban" them because it would violate a person’s freedom of expression, but how far does that freedom go? Could business post nude advertisements that are in public sight? How about pornographic advertisements? And It doesn’t necessarily have to be nudity. What about profanity? After all I can choose to turn a telivison off, or choose to not have certain things inside my house, but when I step outside I have very little power over what my child sees and hears in public. Granted I can keep them out of certain places, but generally speaking I don’t have that much power outside of the home. I know in several instances, nothing has been done to stop explicit advertisments before, but other times people have sued, and won, after someone swore in front of their children.

Parents have a responsibility in teaching their children about sex and a slew of other things., but when children are bombared with images and ideas outside of the home, that task can be made very difficult. I know there have been some precedents on public profanity and nudity, but I’ll restate and question, and open the debate. ** Should parents have more government support through laws in raising their children, or is that enforcing one’s views or morality onto another? **

2

No matter what Hillary Clinton says, it does NOT take a village to raise a child. It takes the child’s parents. How about you raise your children according to your views and beliefs and I’ll raise mine according to mine?

3

What if what happens outside of my house affects how I raise my children? What if what goes on in public undermines what I say to them?

I also tried to imply that the government should support a parent’s decision, not enforce it on others. (which, I agree, seems contradictary in the OP.)

Really ** Lord Ashtar ** Try just adding to the debate instead of being insulting and defensive.

4

Hi, Patros! First, let me say that although I disagree with your viewpoint, I like the way you present it.

No, I don’t think government should intervene, simply because there are so many conflicting points of view. I can relate to this because, in a microcosm, I’m dealing with a similar situation on a mailing list I manage:

  • We’re listed as an ‘adult’ list. This is so that we can curse if we want to, and more to the point, so that we can freely discuss matters concerning sexuality. We’re not a porn site, although we do write and share erotica.
  • Because we’re listed as an adult list, we’ve been getting spammed lately with links to porn websites. Yeah, I ban the spammers, but they just resubscribe under another addy.
  • Reactions of the members range from boredom through exasperation to outright rage; as it’s my job to keep the list as happy as possible, I have to take what action they think is appropriate, and herein comes the rub:
  • I can’t get them to reach a consensus! So far there have been at least a half-a-dozen solutions proposed, each of which is objectionable to some of the members. What’s a governess, or government, to do?

Now, take that list of about 200 people and multiply it up to the population of the US. See the problems?

You can, yourself, counter the societal influences that you consider negative with a strong influence of your own. I well remember my parents’ response to my wail of “everybody else–”: “If everybody else jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it, too?” :slight_smile:

I had an ‘adult’ library card from an early age, with my parents’ approval. They never censored anything I read or watched, so firm was their conviction that they had raised me right, that they had raised me to know right from wrong, to make the appropriate decision, to have my own inner moral compass. I came of age in the 1970s (I was 16 in 1976), a time of sexual license and heavy
recreational drug use. Yet I was a virgin until I was 24, and I smoked my first joint at 22. I wasn’t so impressed with either sex or drugs that I threw away my upbringing for them.

5

** Squish ** for the most part you’re correct, but your profanity and suggestive dialouge can be kept out of public view. I don’t have to see it if I don’t want to, and my children aren’t exposed to it if I don’t let them access that site. The government has given you your freedom of expression and you have exercised that freedom, and no one (from what I can tell) is harmed by it. :slight_smile:

And honestly? I came up from a background where sex, profanity, and drugs were very present, and I chose not to do any of them. (except for sex, but that remains inside of marriage.) I know people who are the exact opposite, and were brought up in very strict households and became sexual maniacs and experimented with anything and everything.

6

Well, it’s not the content of the mailing list that was my point; it was that finding a consensus among even a small group of people is difficult and finding a consensus among the citizenry of a large nation is nightmare-inducing. :slight_smile:

I still feel that teaching by example–your own example, and lessons from the negative or positive examples of others–is better than government interference.

7

“But think of the children!!!” is often the excuse offered by people who want the government to see to it that everyone is compelled by law to behave according to their religion’s rules of morality.

8

Perhaps, but I’m suggesting that government have more protection, not tell people what to do. (in the sense that you can still look at porn, you just can’t show it to a child.)

Totally true, I just fear there are more negative examples than there are positive ones.

