Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl01256)

>I found myself asking the same simple question again and again:  Why is it
>that for thousands if not millions of years parents in every type of culture
>have been at least able to successfully raise their own children . . . but
>that it seems like such a major problem for us?

Richard,

What makes you think parents have successfully raised their children in the
past?

I'm thinking of the 1800ds, when much city folks were so poor that the
parents went to work, & the kids stayed in the streets by themselves. Some
of them were taught to scavenge, and/or to steal, to add to the meager
family income. What Dickens depicts, actually happened. There was a time in
the US when the city people gave their children to some oganization who put
them on trains going West & gave them to farmers to be laborers, more like
little slaves. I wonder how mentally crippled medieval children were, when
their childhood was spent thinking their mothers were evil witches, &
sometimes they had to stand by & watch them being burned. I wonder what kind
of an upbringing little fatherless children had, when their mothers were
hardly able to feed them, because women couldn't earn more than a pittance.

Seems to me our kids are a bit better off today. Or let's say, at least we
know something about how to raise children, if we'd only teach it to those
who are too illiterate & unsophisticated to read up on it themselves.

Liesel