TV and Fear-based Parenting
Lenore Skenazy is the author of the secular book, “Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry,” which makes the case that the everyday threats to our kids’ safety “these days” are way overblown. Making a similar point to something emphasized in the Real World Parent seminars, Skenazy points to stats which reveal kids are as safe or safer now (in all kinds of ways) as they were when most of us were kids. And, yet, many of us parent as if the dangers are worse than they’ve ever been.
In a recent Salon.com interview, she pointed to the kinds of media parents consume as one reason for our perception about the threats to children.
When I was growing up, my parents were not watching those horrific television shows that are on now like “CSI” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” They were watching “Dallas,” “Dynasty,” stuff with maybe big hair, but that was the biggest crime. It wasn’t all these shows with really graphic, horrifying consequences for kids.
And then, you didn’t have cable, and cable has to fill 24 hours with the worst possible stories, because if they filled it with stories about kids getting home safely, you wouldn’t watch. What’s the most compelling story that anyone has come up with so far? It’s something terrible happening to a child.
There’s no doubt that the kinds of stories we consume and ponder can contribute to the level of our parental fear. Paul’s teaching in Philippians 4 for walking with peace—even in parenting—was to focus our minds on things that are true and positive. If our news and entertainment makes that especially difficult, how are they really helping us?
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Masters Commission on May 12, 2009 said...
Skenazy makes some interesting points. We’ve been wrestling for a little over a year with “what’s changed in youth ministry.” We’ve been doing Youth Ministry the same way for 10 years, and it just doesn’t have the same edge that it once did. It seems our kids are somehow different. We know the parents are different. But why are the parents who are currently age 35 to 45 so much different than the parents from a few years back, who are now age 45-55. We see a very dramatic difference in the permission, freedom, trust, and level of protectionism we see between parents of our current kids… and parents that we’ve had bring kids to the ministry from 2000-2008. Perhaps part of the difference is the TV Shows, as she mentions. Interesting food for our brainstorming session this week. Thanks —Drew—www.GZMConline.com