Parents must also teach their children right from wrong. No child is born knowing right from wrong. Children have to be taught the difference, which means (in this context) accepting instruction as authoritative truth. And authoritative teaching requires authority.
When parents abdicate their authority, they set their children adrift. Kids need firm guidance. When their parents don’t provide it, they look to peers or social media or the Internet. What they find is Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Akon, Eminem, Nicki Minaj, Kim Kardashian, and Lady Gaga. It’s a confusing mélange of sex, selfies, and the endless striving for popularity and attention. What really counts in that world is who’s sexy and who has the most followers on Twitter and the best photos on Instagram.
Legitimate authority establishes a stable moral universe for children. It provides an alternative to the popular culture that has become a culture of disrespect: disrespect for parents, for teachers, for one another. This culture of disrespect leads young people even to disrespect themselves: hence the growing propensity of American teens to post photos on social media of themselves in various states of Âundress. This new norm””the Âcasual obscenity of Âsexting””would have been Âunthinkable even twenty years ago. “ÂEverybody does it” is what kids tell me, with a shrug. “It’s no big deal.” Without clear adult Âauthority to guide them, they live in an unstable moral universe in which everything is relative, in which self-worth is Âcontingent on the opinions of same-age peers.
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(1st Things) Leonard Sax–Children must accept parents authority+parents mst exercise it responsibly
Parents must also teach their children right from wrong. No child is born knowing right from wrong. Children have to be taught the difference, which means (in this context) accepting instruction as authoritative truth. And authoritative teaching requires authority.
When parents abdicate their authority, they set their children adrift. Kids need firm guidance. When their parents don’t provide it, they look to peers or social media or the Internet. What they find is Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Akon, Eminem, Nicki Minaj, Kim Kardashian, and Lady Gaga. It’s a confusing mélange of sex, selfies, and the endless striving for popularity and attention. What really counts in that world is who’s sexy and who has the most followers on Twitter and the best photos on Instagram.
Legitimate authority establishes a stable moral universe for children. It provides an alternative to the popular culture that has become a culture of disrespect: disrespect for parents, for teachers, for one another. This culture of disrespect leads young people even to disrespect themselves: hence the growing propensity of American teens to post photos on social media of themselves in various states of Âundress. This new norm””the Âcasual obscenity of Âsexting””would have been Âunthinkable even twenty years ago. “ÂEverybody does it” is what kids tell me, with a shrug. “It’s no big deal.” Without clear adult Âauthority to guide them, they live in an unstable moral universe in which everything is relative, in which self-worth is Âcontingent on the opinions of same-age peers.
Read it all.