9

A man slapped his mouthy teen aged daughter across the mouth after she sassed him back because he would not let her stay out late and she insisted that she was going to. She called the cops on him and he was arrested and jailed for assault.

Now, whose morality is that? Certainly not the parents. Who is responsible for disciplining the kids and how? What do you do if you cannot spank or slap your child when talking does not work and they TELL you what THEY are going to do, no matter what your opinions are?

Time outs are no good if the kid refuses to obey them and walks away. You restrict the kid to their room and they go out anyhow in defiance KNOWING that you cannot do anything more than yell harmlessly at them and that the cops will not even arrest them unless they commit a crime.

10

But how do you propose the government provide more protection (read: laws against certain behavior), without telling people what to do?

11

Good question. Banning thongs for one? (I’m kidding) Honestly, I don’t know. I just wanted this debate to explore the ideas IF the government should do such a thing.

The only thing i could say, though, that I would want the government to assure me that if I walked outside with my child, I wouldn’t see something questionable or something that would undermine my parenting. Yes, I know the world isnt rated G.

Perhaps the debate is moote because I really can’t find a possible way FOR the government to support parents without violating constitutional rights. Maybe deep down I’m hinting at something more, but don’t realize it. Perhaps someone else can jump in an offer something?

12

Panthros_1983

That’s simply impossible for the government or anyone to accomplish. While you may consider your requirements to be reasonable, what if you shared the Arabic or Islamic view (just to mention a couple of examples)?

I can certainly understand that you want to control the influences that are in your child(ren)'s life. We all want to do that or did so to the best of our ability. But it is truly your responsibility as a parent to filter and “scout out” places where you choose to take your child. As long as we live in a “free society”, we must expect to have that responsibility because it was us who chose to have a child in the first place.

My oldest daughter learned her first bit of smut on her first day of Kindergarten during the school bus ride. That’s a public area, too.

One other thought. Even though the Amish (for example) have tried their best to keep their lives within acceptability to them, they still failed to filter out dealing with us.

13

My question is “Who defines morality?” By my personal standards, cruelty and adultery are both highly immoral, in part because they violate the fundamental laws of my religion. This is one reason I never did watch the television show Once And Again, although I would not advocate taking it off the air. Over in the Pit there’s a thread about a man who chose to inflict his version of Christianity on one of our fellow Dopers in what I see as a rather cruel fashion. By his reasoning (I assume) his action was moral. I consider it immoral. Who makes the laws?

I’m not a parent, but, to my way of thinking, it’s up to parents to let their children know what their beliefs are and how they should be acted on. Yes, as others have pointed out, this backfires sometimes. Yes, parents should be supported, but that is what religious organizations and other communities should be doing, including extended families and networks of all kinds. Quite frankly, I’d rather trust morality to an organization which knows something about it and has been known to practice it regularly. Much as I love this country, IMO, that does not include the U.S. Government.

CJ

14

What makes you think that children who rebel against their parents’ influences would be curbed by laws against their actions? Last I heard drugs were still illegal and teens couldn’t drink or smoke. Doesn’t stop many kids from doing these things anyway.

Additionally, sheltering children from all the “bad” in the world isn’t necessarily the best way. When they get out on their own they will see all of this stuff that they don’t know how to deal with.

One law that I did like, although I didn’t at first, was the proposed law in Georgia allowing parents to revoke their kids’ driver’s licenses. That is a law supporting a parent’s rules without taking away the rights of anyone else.

15

What I would do, the next time she stayed out without my permission, is to put her possessions–and only those possessions she’d paid for with her own money–on the front lawn and lock her out of the house. This is my house and as long as you live here, you live by my rules. If the police were called, I’d calmly inform them that she was incorrigible, that I was afraid for her safety and since her failure to mind was making it impossible for me to see to her safety, that she would be better off on her own or under state supervision.

