Is the TV in a main room in the house where you can easily monitor the content flowing into your home? Do you use DVR, TiVo, the V-chip or other technology to safeguard your children from inappropriate TV shows? Do you keep the remote handy to mute those embarrassing commercials for erectile-dysfunction treatments?

If you answered “yes,” you’re in the minority. According to the most current Kaiser Family Foundation “Generation M” survey analyzing media use by children aged 8 to 18, only 28 percent of parents have rules about TV viewing. But good for you, because all available research confirms that children with limits on media consumption – both in terms of time and content – fare better in virtually every way you can run the numbers.

Unfortunately, the nation’s biggest entertainment conglomerates are offering your children an end run around your best efforts to limit their exposure to TV shows to which you might object.

According to a new study from the Parents Television Council (PTC) being released Wednesday, kids consume more of their video entertainment through platforms other than the family television set, thanks to widely accessible videos offered on free, unrestricted Internet sites. (Full disclosure: I’m on PTC’s Advisory Board.)

This means your 13-year-old daughter can easily watch racy shows like CWTV’s “Gossip Girl” or prior episodes of “Sex and the City” at the click of a mouse. And with more children and teens using smart phones and other browser-enabled devices, inappropriate content now is available anytime, anywhere.

PTC’s new study, “Untangling the Web of Internet Video: Questions, Answers and a Report Card for Parents,” is intended to arm parents with the information they need to protect children from graphic, explicit and potentially harmful adult content.

In the study of four of the most popular online video sources: Hulu (NBC/Universal/Fox and Disney/ABC), Fancast (Comcast), Slashcontrol (AOL) and AT&T, PTC’s research revealed:

- Providers and their partnering networks use different and more lenient content ratings and standards for online videos compared with those used for broadcast networks – even though the content is the same as what aired on TV.

- Online providers don’t use the content descriptors for sexual content, offensive language, violence or adult situations that are used to block TV shows.

- Even when a user account indicates the age of the viewer is 13 years old (the minimum age required to open a user account), there’s no mechanism to block specific adult content.

- There aren’t effective parental controls on the sites.

- Advertisers aren’t filtering their Internet ads, but instead are freely marketing adult products, such as alcohol to children.

In short, when it comes to safeguarding children from inappropriate content, thanks to the Internet, we’re back to square one.

The Internet sites in PTC’s study are some of the most trusted entertainment companies in the world. Parents ought to be able to assume that the policies and standards that apply to the content found on their broadcast networks are consistently applied on their websites. They’re not.

Tim Winter, president of PTC, doesn’t expect these companies to do the parents’ job of monitoring media exposure. “The responsibility to safeguard our children from harmful media content rests with parents,” he says. “But they have a false sense of security with companies like Disney, NBC and Comcast. Providers ought to offer gating mechanisms so that parents can make wise choices for their children across all entertainment platforms.”

“An informed parent is the first line of defense,” Mr. Winter says. “We’re simply trying to give parents the resources they need to do the best they can for their kids.”



Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

Here’s the short version of what happened: Mr. Tuitel (sounds like “title”) was scheduled to fly from West Palm Beach, Fla., to Kansas City for a speech. Because of cerebral palsy, he’s wheelchair bound (and always has been), so, as usual when he flies, an airline employee helped him into his seat using a specially designed chair that fits into the aisle.

Once seated and belted and ready for the flight, Mr. Tuitel was told he had to get off the plane because he didn’t have a travel companion and his disability rendered him unable to help himself in the event of an emergency. US Airways’ policy requires passengers with disabilities such as his to be accompanied by someone who can assist them.

Left with no choice in the matter, Mr. Tuitel disembarked from the plane. Two days later, he flew to Kansas City on Delta Air Lines without incident, though reports say he missed his speaking gig.

So many things wrong are with this story, it’s hard to know where to begin. Suffice to say US Airways’ policy on disabled passengers, no doubt a response to intrusive federal regulations, must appear in the “litigation avoidance” section of its corporate handbook. It ought to be filed under “faulty assumptions” instead.

Suppose there is an on-board emergency (read: plane crash). Theoretically, a whole lot of passengers could be rendered “too disabled” to help themselves or others. In all honestly, being the fearful flier that I am, I’m not sure I’d be all that able in such a situation to do more than fumble with my rosary and whip off a quick act of contrition.

On the other hand, if it’s an emergency landing, it’s hard to imagine that Mr. Tuitel’s fellow passengers wouldn’t assist him to get off the plane. People are like that.

Being the reluctant flier that I am, and having visited Mr. Tuitel’s website and watched his videos (http://www.johnnietuitel.com), I would sit next to him on any flight. Most emergencies require strength of character, courage, tenacity and a sense of humor. It’s clear US Airways kicked off the most able of its passengers that day.

Mr. Tuitel’s saga with US Airways continues, but not in the way you’d guess. What you’d expect next would be a lawsuit for lost wages and emotional distress. (Unless you were the young woman escorted off a Southwest Airlines flight in 2007 for your “lewd” fashion sense. In that case, what you’d next expect next would be a Playboy pictorial, and you’d have been right. But I digress.)

Instead of trotting out a plaintiff’s attorney and a long list of the successful flights he has enjoyed while racking up an estimated half-million worldwide air miles in pursuit of his livelihood, Mr. Tuitel has agreed to work with the folks at US Airways to revisit their policy on passengers with disabilities.

He’s not filing a discrimination suit. He’s not even angry.

Instead, he’s proving that his philosophy of “handicapitalism” — a word he coined more than 10 years ago — is the positive solution to an unfortunate reality.

Mr. Tuitel speaks and writes a message of sheer ability. He defines handicapitalism as the motto that inspires him to participate in a barrier-free world, earn and spend his own money, overcome the obstacles he faces while asking for help when he needs it, and give back to the community he loves.

Mr. Tuitel refuses to be a victim of US Airways, cerebral palsy or life’s circumstances. His message of empowerment is just what America needs in these frustrating times.

So thanks, US Airways, for kicking Johnnie Tuitel off that plane and into my newsfeed. He made my day.

Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

Mr. Clementi was the apparent victim of an invasion of privacy, as a fellow student reportedly used a hidden camera to stream Mr. Clementi’s sexual liaison over the Internet. The humiliation of this incident led to his decision to end his life by jumping off a bridge.

The nation is reeling from this and several other recent suicides attributed to ongoing bullying and harassment. Meanwhile, news stories of more incidents of bullying are becoming as regular as the weather report.

To wit: Monday’s headlines included this from CBSPhilly.com: “Delaware Teen Knocks Over Portable Toilet With Boy Inside.”

This time, according to the report, a 14-year-old bully threatened a group of 7-year-olds in a Newark, Del., park until one of them, in an attempt to defuse the threats, complied with the bully’s demand that he enter a portable toilet. The older boy then knocked over the toilet, leaving the younger child screaming and covered in human waste.

Reports say the bully laughed and walked away while the victim’s young companions scurried to get their pal out of the unit and find help.

Just as reports of bullying seem to be on the rise, so are advice columns telling parents how to deal with this destructive behavior. The headline of one sent to me this week by the parenting website Momlogic.com caught my eye: “What if your kid’s the bully?”

Assuming anyone whose child truly is a bully ever reads parenting advice columns (doubtful), you would hope this column would do some good. But what I found in it is the same pop-psychology message that has undermined the development of conscience and character for at least a generation — the “feel good” parenting advice to “condemn the behavior, not your child.”

