By Carolyn Marie Lee Santa Monica
There appears to be a war on children. Children are no longer allowed to have a childhood. We are losing future generations to a culture of violence, vulgarity, and immorality. Our children are being misguided, misinformed, and miseducated.
Our youth are being bombarded daily with negative messages and negative role models. They are being sexually manipulated through fashion, advertising, music, video games, cartoons, television, movies, and magazines. The glamorization of deviant and destructive behavior as the norm has deemed it “socially correct.”
Working and single parents are lacking support, resources, and solutions to halt the blatant exploitation and degeneration of their children. Parenting is on the verge of becoming a lost art form. Many are not only afraid to discipline their children but are afraid of their own children and other people’s children.
Public education has become an intricate part of the problem by laying the foundation for predictable future failure through intolerance, indifference, and incompetence, and by labeling low-income students as unteachable. Zero tolerance incriminates the innocent and views at-risk children as future felons and enemies of the state.
The foster care and welfare system neglect and abuse the young far more often than they protect and serve them. They perpetuate a vicious cycle of violence, teen pregnancy, child abuse, substance abuse, teen suicide, sexually transmitted diseases, and poverty. One half of foster children become homeless after age 18.
Sadly, the women’s movement has been perverted into a sexual revolution that encourages women and young girls to exploit themselves as sex objects. Girls as young as 12 and 13 are sexually active and more that 30 percent of prostitutes are under the age of 18 years of age. Seventy percent of black children are born out of wedlock.
Gang violence, AIDS, drugs, and alcohol are debilitating many young lives in many communities, and black youth are at greater risk, having the highest cases of AIDS in the U.S. We must reclaim our children’s hearts, souls, and minds. We can start by raising our own consciousness and become better role models. Our children are the future, and we must cultivate excellence, greatness, and benevolence within them so we can create a future we can live in and with.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 6, 2002. Read the original PDF.