A friend of mine called her 12-year-old son’s bluff in an amusing way, once. When he said, “I’ll call Child Protective Services and tell them you’re abusive,” she responded, “Fine. Let them take you away and put you in a foster home. I’ll just sell your skateboards, your Playstation, your TV, your VCR… why, I’ll be rich!” Then she started pondering out loud all the wonderful things she could do for herself if she didn’t have him and his brothers to raise and support. :smiley:
Patros, you said:

How is that even possible? And how far does that extend? If you don’t want your child to see me in a mini-skirt or a low-cut dress, is the government going to make me wear a burkah or chador? No matter how pure your motives are, that is an infringement on my rights.
Cessandra wrote:

That’s my p.o.v. Too much ‘shielding’ of a child leaves them unable to cope with things when they get to high school or college. They need to be able to make informed decisions.

16

I actually agree with pretty much all of what Cessandra and ** Squish** said. However, I think the point of my Original Post was missed in that I wouldn’t want to teach my children something, then they go out the door and society tells them something else, or rather, society says they’re right and I’m wrong.

Really though? You’re right. I can’t shield my children from everything that happens in the world, but I can try to filter it, and prepare them for it. I think, though, that I personally have been influenced more outside my home than within, and feared that if the same happened with my children, they could do things that I would teach otherwise. I made this thread as an extension to the thong banning thread simply to pose the ideas I presented there.

After pondering it for some while, though, I’ve realized you can’t have government intervention. It would mean violating freedom of expression and choice, and I think the areas I DID mention of government intervention already have laws in place. (I.e public displays of pornography) I think it comes down to teaching my children what they need to know to deal with an abrasive society, rather than convincing our government to change it. I didn’t like high school and I think deep down I want something to be different for my kids. After all, its not easy being told to stay away from sex, drugs, and violence, when your hormones and your classmates say otherwise.

I think one thing is important though, and that is where do we draw the line at bad parenting? I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, and although it hasn’t come to be as severe as what I suggested they do, the government **does say at some level what is proper and improper parenting. ** If a mother has a child who is young, but molests another child and the mother lets it happen again and again, then the government can and has said “you’re a bad parent and aren’t legally able to raise that child.”

There’s a slight hijack I have (even for my own thread) and I think it’s an interesting point. Is a parent bad for letting their child watch a TV program about homosexuality, or are they a bad parent for NOT letting them watch a program promoting tolerance towards homosexuals? How about nudity? Is a parent bad for not teaching acceptance of the human body or are they bad for teaching immodesty?

Hmm… interesting thoughts, indeed.

17

Oh and one last thing… just a nitpick, but its

** Pathros **

NOT

** Panthros **

NOT

** Patros **

18

I just wanted to respond to your hijack, Pathros.

What’s omitted here is the parent’s view of homosexuality and/or nudity. Personally, I have no problem with either one, however, my view on nudity has shifted rather dramatically during the past 2 years. If I’m going to generalize, I’d say what’s bad is allowing a child to watch a program on a controversial subject without talking to them about it. If you object to something, tell them why. If you object to the way something is portrayed [insert standard grumble about how in the US nudity must equal sex], talk to them.

About 20 years ago, there was a woman in Tennessee who sued the local school district because they didn’t teach her narrow views. Among the things she feared is that her children might come to question their religion. My gut response at the time was that all children do so. The trick is to teach them how to do it in such a way that they don’t get hurt, like riding a bicycle or crossing a street.

CJ
$.02 USD

19

Eeep, sorry about misspelling your nick!

In response to your question quoted, I would say: neither. I would say they were a bad parent if they didn’t teach their children tolerance. Even if homosexuality is against your religion, “hate the sin, not the sinner.” What did the parents of the people who murdered Matthew Sheppard and the ones who beat my friend David so badly that he has plastic and wires holding his face together teach them? They taught them hate–and that’s wrong. Which is more objectionable: a gay character in a book, movie or TV show–or the website of Fred Phelps?

We don’t live in a homogenous society. Children need to be taught that even though someone is different from them, they need to respect people.

20

I’m not sure if I understand what you are asking. Are you asking if the government should legislate morality or if they should legislate morality to a greater degree than they do now?

The government legislates morality all the time. Taxes on cigarettes, restrictions on what can be advertised and where, zoning laws on where you can and where you cannot put a porn shop. Even laws against murder, rape and sexual assault reflect the values of society.

That said, the only question is where the line should be drawn between free speach and legislated decency.

Personally, I don’t think that people have a right to go outside or watch TV and not expect to see images that offend them or challange their beliefs. The days of the the homogenious Mayburry town are thankfuly gone.