The article says parents should define bullying as “unacceptable,” but it discourages parents from couching the issue in terms our children need most of all: Bullying reflects that you are bad.

Supposedly, bullies behave aggressively toward others because they themselves lack self-esteem or because they seek to fulfill a need for power that perhaps is missing at home. They ought to be excused to a degree because they act only on emotional needs for which they’re not responsible. Therefore, the expert says, don’t make matters worse. Rather than condemn the bully, teach him to be empathetic toward others, especially those who are different.

Regarding such advice I say: Thanks, parenting expert, for helping our society raise the kinds of kids who would force a 7-year-old into a portable potty only to knock it over. Which is to say, thanks for helping perpetuate an increase of bad kids.

Because of “expert” advice such as this, we’re so consumed with protecting the feelings and self-esteem of our children — even bullies — that as a society, we’ve adopted the worst habits of the most unskilled parents. There’s a huge difference between telling a child, “I love you unconditionally” and saying, “You are always good, even if you do bad things.” The first statement should be nonnegotiable, but the second is a lie.

It’s time to re-connect children’s behavior to their character. The parents of bullies need to condemn both their children’s actions and the character it reflects by speaking the truth: “You are turning into a bad boy. Your words and actions are mean, and they prove that you have developed a cruel and unkind heart.”

But that’s not all. Children also must learn repentance (much more effective than empathy — and also the path to genuine respect for others, after all). To help this happen, parents of bullies should lovingly say, “Together, we need to start over to teach you right from wrong so that you can show me and the whole world that you are a good person. Anyone can go from bad to good. It’s a decision only you can make, and it will be reflected in your actions.”

But hey, I’m no expert; I’m just a mom.

Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

But while we mingled casually with her friends and their families, the students at Rutgers University were forced to entertain an unwelcome visitor to their campus: Grief.

Last week, Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi learned he had been videoed without his knowledge while engaged in a gay sexual encounter in the privacy of his dorm room. Authorities say the videographers were his roommate, Dharun Ravi, and another student, Molly Wei. Mr. Raviset up a camera in the room so that he and Miss Wei could stream the video live online, police said.

Upon learning of his exploitation, Mr. Clementi sought redress through university housing authorities but apparently was emotionally unable to accept the public humiliation to which he had been subject. HisFacebook status, “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry,” conveys in its brevity his helpless desperation.

Mr. Clementi‘s tragic suicide left a heartbroken family and a bewildered community that struggles to understand why a shy, unassuming, accomplished person was the target of such a despicable invasion of privacy.

The quick and politically expedient answer is that he was gay. Public outcry from every corner —including from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and entertainer Ellen DeGeneres — has focused on the fact of his nonconforming sexuality as the reason Mr. Clementi was targeted.

In fact, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocates, employing the radical left’s go-to strategy, “Never let a crisis go to waste,” point to Mr. Clementi‘s death and several other recent gay-teen suicides as proof that we must institutionalize LGBT awareness and acceptance training at every stage of a child’s education in order to prevent bullying of gay students.

But the theory — that kids will cease to belittle student of nonconforming sexuality because of early sensitivity training — will only put more teens and young adults at risk of bullying, depression and suicide. Kids don’t need to be taught about sexual preference. They need to be taught right from wrong.

I don’t believe Mr. Clementi‘s roommate and another friend invaded his privacy to stream his sexual encounter online because he was gay. Early evidence suggests both students have a history of accepting gay friends and essentially were amused by Mr. Clementi‘s sexuality.

They did it because they have no conscience.

The question we should be asking in the aftermath of this tragedy isn’t, “How can we protect gay students?” It’s, “What kind of person would do such a thing to another human being?”

Our hypersexual culture promotes sexual awareness and activity — for both gay and straight adolescents — far too soon. The far left’s insistence on comprehensive sexual education isn’t protecting children and teens, but rather is promoting the emotionally powerful experience of sex to an immature and morally inept generation. Even in some elementary schools across the nation, the left seeks to establish programs that encourage students to acknowledge homosexuality in themselves or others long before children have the maturity to do so.

Meanwhile, as revealed every two years in the Josephson Institute’s longitudinal survey of American teenagers, our nation’s youth lack the moral compass and ethical maturity to know that some behaviors are always wrong, no matter whom you target.

It’s not about gay kids being bullied. It’s about all kids learning and conforming to a societal standard of decency and civility that would result in genuine respect for others. And it’s about learning a behavior code in which the bullying of another person would be unthinkable.

If we buy into the knee-jerk reaction that what’s needed is more sexual education and greater advocacy of the gay agenda, we’re selling short all kids, gay and straight. What they need instead is character education.

The right response to this appalling episode is to halt sexuality education in favor of developing in our young people the one thing that would protect every child from heartless bullying: A conscience.

Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

Instead, when Assistant Principal Tim Kotch cued up the PowerPoint slides provided by an employee of Central Blood Bank, the giant screen was filled with gay porn. It gives new meaning to the term “flash drive,” doesn’t it?

Reports say it took somewhere between 15 and 30 seconds for the images to register in the minds of the large audience, and then for the assistant principal to pull the plug on the graphic photographs. Astonishingly, the guy from the blood bank actually took the microphone and gave his talk about donating blood, which students say they’ll now never forget.

But parents are justifiably upset, and the Central Blood Bank understands this. Officials there suspended the employee and sent a letter of apology to parents.

The school district also is upset, communicating its concern in a letter to parents as well. Offering its “sincerest apologies” for the incident, administrators said, “We find this incident inexcusable and are taking every measure we can to ensure that the investigation is carried out with the utmost fidelity.”

While the folks in western Pennsylvania grapple with the damaging effects of inadvertent exposure to pornography, parents in Helena, Mont., continue their fight to protect their children from the deliberate exploitation of an aggressive “comprehensive” sexuality-education program still in development.

The proposed program made headlines this past spring because it intends to teach children as young as kindergartners some very specific — arguably graphic — information about human sexuality. This week, revisions to the plan are being presented, with a goal of adoption in the coming month.

So far, the Helena public school system has released only the “critical competencies” that will inform the creation of the actual curriculum. “Competencies” are the educational outcomes that educators expect kids to achieve when the teaching is complete.

For example, kindergartners will be able to “appreciate the uniqueness of the individual and the way in which people are the same and different” and “recognize that people express love differently to their parents, families and friends.” Seems innocuous enough, until you realize that they’re going to explicitly teach information that many parents either don’t yet want their 5-year-olds to learn, or want to teach at home in the context of their moral and religious beliefs.

In the first grade, outcomes include the ability to “understand [that] human beings can love people of the same gender and people of another gender,” which means forthright lessons about homosexuality for 6-year-olds.

By the fifth grade, a critical competency of the Helena sexuality-education program is to “understand that sexual intercourse includes but is not limited to vaginal, oral, or anal penetration; using the penis, fingers, tongue or objects.” This educational outcome is repeated in every grade level from fifth through 12th grade (apparently, unlike gay porn in Pennsylvania, it’s not expected to be memorable enough to remain in students’ collected knowledge base).

Keep in mind that most fifth-graders are 10 years old. Some child-development specialists believe forcing such young children to endure lesson plans that present such graphic material constitutes child abuse.

But for our nation’s largely leftist teaching establishment — the folks who train teachers and develop this kind of curriculum — “competency” is actually defined as a progressive belief system about sex and sexuality, so exploiting childhood innocence is worth the result.

