Thursday, August 18, 2005
Is the American dad obsolete?
By Russell King
This morning, the "Good Morning America" TV show, with an audience of 4.3 million, talked on at leangth about the book Raising Boys without Men by Peggy Drexler. In short, Drexler asserts that not only do boys raised without fathers turn out OK, they even excel at life. I'll pause while you laugh, scream or say impolite words. Men as fathers are not necessary, according to this author. Boys just need a "male role model replacement" and "boys have a way of seeking out on their own."
I confess that I have not read the book. I confess that I am not likely to spend the time or the money to read the book. I confess that I do not need to step into the cowpie to know enough to walk around it.
As the dad -- oops, sorry -- as the parent of a 17-year-old son, I can easily imagine what message he'd hear in this: It's OK to go ahead and sow those wild oats; it's OK for you to create sons without ever being part of their lives; your involvement doesn't matter anyway. Thank goodness he sleeps in until just before he leaves for work, so he'd never get the chance to hear this nonsense.
Here's a quote from the "Good Morning America" website: "In Raising Boys Without Men, research psychologist Dr. Peggy Drexler says that boys raised in households headed by just mothers can grow up emotionally stronger, more empathetic and independent than boys raised in traditional two-parent households. Drexler's book is based on a research study she started in 1996, in which she tracked families headed by a mother and father, families headed by two mothers and single-mother families. She says that her research shows parenting is not anchored to gender; instead, it is either good or deficient. "
Trouble is, Drexler is up against more than two decades of research and thousands of studies that conclude just the opposite. For example:
By Russell King
This morning, the "Good Morning America" TV show, with an audience of 4.3 million, talked on at leangth about the book Raising Boys without Men by Peggy Drexler. In short, Drexler asserts that not only do boys raised without fathers turn out OK, they even excel at life. I'll pause while you laugh, scream or say impolite words. Men as fathers are not necessary, according to this author. Boys just need a "male role model replacement" and "boys have a way of seeking out on their own."
I confess that I have not read the book. I confess that I am not likely to spend the time or the money to read the book. I confess that I do not need to step into the cowpie to know enough to walk around it.
As the dad -- oops, sorry -- as the parent of a 17-year-old son, I can easily imagine what message he'd hear in this: It's OK to go ahead and sow those wild oats; it's OK for you to create sons without ever being part of their lives; your involvement doesn't matter anyway. Thank goodness he sleeps in until just before he leaves for work, so he'd never get the chance to hear this nonsense.
Here's a quote from the "Good Morning America" website: "In Raising Boys Without Men, research psychologist Dr. Peggy Drexler says that boys raised in households headed by just mothers can grow up emotionally stronger, more empathetic and independent than boys raised in traditional two-parent households. Drexler's book is based on a research study she started in 1996, in which she tracked families headed by a mother and father, families headed by two mothers and single-mother families. She says that her research shows parenting is not anchored to gender; instead, it is either good or deficient. "
Trouble is, Drexler is up against more than two decades of research and thousands of studies that conclude just the opposite. For example:
- compared to living with both parents, living in a single-parent home doubles the risk that a child will suffer physical, emotional, or educational neglect;
- boys born to unwed mothers are 2.5 times more likely to become incarcerated;
- a child living in a household absent their father is 32% more likely to smoke, drink, and use drugs; and
- in studies invloving more than 25,000 children, children living with only one parent had lower GPAs, poorer attendance records, and higher drop out rates than students who lived with both parents.
It's not just decades of data that attest to the value of dads, it's life, too. Here's an excerpt from an "American Dad" piece I wrote in September 2003: "My eldest son suffers with several hard-wired emotional disorders for which he has required residential treatment. At the end of one of our visits, I hugged and kissed him goodbye, and one of the other teenage boys at the facility witnessed it. His reaction was an exclamation of pain and longing-- 'Ah!' His head hung and shook, then he said to no one in particular, 'I wish I had a dad.'
"The sound of his voice was the sound of despair, of the kind of suffering that comes when you have a lifelong familiarity with an emptiness you know will never go away. This boy knew something big, something indispensable, something wonderful was missing from his life, and that something was a dad. The hollowness, the craving, the anguish in his voice haunts me.
"His voice tells me something else, too. Take heart, dads: You are more valuable than the kids or the culture can admit, you are more valuable than you can imagine."
Details about Drexler's book (including comments from those who endorse it) can be found at the following link: http://www.peggydrexler.com/raisingboys.htm.
What can you do? Ask Good Morning America to give air time to the other side -- the much more substantial side -- of the story. You can reach them by e-mail here: ttp://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=158076 . Arm yourself with some of the facts that Drexler overlooked: Click here to order your copy of Father Facts 4th edition! (FYI: I don't get a dime from your purchase.)
