CHRISTINE SMITH writes:

The other day, I took my young son to the pediatrician for a check-up. In the waiting room, I picked up the latest issue of Parents magazine. In the index was a picture of a small boy doll sitting all alone in a dollhouse living room. The caption read: “Why millions of kids have to go it alone.” “Obviously,” I thought, “it’s because their mothers have all left them to have jobs.” But surely, a modern magazine would never admit to that. I was intrigued, and quickly flipped to the page with the article. It was titled “The New Latchkey Kids.” The subtitle read: “More than a million grade-schoolers have nobody to take care of them once class lets out. Where have all the  — ‘Mothers gone?’ my brain immediately filled in.” But no, it was, “Where have all the after-school programs gone?”

The article explains how government cutbacks have caused after-school programs to be cut, and reduced financial assistance for families has left them without the means to afford childcare. Many of the children discussed in the article were younger than ten, and forced to look after themselves for hours (probably rotting their brains with television and video games). When are people going to stop putting the blame on everyone else but themselves? It’s not the government’s job to care for children.

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Jill Farris writes:

I often have the opportunity to speak to mother’s groups and I always exhort them to be very careful what sort of parenting literature they read, beginning with the really rotten Parenting magazine often found in the waiting room of Pediatricians.

These magazines market fear and worry to parents with articles warning parents to expect sibling rivalry with the birth of a new baby, to expect their toddler to have tantrums and to expect each stage of parenthood to be difficult enough to drive the parents to an “expert” such as a psychologist or medical doctor. Often the “experts” who write the articles on parenting aren’t parents themselves…or, if they are, have one or two children spaced about eight years apart Tthese publications are the “gateway drug” which leads to complete reliance on the medical establishment.

The biblical solution to the very real need that young parents have for advice and help is to find an experienced older parent whose life and family exhibits proof of wise and careful parenting.

Parenting is hard (there is no doubt about that) but I get sick to my stomach at the number of experts who tell young moms that it is “normal” for a toddler to have “separation anxiety” when she leaves him for many hours a day. What they are saying is that it is common for little children to get anxious about their mother being gone…and since it is common, it is “normal”…and that must mean it is to be accepted as o.k.

Instead, young mothers need to be told (by an older mom who has done a good job in raising joyful and well-adjusted children because the proof is in the pudding) that little toddlers cry and get anxious about their mommies leaving because their mommy is their whole world. The young mother needs to know that the love and security she creates by staying close to her young children is a precious and God-given gift and it isn’t normal or right for a mother and her child to be separated for long hours. Yes, I know that some mothers have to work….let’s not even start that argument…..but many more mothers aren’t willing to go without material possessions in order to own the one thing in this life more precious than gold; the close, loving bond of a mother with her child.

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