Parents in Pennsylvania reacted with appropriate outrage when a careless community speaker accidentally violated their teens’ innocence.

Parents in Montana — and across the country, for that matter — need to be equally outraged that the innocence of our nation’s children is gradually being sacrificed in the name of “comprehensive” (read: progressive) sexuality education.

Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

“Rules?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I figured since the parent meeting at school was mandatory, they must be telling you about all sorts of new rules.”

“Nope,” I reassure him. “Same rules as before.”

He can’t imagine what administrators and parents would need to discuss if not some sort of complex rubric to define the various rings of hell one might be required to visit in the event of a behavioral lapse.

I explain that the meeting wasn’t about school policy, but rather about the school’s mission. “You might say it was a mission-effectiveness seminar for parents,” I say.

He glazes over and then says, “Huh? Well, good night.”

My son doesn’t get it, but that’s OK. As a high school junior, he can’t appreciate that his education is, for his teachers and me, a mission — something we deliberately set out to do, with goals and strategies to help him succeed.

On the other hand, we parents are supposed to understand the connection between our children’s intellectual, emotional and spiritual growth and the opportunities they will have in life for happiness, fulfillment and success.

Taking the long view is precisely our job. It’s why we get paid the big money.

Oh, wait. There’s no money in it; just the intrinsic rewards that come from knowing you’ve fulfilled your obligation to be the best parent you can to the children God has put in your care.

Unless … you recently enrolled your son or daughter for the first time at the troubled Jefferson Elementary School in St. Louis. In that case, you will get paid — $300 per student, to be exact — simply to assure that your child has near-perfect attendance and that you participate in a minimum of three parent/teacher meetings in the first semester.

A nonprofit called Urban Strategies offers the program. Working in partnership with a private developer of affordable housing, Urban Strategies has since 1978 sought to rebuild faltering neighborhoods by introducing creative solutions that empower community residents. The enrollment incentive program is meant to attract nearby families to their neighborhood school, rather than choose charter or magnet schools in other parts of the city.

On the one hand, it’s laudable to want to rescue a neighborhood school. But less than 15 percent of Jefferson’s students passed last year’s Missouri Assessment Test. You have to wonder if the benefit of a cash payment at the end of the semester is worth the risk that your child will be among the 85 percent of students who are not being well-educated.

The Urban Strategies program is but one of countless incentive plans aimed at improving student behavior and parent participation through cash rewards. Based on an extensive study of such programs for students in four major U.S. cities, researchers at Harvard University found that while some may improve classroom behavior, most don’t make a difference on standardized test results. The effectiveness of programs for parents is less clear.

I confess these educational incentive programs chafe me. Education is a privilege to be protected. Parents who won’t take responsibility for their children’s schooling ought to be held accountable for the negligence they exhibit, not bribed to get in the game.

The American public education system used to be one of the best in the world. For all of my adult life, it seems as a society we’ve been chasing our tails trying to figure out why it doesn’t work the way it used to, or the way it should.

I’m not sure we need more reams of research to accept that we’ve created a monster of mediocrity.

When you can’t fire bad teachers because of tenure and union protections, and you can’t get parents to participate even nominally in the education of their own children, it doesn’t matter how many billions of dollars you spend on education.

Children will be inadequately educated, and the country will pay the price.

Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

One week we’ll be dealing with financial worries, and the sermon is about trusting God to provide everything we need, even if we can’t quite see how that’s possible.

Another week will find us stressed by too many obligations and commitments, and we’ll hear a lesson reminding us “From everyone to whom much is given, much will be required” (Luke 12:48).

Either the stuff we’re dealing with is universal, or someone is feeding talking points to the padres.

This week, Father Joe displayed his typical, uncanny insight into my family’s spiritual challenges. How did he know we’re getting a little tired of spending so much time together, sharing bathrooms and cars, wondering when someone else will take a turn to replace the shampoo or fill up the tank?

Must be my family isn’t the only one counting the days until school starts. Either that or short tempers are serendipitously part of the liturgical calendar. Father Joe challenged us with the words of the late Pope John Paul II to “act as we wish we felt.” Basing his lesson on the seminal work “The Acting Person” by the late pontiff, Father Joe reminded us that rising above our own selfishness and self-interest, even in little things, can lead us to heroic acts of love.

Now, let’s not tell Father Joe, but my mind wandered just a bit while he was talking. I didn’t stray from the topic, mind you. But I’m sure he wanted me to reflect on my own behavior and not on the antics of one Steven Slater, erstwhile steward for JetBlue Airways.

Mr. Slater is America’s new celebrity because of his actions at the conclusion of JetBlue‘s Flight 1052 on Aug. 9. After claiming to have endured a final indignity of rude behavior on the part of a passenger, he delivered a cuss-filled rant over the aircraft’s public address system, grabbed two beers and his suitcase and then exited the plane via the emergency inflatable slide.

When his “Take This Job and Shove It” moment made the press, he became a folk hero. Within a few days, a Facebook fan page for him had garnered tens of thousands of members — there are more than 210,000 as of Tuesday — and he was the subject of a musical tribute on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” among other noteworthy accolades.

Now there’s talk of a TV reality show in which Mr. Slater would help people quit their jobs. Pretend you’re surprised.

Not everyone was impressed.

Mr. Slater was arrested for illegally enabling the emergency chute and improperly exiting the airport, and he faces the prospect of jail time. Investigators so far have not found anyone to corroborate his story about a disrespectful passenger and instead have found lots of people who say he was the rude one — treating several people discourteously from the time they boarded the plane.

Yet Mr. Slater is the “everyman” for a disheartened American working class.

True, we’re a stressed-out country that is drained from worrying about our finances and our jobs. And we’re sick of putting up with the rude behavior that seems to be our new national norm.

But I’ll bet we all can name a dozen people who, despite their stress, remain cheerful and act with kindness and patience, no matter how others behave.

It’s disappointing that a guy like Mr. Slater has evoked the sympathies of our emotionally immature culture. The real heroes are the people who act as they wish they felt, lovingly and patiently toward the people God has put on their paths.

Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

Sometimes, lessons in parenting come in subtle but significant moments. “What is cauliflower?” was the moment I realized I hadn’t done enough to incorporate a variety of fruits and vegetables into our family’s diet.

I’d been under the misguided impression that children simply wouldn’t eat Brussels sprouts or edamame or hummus. When I started buying those things, sure enough I proved myself wrong. Children will eat anything, especially if they’re hungry.

Much attention now is focused on the eating habits of American children, thanks in large measure to Michelle Obama’s campaign to raise awareness of the serious problem of childhood obesity. I applaud her interest in the issue, as she’s using her platform to draw attention to a crucial public health problem.

Unfortunately, enthusiasm for Mrs. Obama’s obesity agenda is causing some folks to apply the typical, knee-jerk government solutions to a problem that government cannot solve. It’s also ironic because our government is even more bloated than our citizenry.

For example, states and localities are hot for an excise tax on sugary sodas as a means to discourage their consumption, even though the benefits of such a tax are theoretical at best. According to economic research from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, “Taxes on sugar-sweetened soft drinks do not necessarily advance the overall public interest, may be regressive in nature, and hardly ever work as intended.”

Come to think of it, that never stopped governments from raising taxes before, so I guess it won’t stop a punitive soda tax.

Since we know that obesity represents a serious public health issue, already accounting for at least 10 percent of health care spending (and slated to climb to as much as 30 percent), we clearly need to put ourselves on a diet. Get to know our societal head of cauliflower, as it were.