Just a closing thought: I wonder what the reaction would be if a man had written a book saying that his study shows that mothers are unimportant, perhaps even detrimental, to the lives of their daughters. Just wondering....
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Garbage in, garbage out, and the lust to buy
By Russell King
Last week, when writing about the unhealthy influence of mass media on kids, I mentioned that I think the greatest threats is the indoctrination of our children to the anti-values of consumerism, materialism and greed – an infection I call the "lust to buy." Rhonda and I were talking it over this week, looking for a way to combat this garbage from getting into our kids’ heads. We came up next to empty.
As luck would have it, some other folks – much brighter than I am – were thinking about this, too, and they sent along some ideas to get us started.
They took a look at why the lust to buy is spreading so rapidly among our kids, and they found it’s no accident. Both mass media and marketing have gotten smarter about doing what they do, and they’re making it so a whole lot of hawkers can directly target kids in ways that parents often don't know about and are hard-pressed to control. Some of their tricks go beyond TV ads and turn childhood into a never-ending commercial: tricks like invasive "viral marketing" campaigns that turn children's friendships into word-of-mouth networks for spreading enthusiasm about new products (that is, they’re hiring kids to "talk up" their junk); covert sociological research into children's habits and preferences; and gimmicks such as hybridized "advergames" that disguise brand-building and consumer product research as slick entertainment.
Michele Stockwell, who heads up research on this stuff, says "As tens of thousands of those flickering images melt together into a constant, nagging whisper in children's ears, specific harmful effects can run the gamut from increased parent-child conflicts to strained family budgets, distorted value systems, and both physical and emotional health problems." And if that wasn’t bad enough (which it is): "Part of the commercial bombardment aimed at kids involves products -- including alcohol and tobacco--and content -- such as hyper-violent and sexual images -- supposedly reserved for adults."
The result? They’re cashing in on the more than $200 billion spent each year by kids and creating lifelong customers with highly developed consumer habits. Some of the dominant culture's corrosive influences (the anti-values spelled out last week) exploit children's psychological and cognitive weak spots and push them too quickly into adulthood. (There’s a reason your middle-school daughter looks like she’s 25.)
American dads – and moms – are still the first line of defense against the lust to buy, but we could use some help. Here are a few modest ideas that could give us a hand, at least against the nastiest of the hawkers.
1. Congress should restore the Federal Trade Commission's authority (taken away by Congress in 1980) to regulate unfair advertising to children. Congress should also direct the FTC to investigate the full range of marketing practices aimed at children and create some common-sense rules to protect kids.
2. Corporations should have to tell the world about their marketing practices involving both the advertising of adult entertainment and products in media poplar with youth and the hiring of children to pitch products to their peers.
3. State education departments and local school boards should work to restricting inappropriate commercial activities in public schools though a set of voluntary guidelines, with special attention to elementary schools.
4. The marketing industry should set up for itself clear standards for the involvement of children in product research to protect children's welfare.
5. Congress should strengthen safeguards against the use of children's personal information
for commercial purposes, especially on the Internet.
6. This one is a pipe dream, I know, but can the broadcasting industry be persuaded to create more kid programs – and to make them commercial-free – and can the cable and satellite providers be persuaded to offer family friendly program packages?
Of course, all of these suggestions together won’t make our kids immune to the lust to buy, but they’ll help contain the spread of the bug. Meanwhile, we’ll keep looking for ways to strengthen the kids’ resistance. Let me know if you find any good ideas; we’ll return the favor.
By Russell King
Last week, when writing about the unhealthy influence of mass media on kids, I mentioned that I think the greatest threats is the indoctrination of our children to the anti-values of consumerism, materialism and greed – an infection I call the "lust to buy." Rhonda and I were talking it over this week, looking for a way to combat this garbage from getting into our kids’ heads. We came up next to empty.
As luck would have it, some other folks – much brighter than I am – were thinking about this, too, and they sent along some ideas to get us started.
They took a look at why the lust to buy is spreading so rapidly among our kids, and they found it’s no accident. Both mass media and marketing have gotten smarter about doing what they do, and they’re making it so a whole lot of hawkers can directly target kids in ways that parents often don't know about and are hard-pressed to control. Some of their tricks go beyond TV ads and turn childhood into a never-ending commercial: tricks like invasive "viral marketing" campaigns that turn children's friendships into word-of-mouth networks for spreading enthusiasm about new products (that is, they’re hiring kids to "talk up" their junk); covert sociological research into children's habits and preferences; and gimmicks such as hybridized "advergames" that disguise brand-building and consumer product research as slick entertainment.
