Who Is Raising Our Children?
We all know that our children are our next generation. Unless there is a conscious effort on the part of an adult, people will parent their own kids the way they were parented. Being parented doesn’t necessarily mean that a mother and/or father raised you. For generations, people like grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends have raised children. We have even had children being raised by people unknown to the child such as foster parents.
The Bible, as well as history books, are full of stories of children being raised by someone other than their birth parents. These people grew up and became parents and did fine for the most part. The differences in children being parented today are societal influences (computers, internet, video games, TV, etc.) and other entities that are raising our children especially children from single parent families. The significant other, or a cohabitating partner, is one example – a situation which, by the way, says, “I can’t commit to marriage but I will commit to letting you influence my child for several years.”
Who Is Influencing Our Children?
Children from single parent families spend the majority of their waking hours in group care. They either have parents that are attending school full time or parents that are working – some of these parents are working two or more jobs or going to school and working. One small study showed that school age children might very well be in child care 300 to 400 hours more per year than even in public school. When one counts summer, school vacations and holidays, early outs and parent teacher conference days the child will spend many more hours overall in the childcare facility.