But in a free-market economy, that means government needs to get out of the way and, rather than attempt to regulate our personal behavior, create incentives for businesses to make money by promoting healthier lifestyles.

For example, Mrs. Obama has noted the problem of “food deserts” — urban and rural areas without adequate fresh-food outlets. Rather than impose new or larger taxes to fund subsidies of “desert grocers,” we ought to give tax breaks to grocers that set up shop in these areas. If there’s a role for government, it’s to keep neighborhoods safe for businesses to conduct commerce.

Creative approaches also include tax benefits for grocers that install demonstration facilities to teach shoppers how to cook fresh food and for companies that partner with schools to provide healthy, fresh food for children’s meals.

If there’s a way to make money by fighting obesity, corporate America ultimately will do it. This approach helps the economy a whole lot more than soda taxes that governments will misappropriate, to be sure.

Americans are fortunate that someone is leading the charge to improve our nation’s health. It’s British chef Jamie Oliver. The 2010 recipient of the TED Prize for innovation, Mr. Oliver says we will overcome our national weight problem by rebooting our approach to food, learning and sharing a love of healthy food preparation, and applying some simple and inexpensive principles.

He also believes that as America’s waistline goes, so goes the world’s.

Check out his TED acceptance speech for the best 20 minutes you’ll ever find on the issue of obesity in the U.S. at www.jamieoliver.com/about/jamie-oliver-videos.

Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

For example, the New York Times last week carried an interesting story by Randall Stross titled, “Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality,” in which the author previews an upcoming scientific paper on the effects of home computers on the educational outcomes of low-income students.

The study’s authors — professors from the University of Chicago and Columbia University — used fieldwork from a Romanian computer voucher program to prove that low-income students who received home computers actually achieved lower test scores than students who applied for, but did not receive, the vouchers.

Here’s the part where we could pocket some research grant money: Mr. Stross quotes researcher Ofer Malamud as saying, “We found a negative effect on academic achievement. I was surprised, but as we presented our findings at various seminars, people in the audience said they werent surprised, given their experiences with their school-aged children.”

Who needs stark regression discontinuity to establish something that any competent, responsible parent can tell you over a cup of Starbucks? If you’re trying to raise a well-educated, well-rounded child, you need to limit — not increase — the time he spends on the home computer.

Of course, now that there’s scientific research to prove the point, will educators and government bureaucrats take notice?

After all, much is being made of the “digital divide” between the haves and the have-nots, especially children of low-income families who do not own home computers. Such students are condemned to use school computer labs or (gasp!) access the Internet on free computers at the public library. Improving access for all students is assumed to be necessary in order to level the playing field of educational opportunity.

In fact, assumptions on the part of educational experts about the need for greater Internet access are behind the Obama administration‘s push to provide free high speed broadband to low-income rural homes. (Dial-up is simply insufficient if a poor child is to keep up in a 21st-century global economy).

Yet this study contradicts the knee-jerk solution of resolving an inequity with government dollars. In fact, it’s just one more example of a cure that makes the disease even worse.

The research showed that low-income students who received home computers didn’t use them to enhance their schooling, but rather, used them to play games. (Act surprised). Their scores in three academic subjects actually declined, but at least their proficiency in computers was measurably higher, so I guess the experiment wasn’t a total loss if what you’re looking for is a generation of low-income computer gamers.

The unvarnished truth is that the digital divide isn’t what’s holding back America’s underprivileged children. The real problem is a discipline divide. Regardless of socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity or religion, where there are strong, skilled, supervising parents, you will find successful students. And where there aren’t, you’ll find gamers.

It’s time to stop throwing money, technology and excuses at poor children and calling it education. The only way to close any sort of gap is to stop selling kids short on competent teachers who are committed to imparting knowledge and skills rather than using the classroom to affect “social justice,” and to hold their parents accountable for the privilege of a free public education.

A well-educated person — no matter what his economic background — will figure out how to get a computer in his home and use it to his advantage.

On the other hand, an uneducated child who gets a computer will use it to find www.freegamesonline.com and while away the hours that most certainly would be better spent turning the pages of a book.

Maybe I should start applying for research grants.



Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

My college freshman almost had me convinced that I ought to change the house rules for her younger sister.

The logic sounded reasonable, the timing seemed right, and I could almost envision myself jumping into the minivan and driving to the cellular store to pick out an inexpensive cell phone for Amy, my 12-year-old.

Then, in a fit of common sense, I spent 20 minutes on one of those Mommy-blogger sites. Simply perusing the headlines reminded me of all the reasons why we don’t get cell phones for our children until they hit high school. Ditto for Facebook.

“There’s no 3 in texting,” one story is headlined. “A new way to monitor kids on Facebook,” is another. “How to REALLY talk to your kids about cyberbullying,” offers another.

Not to mention all the stories about teens, tweens, technology and sex, an alarming connection in today’s culture.

Now, before you get defensive and start telling me all the reasons why these things are safe and appropriate for our children, know that I’m not judging your house rules. We’re just not changing ours.

Perhaps my husband and I are subjecting our daughter to an “Amish Lockdown” (her phrase, not ours), but she’s well-adjusted enough to joke about it. And besides, we still have a land line that rings often enough to keep her busy.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “my parents are forcing me to live in the Dark Ages” and 10 being “kegger at my house this weekend,” we’re firmly at about a 4. Some days even a 5.

But when it comes to the technology that provides greater freedom from our supervision, our middle schooler really is deprived.

We’d rather she wait for an age-appropriate privilege than spend our days and nights monitoring her every move.

Supervising kids and technology is even harder during the summer months. A new crop of mom-blog posts now warns parents about idle tweens and teens spending summer vacation time sending “sext” messages, engaging in cyberbullying or broadcasting details about their whereabouts over social-networking sites.

Not enough to worry about during the workday? Perhaps while you’re plowing through the “in” box on your computer, your son or daughter is enduring the threat of “textual harassment.” (No, I didn’t make that up.) This is when someone hounds or stalks another via text messages – a particularly scary factor in tween and teen dating abuse.

Yet the market saturation of cell phones for children and teens (80 percent of U.S. children older than 12 have a phone) as well as the astronomical number of tweens with social-networking profiles (25 percent of children ages 8 to 12, according to one study) indicates that even if parents have misgivings as I do, they aren’t using those reservations to inform their house rules.

There’s no question that teens and tweens are using all this technology in destructive ways. Nearly a quarter of 11- to 14-year-olds report they’ve engaged in sexting — sending or receiving sexually explicit photos or content on their cell phones. The percentage is higher for older teens.

Ironically, one of the first reasons most parents give for arming their children with cell phones is personal safety. Given the statistics on sexting, I’d say that’s backfiring for some families.

The trends are forcing parents to spend a lot of time supervising and, if not, wading through the consequences of immaturity and bad judgment on the part of their unsupervised children.

Thankfully, when that wave of flexibility washed over me, I approached my husband and said, “I’m thinking we could relent and let Amy get a cell phone this year. Maybe for her birthday. It’s only five or six months ahead of schedule.”

He lifted an eyebrow and kept working.

And with that, I sat down and surfed some Mommy-blogger sites for a dose of reality to remind myself why we do what we do at our house.

For now, “Amish Lockdown” remains in effect. Fortunately, I’m certain she’ll survive.



Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

For example, “Comedy Central’s ‘JC’ to Depict Cartoon Jesus” announces an animated show in development for the cable network that would portray Jesus Christ as a “regular guy” who moves to New York to “escape his father’s enormous shadow.” Reports say, “His father is presented as an apathetic man who would rather play video games than listen to his son talk about his new life.”

Of course, that story only demonstrates that in America we protect freedom of expression, even if it potentially offends more than 80 percent of the citizenry that is resolutely Christian.

A more dangerous and disturbing story this week is titled, “Senior citizens told they can’t pray before meals.” In Port Wentworth, Ga., patrons of the Ed Young Senior Center, owned by the city of Port Wentworth but operated contractually by Senior Centers Inc., were told they could observe a moment of silence, but not pray aloud before eating their federally subsidized food.

The folks at Senior Centers, Inc. interpreted the guidelines issued by the state Office on Aging to prohibit the free and open expression of faith simply because $5.45 worth of the $6 per plate meal is paid for with federal funds.

No wonder Comedy Central thinks God is apathetic.

One solution for the seniors of Port Wentworth might have been to announce, “We are now going to bless the .55 worth of food on the plate that was not provided by the government.”

But instead, Mayor Glenn “Pig” Jones asked his senior constituents to be patient while he put his legal counsel on the question. Within a few days, the state’s Office on Aging clarified that their guidelines do not prohibit citizens from joining together to pray aloud; they only prohibit city employees or employees of the service provider from leading the patrons in prayer.

“We now know that the rules were misinterpreted. There’s no language to say people cannot bless their meals, only that city workers or those contracted by the city cannot ask everyone to bow their heads for a blessing,” Mr. Jones says.

Meanwhile, Senior Centers Inc., released a statement they were only following instructions, and that they’re pleased to confirm that the state’s new director of aging has “reversed” the long-time edict against verbal prayer, a rule that had not been enforced until last week.

This is the nonsensical world in which we live — and in which our children are growing to believe that public prayer is actually outlawed. You have to wonder how, as a nation, we will come to anything but total secularism when our right to free speech seems more often to extend to those who want to bash religion than to those who seek to practice it?

In his new book, “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tackles the misunderstanding of our Constitution’s establishment clause, which causes improper rules such as the one briefly imposed in Port Wentworth.

“Among some Americans … it has become unchallenged conventional wisdom that the First Amendment’s establishment clause — ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion’ — means the U.S. government must purge all religion from public life. … [This argument] is fatally flawed because America’s historic conception of rights is clearly dependent upon a higher moral order than the laws of man. … How then can a purely secular worldview account for the original American understanding of our rights and freedoms? It cannot.”

But what’s the point of imposing secularism?

Mr. Gingrich explains that the left “shares a vision of a secular, socialist America run for the interests of the political machine that keeps them in power. It will be an America where government dominates the people, rather than represents them.”

Simply put, a faithful people will resist the intrusion of the government into their lives, while a secular society will embrace government as its supreme authority. That shift is essential to the “remaking” of America now under way.

Except, it seems, in places like Port Wentworth, where they’re still praying over their chicken and rice and they know God is far from apathetic.

Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

Recently, however, owing to his incessant habit of rapid growth, my 15-year-old son needed new shoes. Thus, I found myself in the chain store Journeys, where one finds all manner of casual footwear, including styles even a mother can approve.

The Journeys store at my mall is well-managed and well-staffed. The salespeople are truly some of the friendliest, most attentive and most competent I’ve found in a store that caters to young shoppers.

Still, I can’t look these guys in the face. This is because despite their pleasant demeanor, every member of the sales team is pierced and tattooed in the extreme. They even sport “gauged” ear lobes — piercings that stretch the lobe to resemble elephant ears.

So gross.

So I adopt a strategy I have dubbed “Product Scrutiny.” Basically, I focus all my attention on the shoes under consideration as though I have never before bought footwear.

On our recent visit to Journeys, it happened they offered a freebie — a hat — for which we qualified by virtue of the size of our purchase. Two pairs of shoes, two packs of socks, tell the folks what they’ve won.

When the salesman shows us the free hat, I say, “Hmmm, I think the only time this style works is in the Cuban military or with a Che Guevara T-shirt.”

My son nods in agreement as we both conclude the hat will go directly to the Halloween closet.

But my comment isn’t lost on our salesguy, who offers cheerfully, “We have Che T-shirts!”

I say, “But he was a cold, brutal killer and the chief henchman for Fidel Castro. Why put him on a T-shirt?”

To which the young man responds, “Hey, viva la revolution. I dont like to live in the past.”

I can’t leave it at that, so I say, “Even in the present, he remains a heinous murderer. Being dead and all, he can’t exactly rehabilitate himself.”

Transaction complete, my son and I walk to the mall exit, and Jimmy listens to me rant about the magnitude of idiocy and ignorance that seems to permeate an entire generation.

How have we become a culture that thinks it is cool to wear T-shirts and caps glorifying a brutal mass murderer who helped to oppress a society with the scourge of communism? How have our young people adopted a philosophy as vapid and useless as “I don’t like to live in the past”?

And what happens to a culture whose youth are so uninformed and uneducated?

Unfortunately, according to a recent study by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, we’re going to find out. A few weeks ago it released the results of an annual survey of college freshman and seniors, in which 14,000 incoming and outgoing college students were given a 60-question civics test.

Half of the incoming freshmen failed the test, and worse, only 54 percent of graduating seniors passed. The schools that did the worst — that is, their graduating seniors actually scored worse than they did as freshmen — were among the nation’s most elite schools.

Another important finding, though, is that four years of college influences students’ opinions on a few popular yet polarizing issues: Abortion, gay marriage, prayer in schools, the divinity of the Bible and the opportunity to succeed in America. That the influence regarding these issues is resoundingly liberal is so obvious as to be a cliche.

So there’s the answer to a couple of my questions. We’re a culture whose young people think Che is cool because “The Communist Manifesto” is required reading for thousands of college freshmen, but not “The Federalist Papers” or even the U.S. Constitution. They’ve adopted a vapid “live for today” philosophy because they don’t learn the history of our government or anyone else’s.

What happens to such a culture?

Only time will tell.

Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

She’s been in a medically induced coma since the day of the attack. Doctors report she isn’t getting any worse, but she isn’t getting better either.

The story made headlines because another 15-year-old beat Miss Ratley — a high school boy named Wayne Treacy — who became angry over text messages sent to him by Josie Lou disparaging Treacy’s late brother, who committed suicide last fall.

The texts prompted Treacy to announce to friends that he planned to kill the girl, and by all accounts that’s what he intended when he pounded her head on the concrete sidewalk several times, and then kicked her repeatedly with his steel-toed boot.

The two teens didn’t actually know one another. In fact, Treacy almost attacked the wrong girl until his girlfriend directed him to Miss Ratley.

According to reports, Miss Ratley had allowed the boy’s 13-year-old girlfriend — a schoolmate — to communicate with Treacy by using her cell phone for text messages.

One report indicates Miss Ratley found the nature of the relationship between Treacy and her friend inappropriate and said so in texts to Treacy, which escalated into the insensitive and unkind message she apparently sent regarding the boy’s late brother.

Treacy has been charged with attempted first-degree murder. He’s being held in a juvenile detention center while authorities decide whether to charge him as an adult. His girlfriend also has been charged as an accessory to attempted murder. (Her name has been withheld due to her age).