Michele Stockwell, who heads up research on this stuff, says "As tens of thousands of those flickering images melt together into a constant, nagging whisper in children's ears, specific harmful effects can run the gamut from increased parent-child conflicts to strained family budgets, distorted value systems, and both physical and emotional health problems." And if that wasn’t bad enough (which it is): "Part of the commercial bombardment aimed at kids involves products -- including alcohol and tobacco--and content -- such as hyper-violent and sexual images -- supposedly reserved for adults."
The result? They’re cashing in on the more than $200 billion spent each year by kids and creating lifelong customers with highly developed consumer habits. Some of the dominant culture's corrosive influences (the anti-values spelled out last week) exploit children's psychological and cognitive weak spots and push them too quickly into adulthood. (There’s a reason your middle-school daughter looks like she’s 25.)
American dads – and moms – are still the first line of defense against the lust to buy, but we could use some help. Here are a few modest ideas that could give us a hand, at least against the nastiest of the hawkers.
1. Congress should restore the Federal Trade Commission's authority (taken away by Congress in 1980) to regulate unfair advertising to children. Congress should also direct the FTC to investigate the full range of marketing practices aimed at children and create some common-sense rules to protect kids.
2. Corporations should have to tell the world about their marketing practices involving both the advertising of adult entertainment and products in media poplar with youth and the hiring of children to pitch products to their peers.
3. State education departments and local school boards should work to restricting inappropriate commercial activities in public schools though a set of voluntary guidelines, with special attention to elementary schools.
4. The marketing industry should set up for itself clear standards for the involvement of children in product research to protect children's welfare.
5. Congress should strengthen safeguards against the use of children's personal information
for commercial purposes, especially on the Internet.
6. This one is a pipe dream, I know, but can the broadcasting industry be persuaded to create more kid programs – and to make them commercial-free – and can the cable and satellite providers be persuaded to offer family friendly program packages?
Of course, all of these suggestions together won’t make our kids immune to the lust to buy, but they’ll help contain the spread of the bug. Meanwhile, we’ll keep looking for ways to strengthen the kids’ resistance. Let me know if you find any good ideas; we’ll return the favor.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Welcome to Assland
By Russell King
File this one under "Wisdom from the mouths of babes." Four-year-old Maya said, "I don't really like Assland."
Rhonda: "What did you say?" Maya: "I don't really like Assland." Rhonda: "What?"
Maya, pointing the TV: "You know: Assland"
The TV was playing the video "Alice in Wonderland." I think the misunderstanding, though, was closer to the truth: TV really is "assland."
"Oh boy," I can hear you saying. "Another nut whining about ‘gay’ cartoon characters." Relax. I’m pretty sure that two-dimensional inanimate combinations of paper and ink do not have sex lives. I am unafraid of Sponge Bob, Burt and Ernie, Buster’s friends in Vermont and the purple Teletubby.
What makes TV fit Maya’s description are the values that are portrayed positively (not merely presented) in so many programs and commercials. Relax again. I’m equally unafraid of gay fashion, desperate housewives and Janet’s breast. Because "values" has been twisted into a word for the fear, bigotry and religion imposed on others by power-hungry fanatics, let me explain.
Dr. David Walsh, author of "Selling Out America's Children: How America Puts Profits before Values and What Parents Can Do," identifies six key values (I call them anti-values) that dominate mass media. It is hard to argue with his list: 1. Happiness is found in having things; 2. Get all you can for yourself; 3. Get it all as quickly as you can; 4. Win at all costs; 5. Violence is entertaining; 6. Always seek pleasure and avoid boredom.
Not one of these six fits with the values Rhonda and I are trying to teach our children, but how do we compete? We know that "garbage in: garbage out" applies to human minds as well as computers, so we try to minimize the kids’ exposure to garbage anti-values, but the odds are against us. We don’t have cable TV and we’re careful about what periodicals get in our door, but there’s still a ton of garbage that seeps in through the cracks.
Dr. Walsh’s six anti-values of the media aren’t the end of the garbage. Being rude, nasty and even cruel is portrayed as cool. Women are either sexual objects to be gawked at or vicious tyrants to be feared or defeated. Blacks are over-sexed, inarticulate lemmings with a talent for violence – the cool ones, anyway. Dads are bumbling, self-absorbed idiots who prefer to live as boys rather than as men. The list goes on.
Finally, even if we could get past the anti-values and stereotypes, I’d still have a problem with the way mass media sucks the creativity and individuality out of young minds, as well as with the effect the dumbing-down of our news media will have (and is having) on our future (and current) citizens, voters and leaders.
Of all the"lions" prowling the den of mass media, eager to devour our little "Daniels," I believe that the focus on and celebration of money, consumerism, materialism and greed is -- by far -- the most dangerous. It is, as the sages tell us, the root of all evil. When the program "Who wants to be a millionaire?" was on, I kept hoping for: "Who wants to be a good person?" When I see my kids playing video games in which the object is to collect wealth, do violence or achieve victory, I hope for a game in which the goal is sainthood, enlightenment or even just inner peace.
