Parenting - The Lost Art

I am a parent of 2 very young school aged girls. There are times I wonder if I am being the best parent for them. My spouse and I both work, just like other parents. We went through the years (and expense) of daycare. We have gone through the abuse at daycare.

We have done everything that other parents in the U.S. are doing now. But, I wonder if we have lost, or never knew the art of parenting. We can both remember our mothers being home to greet us from school; being chaperones on field trips; picking us up from school when we were sick.

Now, we cannot do these things. Our children's school is constantly asking for help from the parents; but it is very hard to take off from work whenever the school needs help. Thus the school needs to hire more people to help in the schools. In turn, our taxes go up because the schools had to hire the help.

We know that we don't like our taxes to go up. We know the schools need help. But is this helping our children? More and More I keep wondering if we as parents are neglecting our children because of the economic pressure?

Personally, I found myself working 8 hours a day; then brought work home and continue for another 3 to 4 hours. When did my children get to play with me?

Now I teach high school and still have the same issue. No matter what I do to change the situation, I always find myself back into it.

What can we do to find the art of parenting?

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There is actually a whole school of thought on just the issue of the
benefits and liabilities of working moms. Regardless of your opinion
on the subject, the fact remains that family income has not gone up
since women went to work. Now third world competition threatens to
drive the wage scale even lower. Mexicans are no longer the lowest
common denominator in manufacturing. Their jobs are threatened by
still cheaper labor in Honduras and Guatemala.

The quality of pubic education is often tied to property taxes. The
wealthier the community, the better the schools. School boards are
often a case of the fox watching the hen house. Usually boards are
composed of social elites. Some members are childless. Frequently,
there is some connection to the business community. All they want
schools to do is churn out kids who salute the flag and do as they are
told. Worse, the people going into public education are often not
first-rate minds. If they are, they don't stay in it very long these
days because so much of what passes for education is the intellectual
equivalent of canned Spam.

Parenting 50 years ago worked because the economy was good and the old
man had a job. Mothers had time to spend with their children and the
country had a vision. Parenting was taken for granted. It all seemed
so easy. Parents knew their neighbors. Kids were in and out of each
other houses. Moms could talk over the backyard fence and, even if
they had only been supply sergeants before going to college on the G.I.
Bill, dads could swap *real* war stories over a couple of beers or a
campfire with the boys.

These days, as likely as not, mom has a job. Increasingly, she is more
likely to have more education. She has economic freedom undreamt of by
her great grandmother. At the first sign of domestic difficulties,
she dumps the man and takes the kid to counseling. Compared to a
married neighbor, the single mom is several times more likely to live
in poverty. Her kid is several times more likely to do be antisocial,
do drugs, drop out of school, and commit suicide.

Competing with his ex and foreign competition for a job in a downsizing
outsourcing world without benefits, the man is increasing cynical. He
doesn't trust the government and he can't stand his ex. His kid ranks
somewhere between a hobby and a nuisance. If the school even bothers
to call him about the kid 's problem in school, his attitude may be,
"Don't come winning to me if you can't handle him; you and his mother
are the experts!"

Much like the economy, parenting is in the toilet because someone
thought that they could benefit by reengineering the system.
Corporations wanted cheaper labor. Politicians wanted more votes from
women. Schools wanted more power over children. All the special
interests wanted something and they took it from the family. Not only
has it not worked very well, the whole jerry-rigged social apparatus is
teetering on collapse.