Meanwhile, as she waits at her daughter’s bedside for an outcome that looks increasingly bleak, Miss Ratley’s mother, Hilda, bravely urged the public not to let the event simply pass by, but to use it as a teachable moment.

A magnanimous sentiment, but just what should the lesson of this teachable moment be?

As you might expect, the incident set off an explosion of Internet comment on the proper use of texting for tweens and teens, cyberbullying, school-security issues, anger management for youngsters and, of course, the role of the U.S. Department of Education in curbing school-based violence.

I’ve read dozens of stories about how to instruct kids on the dangers of anonymous communication such as is allowed by cell phones, instant messages and social-networking sites. The point of these articles — presented neatly in bullet-pointed lists — is that there’s a short and sweet formula to get kids to behave in a certain way.

You’re almost convinced as you read them that there’s a magic potion — a perfect combination of phraseology and timing — that will produce in our youth the maturity, knowledge, understanding and desire to use technology more responsibly and thoughtfully or to resolve their differences calmly and rationally.

Never mind that the girl got the stuffing beat out of her. Let’s focus on how she might have sent more sensitive text messages, as if poor communication skills are the root cause of school-based violence.

The problem isn’t that kids don’t know how to behave. It’s that kids don’t know how to be.

Dr. Michele Borba, author of more than 20 parenting and education books including “Don’t Give Me That Attitude,” says, “Bad attitudes are far more deadly than mere behaviors because they are more entrenched and are kids’ operating beliefs for life.” America’s youth aren’t suffering a lack of awareness on how to act responsibly or thoughtfully toward others; they’re suffering from bad attitudes — a lack of character and virtue to guide their behavior.

Or as my 12-year-old daughter put it when I told her about this story (using the teachable moment, as Mrs. Ratley urged), “What kinds of people DO that?”

Indeed.

What kind of person sends a cruel message about a boy’s dead brother? What kind of person kicks another human being in the head again and again and again until she’s near death?

Sadly, the heart of the answer is in the heart of the person. In a teachable moment, the condition of the heart is the lesson.



Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

For example, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared on March 10, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

And during a meeting of the House Rules Committee on Saturday, Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida admitted, “When the deal goes down, all this talk about rules … we make ‘em up as we go along.”

With this sort of honesty from representatives in Congress, it’s actually shocking that as much as 64 percent of the voting public strongly disapproves of the job they are doing.

Though the bill has been signed into law, the debate about the merits of the legislation continues.

In particular, proponents on both sides of the abortion issue question the compromise gesture of an executive order to limit federal funding of abortion, the solution that enabled Rep. Bart Stupak and other pro-life Democrats to join their party in passing the bill despite the lack of legislative language limiting federally funded abortion services.

Pro-life advocates note that an executive order is easily reversed and expect that President Obama will do so when the furor over health reform subsides. Pro-abortion advocates fear the executive order represents “a significant rollback in reproductive rights,” a concern expressed by Jehmu Greene of the Women’s Media Center, appearing on Fox News.

“Bart Stupak had an agenda,” Ms. Greene said, “to have the government intrude, to come into my home and come into your home and insist on a medical decision that the government wants to see happen. Thats not what this bill does.”

Sorry, Ms. Greene. That’s exactly what this bill does. Unfortunately, her myopic focus on abortion rights has blinded her to the reality that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, written in such legalese and jargon as to be virtually indecipherable to most people, nonetheless clearly puts the government in charge of our health decisions in ways we have yet to imagine.

Throughout the behemoth legislation are countless new boards, commissions and oversight bureaus designed to assess quality of care, design “best practices” and force — through incentives and penalties — the implementation of the government’s idea of beneficial health services. Those “best practices” will not necessarily reflect the desires of doctors and patients, but the treatments that pass the government’s cost/benefit analyses.

This is one of the harsh realities of health care reform often cited by experts such as Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and himself a presidential adviser.

Anticipating such interference into their profession, roughly a third of current practicing physicians say they will quit the practice of medicine or retire early in part to avoid the government’s takeover of their decision-making power, according to a study in the March issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

As for the “right” to abortion coverage, the reason to keep it out of the bill isn’t only to protect a huge segment of our society from paying for what we consider the unjust murder of innocent children. Consider that rights typically come with commensurate responsibilities, and in the world of government “best practices,” abortion actually could be mandated.

It’s not as crazy as it sounds. I was 37 when I delivered my fourth child, old enough to be deemed “high risk” for having a baby with certain birth defects. My doctor suggested amniocentesis to rule out genetic abnormalities. Learning that there was nothing that could be done in utero to address any potential problems my baby might have, I declined the test. I knew she might not be in perfect health, but she would be perfect for us regardless. An abortion was out of the question.

Is that a choice every pregnant woman will be able to make in the future, or will high-risk moms automatically be subject to “best practices” that may include aborting a child who knowingly will be born with serious (read: expensive) medical problems?

The same question goes for cancer treatment and transplant surgery and even hip replacement. The right of a patient to choose his or her treatment will soon be subject to the government’s idea of what is “best.”

Begs the question, best for whom?

Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

Pointing to the nearly one-third of U.S. children who are either obese or overweight, the administration will pursue a legislative agenda to support its efforts, expanding the federal school-lunch program by $10 billion over 10 years and spending $400 million to bring grocery stores to so-called food deserts, urban and rural areas without adequate food stores.

So I guess this means we’ll now own the corner groceries, right next to our federally owned and operated car dealerships.

Mrs. Obama comes at the issue as a mother. In interviews, she says her pediatrician pulled her aside and encouraged her to improve her family’s health status by initiating portion control, eliminating high-calorie convenience foods and sugary drinks, and getting her daughters moving with more exercise and less TV time.

She listened to her children’s doctor, and her daughters are healthier for it.

Now, the Obamas have committed themselves to eliminating not only the possibility that their daughters might be overweight, but also the entire nation’s childhood obesity health crisis, in the span of one generation.

No one can argue that this would be a good thing, as obesity is almost entirely preventable and contributes to some of the costliest maladies burdening our health care system.

Yet at the same time, Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative was announced, researchers at Ohio State University released a study that shows three factors most effectively reduce the risk of childhood obesity: eating family meals together several times per week, getting adequate sleep and limiting TV time.

Notably, these highly effective, risk-reducing solutions aren’t likely to be influenced by a multibillion-dollar federal government “investment.” In fact, they rely on exactly the tactics Mrs. Obama used — greater parental supervision and more healthful decision-making for one’s own children.

Good intentions aside, a presidential task force isn’t going to do what millions of American parents already don’t do — namely, pull the plug on the 68 percent of kids with televisions in their bedrooms, or on the average 53 hours per week that “Generations M’s” (8-to-18-year-olds) spend engaged with electronic media.

Nor will the task force change the way most families eat. For decades, our federal government already has offered far-reaching programs for nutrition promotion, food subsidies and disease prevention, and as Mrs. Obama points out, these problems are not going away.

On the other hand, we now have an abundance of government Web sites representing the growing nanny state for personal lifestyle support.

It’s worth a tour of the “.gov” cybersphere to see just how involved our federal bureaucracy is in our daily lives. The subject of nutrition alone already enjoys millions of dollars in government Internet attention — never mind the countless publications, pamphlets and educational programs.

In addition to Mrs. Obama’s new LetsMove.gov Web site, we can learn what and how to eat at teamnutrition.usda.gov, mypyramid.gov (another USDA site), healthymeals.nal.usda.gov (yet another USDA site), nifa.usda.gov (the National Institute of Food and Agriculture/Families, Youth and Communities), cnpp.usda.gov (Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion), and USDA’s Food and Nutrition service at fns.usda.gov, among others.

