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Introduction: Parenting: Today's Complex Challenges
| Article
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16817 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1989 |
1,035 Words |
| Author
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William Sayres
William Sayres is professor of education and family and
community life at Columbia University Teachers College in New
York. |
"My children are the joy of my life. All is possible for them." (Nigerian mother) "There are days when I am sorry I brought my children into a world so cruel and full of suffering," (Lebanese mother) Throughout history the bringing of a new life into the world has been accompanied by both rejoicing and apprehension, and in today's world, the peaks as well as the valleys of parenthood seem more imposing than ever.
Parental concerns are universal concerns: How can we raise our children so that they will be free from want and fear, healthy in body and mind, productive rather than destructive, and set in paths leading to a better future?
In particular, how can we do this in a world so beset by conflicting and contending forces of unprecedented magnitude? On the one hand, the "green revolution" has led to remarkably innovative and increasingly effective ways of producing food. On the other hand, there are more hungry people than ever, and an estimated forty thousand young children die of hunger and related causes each day. Progress in medical science has led to one breakthrough after another; yet sickness and disease are rampant in much of the world, especially among children. And in an age when the discovery of new "miracle cures" has become almost commonplace, new and more virulent pathologies, such as AIDS, are sweeping across national borders to afflict even the unborn.
Dramatic developments in aerospace and communications technology have enormously expanded our vision of what is possible for our children in the universe of tomorrow; yet the technological initiatives that have heralded the "new frontier" are also producing weapons of unparalleled destructive power, and we are reminded daily by mass media pictures of battleground dead and maimed that wars are fought primarily by the young, by our children.
Such contradictions between the promise of hope and the prospect of despair are instilling in parents all over the world a need for help in raising their children to realize their hopes rather than succumbing to their despair.
No Easy Prescriptions
Yet there are no easy prescriptions. Complicating the quest for guidelines to effective parenting is the growing diversity and instability of contemporary patterns of family life. Parenting arrangements not only vary from one part of the world to another but are everywhere subject to
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