"But" we hear in reply "the media give the public what the public wants." More garbage. Show me the "public" that is demanding those six anti-values. Show me the "public" clamoring for stereotypes. The Fox News viewing "public," for instance, is smaller than 1/100th of America. Most of us – the 99/100 of American public – are not getting what we want.
If you’re thinking that the problem of mass media anti-values has gotten worse over the past few years, you’re right. In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. By 1992, fewer than 25 companies owned and operated 90% of the mass media -- controlling almost all of our newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records (now CDs and DVDs), movies, videos, wire services, and photo agencies. Today, the number of major media players has fallen to six.
This is just a quick flyover of "Assland," getting a view of the topography. In upcoming American Dad columns, we explore some of the thick, thorny brush and stagnant, slimy swamps. Stay tuned and wear your old shoes.
By Russell King
File this one under "Wisdom from the mouths of babes." Four-year-old Maya said, "I don't really like Assland."
Rhonda: "What did you say?" Maya: "I don't really like Assland." Rhonda: "What?"
Maya, pointing the TV: "You know: Assland"
The TV was playing the video "Alice in Wonderland." I think the misunderstanding, though, was closer to the truth: TV really is "assland."
"Oh boy," I can hear you saying. "Another nut whining about ‘gay’ cartoon characters." Relax. I’m pretty sure that two-dimensional inanimate combinations of paper and ink do not have sex lives. I am unafraid of Sponge Bob, Burt and Ernie, Buster’s friends in Vermont and the purple Teletubby.
What makes TV fit Maya’s description are the values that are portrayed positively (not merely presented) in so many programs and commercials. Relax again. I’m equally unafraid of gay fashion, desperate housewives and Janet’s breast. Because "values" has been twisted into a word for the fear, bigotry and religion imposed on others by power-hungry fanatics, let me explain.
Dr. David Walsh, author of "Selling Out America's Children: How America Puts Profits before Values and What Parents Can Do," identifies six key values (I call them anti-values) that dominate mass media. It is hard to argue with his list: 1. Happiness is found in having things; 2. Get all you can for yourself; 3. Get it all as quickly as you can; 4. Win at all costs; 5. Violence is entertaining; 6. Always seek pleasure and avoid boredom.
Not one of these six fits with the values Rhonda and I are trying to teach our children, but how do we compete? We know that "garbage in: garbage out" applies to human minds as well as computers, so we try to minimize the kids’ exposure to garbage anti-values, but the odds are against us. We don’t have cable TV and we’re careful about what periodicals get in our door, but there’s still a ton of garbage that seeps in through the cracks.
Dr. Walsh’s six anti-values of the media aren’t the end of the garbage. Being rude, nasty and even cruel is portrayed as cool. Women are either sexual objects to be gawked at or vicious tyrants to be feared or defeated. Blacks are over-sexed, inarticulate lemmings with a talent for violence – the cool ones, anyway. Dads are bumbling, self-absorbed idiots who prefer to live as boys rather than as men. The list goes on.
Finally, even if we could get past the anti-values and stereotypes, I’d still have a problem with the way mass media sucks the creativity and individuality out of young minds, as well as with the effect the dumbing-down of our news media will have (and is having) on our future (and current) citizens, voters and leaders.
Of all the"lions" prowling the den of mass media, eager to devour our little "Daniels," I believe that the focus on and celebration of money, consumerism, materialism and greed is -- by far -- the most dangerous. It is, as the sages tell us, the root of all evil. When the program "Who wants to be a millionaire?" was on, I kept hoping for: "Who wants to be a good person?" When I see my kids playing video games in which the object is to collect wealth, do violence or achieve victory, I hope for a game in which the goal is sainthood, enlightenment or even just inner peace.
"But" we hear in reply "the media give the public what the public wants." More garbage. Show me the "public" that is demanding those six anti-values. Show me the "public" clamoring for stereotypes. The Fox News viewing "public," for instance, is smaller than 1/100th of America. Most of us – the 99/100 of American public – are not getting what we want.
If you’re thinking that the problem of mass media anti-values has gotten worse over the past few years, you’re right. In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. By 1992, fewer than 25 companies owned and operated 90% of the mass media -- controlling almost all of our newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records (now CDs and DVDs), movies, videos, wire services, and photo agencies. Today, the number of major media players has fallen to six.
This is just a quick flyover of "Assland," getting a view of the topography. In upcoming American Dad columns, we explore some of the thick, thorny brush and stagnant, slimy swamps. Stay tuned and wear your old shoes.