Clearly, there is nothing about eating that the U.S. government isn’t already telling us, so maybe that’s not the problem.

Mrs. Obama is a concerned mother, and she sets a strong example for those who ought to implement many of her proven and effective parenting strategies. I applaud the use of her platform to urge Americans to face the childhood-obesity issue as a way to do a better job of parenting, period.

That’s because it’s not only an obesity crisis we face; it’s a parenting crisis and a crisis of adulthood that has convinced too many Americans that our federal bureaucracy has an appropriate role in teaching us not just how to eat, but how to live.

Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

Who knew you could burn so many extra calories at the local gym just being humiliated by the content of an ad for designer watches? Thanks to Italian fashion icons Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, we can all cringe with embarrassment while three anorexic-looking twentysomethings engage in the latest TV and advertising fad: Sexual threesomes.

You are probably wondering how sexual perversion and timepieces go together in a television commercial. Me, too.

Apparently the target audience for the brand D&G Time includes promiscuous young adults with upward of $650 to spend on a simple wristwatch. I guess when the watch is all you plan to have on at the end of the day, it had better be special.

According to their Web site, designers Dolce and Gabbana’s “creativity is the foundation of the new D&G Time commercial. … A luxurious period apartment in Paris is the set for a malicious mademoiselle who abandons herself to provocative games, ending in an upper-class menage a trois.” There’s little left to the imagination as the shirtless young men ravage the woman on a settee until “the risque situation is interrupted by her rigorous mother, shocked at the sight of such an impudent display.” (That’s her being shocked in the photo above).

She’s not the only one.

Impudent isn’t the word that came to mind when I was confronted with this unsavory vignette. Indecent is more like it. Incredulous, too. And also incensed.

This advertisement didn’t air after 10 p.m. or on an adult channel, as the Federal Communications Commission requires, but at 10 a.m. during morning chat shows.

According to Parents Television Council President Tim Winter, sexual threesomes now are the rage, in both advertisements and television programming. Earlier this year, PTC successfully campaigned to remove a New York City Calvin Klein billboard with such a depiction spanning the size of building, while the season premier of the teen drama “Gossip Girls” featured a two-episode theme around “three-ways.”

It seems our ability to be shocked now is so limited that advertisers and TV writers need to break through every last taboo in order to feel they’ve “pushed the envelope.” Not that they’ll get me to buy a stinking watch, but whatever.

We parents, who work hard to shelter our children from inappropriate media, often are dismayed that our efforts to protect our kids’ innocence are foiled by advertisers. Families watching wholesome shows or sporting events routinely are sabotaged by commercials such as D&G Time’s, with extreme adult content and sexual situations. By comparison, the embarrassing ads for sexual dysfunction remedies now seem tame.

Why aren’t advertisers subject to the same decency standards as other television programming? Why aren’t there rules to prohibit people like Dolce and Gabbana from polluting our public airways with sexually explicit and inappropriate images targeted to young, impressionable viewers? In fact, the D&G Time ad runs regularly on shows for teens such as the current Fox Broadcasting hit “Glee,” so obviously they’re trying to reach young people.

The answer is, advertisers are subject to those decency standards, but it’s up to the broadcasters – the folks who make money using our public airways – to enforce them by monitoring their advertisers and/or refusing to run offensive commercials. Once again, we need only to follow the money to realize that broadcasters have no incentive to refuse ads simply because they offend us, the viewing audience. They’ll run ads from anyone who will write them a check, and times being what they are, decency be damned.

“Broadcasters haven’t just lowered their standards, they’ve erased them,” Mr. Winter says.

Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

All of these images are captioned, “Take time to be a dad today” and refer to the Web site www.fatherhood.gov.

Positive images of fathers engaging with their children are a welcome message in a culture where families struggle to remain intact and mothers generally bear responsibility for childrearing.

Then again, I’m certain that our Founders are gathered in some corner of heaven wringing their hands and wondering how we evolved into a government that teaches its citizens how fulfill our most basic human responsibilities.

What next? Take time to brush your teeth today? Take time to blow your nose today? Take time to visit the potty today?

There’s a reason they call it a “nanny state.” But sure enough, this ad campaign is a major component of the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC) funded by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Family Assistance (OFA).

It “supports efforts to assist states and communities to promote and support responsible fatherhood and healthy marriage.”

Maybe I’m a cynic, but I think it’s ironic that a government that quite literally is bankrupting our children by incurring incomprehensible trillions of dollars in public debt purports to be concerned about quality parenthood.

No matter. We have plenty of money for this sort of campaign, because after all, it’s intended to go upstream to solve the root cause of other social problems. We know that single parents are at a measurable economic disadvantage as compared with those who are married, and that children who grow up in two-parent families enjoy countless educational, social and psychological benefits compared wih their single-parent peers.

Since the research clearly proves that America would be better off if more couples married and stayed in healthy marriages, and if more children were born to two married parents, and if more fathers were committed to both their wives and their children, it must be the job of the federal government to make it so.

It may be a worthy goal, but I have my doubts about the efficacy of having what is mostly a national advertising campaign to recommit our country to the worthy institution of marriage as a function of the federal bureaucracy.

A report available at www.acf.hhs.gov offers proof, by way of case studies, that federal dollars can and do save marriages and prepare couples for committed family life. The report showcases only “select” grantees with “promising” results, but hey, it’s close enough for government work.

We may be up to our eyeballs in debt, but at least we’re borrowing against our children’s future so that we can shore up their parents’ relationships.

The problem is, there is other research the government seems to ignore. For example, studies prove that men who are churchgoers are more likely to remain married and to be involved with their children than are unchurched men, and that couples whose relationships include a strong religious component are more likely to establish solid, traditional family homes.

Try as we might to avoid the truth, there’s no getting around the fact that family life that is centered on God is simply more stable and more successful.

Rather than spend our tax dollars on ad campaigns, our federal government might do more to eradicate threats to family well-being such as crippling unemployment, burdensome taxes, benefits for remaining unmarried and the scourge of pornography that rots men and marriages from within.

Not as much fun as an ad campaign, but perhaps more effective in the long term.



Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

“Researchers shocked at kids’ online time,” says one. “U.S. kids using media almost 8 hours a day,” another screams. “New media use by children up by hours per week,” another story warns.

Essentially, the news coverage since last week’s unveiling of the updated research on children, teens and the media has focused on the sheer quantity of media consumed by America’s youths, and this is newsworthy, to be sure.

The very idea that children and teens are physically able to absorb more than 53 hours per week of media content — or seven hours and 38 minutes per day — astonished even the researchers, who had thought the previous average of six hours and 21 minutes per day calculated in 2004 represented the maximum amount of time that could be spent.

Even more mind-boggling, thanks to multitasking (using more than one kind of media at a time) children and teens “actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes … worth of media content into those 7½ hours,” the KFF study says. A note to the already astonished: The study didn’t include the time youngsters spend texting via cell phones. Add another 1½ hours per day.

As the mother of four, I wonder if the folks who are surprised by this research have children. It strikes me that only the childless would be shocked by the results. The rest of us spend much of our time saying things like, “Turn off the computer and go to bed.”

Those who wonder how it’s possible that a child can rack up more time using electronic media than most people spend earning a living are perhaps unaware that nearly 70 percent of American children have television sets in their bedrooms. As well, most youngsters personally own computers, gaming systems and, increasingly, mobile devices that provide full access to the Internet. Most important, for most children, there are no rules about when and how they may use their electronics.

According to the study, “Only about three in ten young people say they have rules about how much time they can spend watching TV (28%) or playing video games (30%), and 36% say the same about using the computer. But when parents do set limits, children spend less time with media: those with any media rules consume nearly 3 hours less media per day (2:52) than those with no rules.”

(Rule No. 1: No TV in the bedroom. Duh.)

It’s challenging not only to monitor the amount of time youngsters spend using media, but how they use it as well. According to OnlineFamily.Norton, a monitoring system offered by the Internet security company Symantec, 2009′s top five online search terms for children and teens were YouTube, Google, Facebook, “sex” and “porn.”

Clearly, some of those seven hours using media are unsupervised.

Common sense ought to tell us that there will be cultural repercussions for allowing our children to develop what can only be described as a media obsession.

For example, the KFF study reveals that roughly 75 percent of seventh- to 12th-graders have a profile on a social networking site. Meanwhile, Junior Achievement’s seventh annual teen ethics survey found that those social networking sites have become so central to teens’ lifestyles that more than half (58 percent) “[w]ould consider their ability to access them during working hours when weighing a job offer from a potential employer.”

Um, kids … Google “time theft” and see what you get.

It’s time for us to get over our shock that what is happening right before our eyes is, in fact, happening right before our eyes. Parents (read: we) must teach Generation M to incorporate media into a balanced, healthy, whole life.

As it is, 53 hours a week is just too much.

Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

Perhaps the dark-brown muck oozing its way into the roots of my hair is causing me to doubt my credibility. Perhaps the aluminum foil squares hanging wildly in my face are cutting into my self-confidence.

Or maybe it’s the knowledge that one of the women whose conversation I am overhearing — and whom I dearly wish to admonish — will soon stand over me with a pair of scissors and my hairstyle in her hands.

Whatever the reason, I don’t comment. Instead, I pretend to read a magazine while listening to two women, both mothers of 12-year-old middle school students, lament the difficulties their daughters are having on Facebook.

“I just cannot believe the things these kids write on their walls,” one woman says.

“I know — and in their text messages too,” the other agrees.

Worried about their daughters’ emotional health and about the long-term consequences of rumors, gossip and high-tech teasing, their chatter continues for a solid 15 minutes. It’s a rambling, estrogen-infused diatribe about the indignities of the nasty texts and Facebook comments their daughters endure at the hands of other, meaner middle-schoolers, but also the great parenting strategies they use to make sure their girls do not respond in kind.

“I said, ‘You had better not do that.’”

Masterful. Really.

Oddly, though, at no point in their conversation does either gal question the wisdom or necessity of 12-year-olds participating in social networking sites or of owning and using cell phones to communicate with their 12-year-old posses.

I say “oddly” because this is the first thing that pops into my mind, and the very comment I’d love to blurt out. In fact, what I want to say is, “What hallucinogen are you women taking? Facebook was not created for immature, overemotional, pre-pubescent 12-year-olds.”

Or better, I might say, “Hey, ladies, did either of you read Facebook’s privacy policy that specifically prohibits the participation of children under age 13? Or any newspaper or Web site describing the dangers of children being wired and unsupervised? Because I hate to break it to you, but yours are.”

But again, I don’t say anything because it’s not polite. In fact, commenting on other people’s parenting is considered more than just intrusive or rude; it’s politically incorrect.

The Fort Hood shooting incident taught us the ramifications of political correctness and its impact on our military. For several years, Nidal Hasan made his jihadist political views known to his co-workers and superiors, but since it would be rude to point out the inherent anti-Americanism of his religious and political opinions, the folks who could impede him simply sat there with aluminum foil on their heads.

The result was a “politically correct” tragedy that has changed the lives of more than a dozen families.

Political correctness is wreaking havoc similarly on our nation’s children. The public schools are fraught with bold and bizarre ideas such as “gender education” and graphic sexuality classes that make the former notion of “health” class look like a reading primer from the 1950s.

Curriculum has been hijacked for political purposes, with revisionist history, “climate science” and PC literature at the forefront of the public schools’ outcome-based agenda. Now, the Obama administration is suggesting that children spend even more time in the classroom and less time at home with their parents.

Parents who speak out against the PC establishment that influences their children are labeled bigots or racists or homophobics or prudes, simply because they want to protect their childrens innocence and keep them from indoctrination at the tender age of 11, when, for example, fourth-graders in Massachusetts can be asked to draw pictures of the reproductive sex act.

It’s clear that remaining quiet isn’t serving our children’s interests. We need to worry less about how we’re perceived and more about the generation being raised by people who are politely keeping the truth to themselves.

Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks

My problem is that making resolutions for the New Year feels like entering a perpetual state of Lent, which is sometimes doable for 40 days, but for a lifetime is the definition of hell. Or failure. Or both.

Second, I don’t make resolutions because doing so strikes me as shallow and self-serving. Most resolutions tend to have at their core a benefit only for the one who is resolved. As such, these promises are easily broken, and thus, the probable cause of a spike in chip consumption only a month after the annual rise in sales of exercise apparel.

If the problem with New Year’s resolutions is that they are punishing promises meant to serve only the one who is resolved, then it might follow that resolutions could be more successfully maintained and more useful to society if they were the opposite. They should be easy to do and meant to improve the lot in life of others, not just ourselves.

In fact, I think our entire nation would benefit if American parents were to make five simple New Year’s resolutions. These resolutions are way easier than losing 10 pounds or drinking copious amounts of water each day or turning in library books by their due dates.

Why? Because we parents don’t actually have to do them; our children do.

You may want to get some scissors so you can cut this column out and tape it to the fridge. Ready?

Resolution No. 1: Institute an allowance system and make your kids live within their means. Hard for your kids? Perhaps. But the obvious benefits to you and our nation are irrefutable. Imagine if we raise a generation of people who have learned, from an early age, that when the money is gone, it’s gone. Can you say, “No more bailouts”?

Resolution No. 2: Require your kids to use proper manners. Can you imagine how pleasant your life would be if your children said things like “Please pass the gravy,” “May I have my allowance?” and “Thanks for the new sneakers, mom.” And think of a world in which our children have been taught to patiently wait their turns. Road rage? Forget about it.

Resolution No. 3: Take the TV out of your child’s bedroom. This is an easy one for you. Your child? He’ll get over it. And consider that the simple act of removing the TV will reduce the number of hours your child watches television, increase his sleep time, and even promote imaginative play and reading. It’s like magic, statistically speaking.

Resolution No. 4: Make your children eat dinner at home with you most days. Cheaper for you? Absolutely. And besides, with those improved manners from Resolution No. 2, the experience will be more pleasant than ever. Plus, research shows children who eat at home with their parents get better grades, score higher on standardized tests, use better vocabulary, eat more veggies and get more sleep than kids who don’t eat with mom or dad. Think of all the resolutions your child won’t have to make if you impose this one.

Resolution No. 5: Have more fun. When we encourage our children to enjoy their childhoods and find ways to have fun together, we remedy a whole lot of parenting mistakes which, according to experts, we’re perpetrating by the minute. Fun redeems a multitude of parenting sins.

Who ever thought the New Year could be so resolutely improved?



Copyright 2010 Marybeth Hicks