A declining number of married, or civil union conjoined, adults are choosing to become parents. Who can blame them? Parents today are not supported by the institutions of society, especially government with its taxing power, and are forced by the volatility of the jobs marketplace into seeking dual income status to survive. Forget the arguments about the value of a stay-at-home parent. That is not a choice in the vast majority of families today. Most families are a single paycheck away from catastrophic economic disaster. If at least one parent is working, the disaster meltdown may be delayed for a while, and that simple fact keeps both parents in the active job market. With both parents working for a wage, neither is left with the needful time, and especially the mental and emotional energy needed to rear the next generation. There is nothing new in this part of the equation. This is the normal situation for most families across the globe, and has been the normal situation for tens of thousands of years. What is new is the lack of, absence of, grandparents, or elders, to fill in the gaps today in child care and rearing. Modern parents recognize their dysfunctional status and poor accomplishments in this their most important life task. They and their institutions try to blame the failure on almost anything else: TV, comic books, video games, porn, the internet, Rock & Roll music, peer pressures, sex and drugs. Nothing has changed here for centuries, except the specific items in the list above. The Greeks and Romans of a thousand years ago were complaining of the same kinds of problems, and they had grandparents to help with child rearing. Demagogues, in government and in pulpits, find an audience in parents easy to influence and manipulate in areas around this subject. Despite all the sermons and all the lectures, hearings and proposed legislation, no real effort is really made to directly affect the basic problem --- change the tax code and system so that it is supportive of families with children, and attempts to ensure that one parent is freed to stay at home with the kids during their early formative years. It is these few early formative years where civilization in individuals is created. It is here that the basic lessons preparing the child to be ready for the more formal lessons of kindergarten and elementary school are inculcated. The future of our country is too important to leave it to the individual resources available to any individual family. The future of the country is specifically the business of the country. It is in the best business interests of the country to see that the physical and mental needs of every child is provided for by the state to prepare that child to perform to its maximum potential in the future. The state’s concern should be to invest in the child to maximize the future return from that child as an adult in terms of taxes that will be paid from future maximized income and in terms of maximizing the future adult’s contribution to the general economy through education, training, and achievements in fields as diverse as the arts, to invention, maximization of business productivity, to generation of new businesses. If this means pre-natal care and nutritional supplements for the pregnant woman, so be it. This should be a part of any decent national health care system. If this means programs to teach good parenting skills to new parents, so be it. We are talking about our future. If this means solving the problem of dead-beat dads, so be it. Isn’t it about time that parental responsibility be extended to the male of the species? If this means curtailing divorce, so be it. If this means proper support of nutritious meals in the public schools for all children, so be it. If it means real national investment in trade school training in high schools, so be it. If it means real national support for basic and advanced training to assist businesses, so be it. If it means real national support for college training in needed skill areas, so be it. If there is an identified shortage of nurses, vertical mill operators, teachers, doctors or engineers, then train them, by adding real, major economic incentives to individuals to enter that specific field of learning, training, and effort. Real means educational support with low cost loans and grants and future tax breaks. The news reports that the United States is moving up on a population of 300 million people, at least suggests a strong, vibrant country going somewhere. I’d like to think that our leaders had some idea as to where we might be traveling. I’d like to think that our leaders could get their heads wrapped around some real ideas that do involve the future of out country. Our country will not continue to be strong and vibrant if we don’t make it possible for it happen in the future when we arrive there. People do not buy a plane ticket with only the expectation that the plane will take off. There are at least two other expectations: a relatively uneventful flight, and a safe landing upon arriving at the destination. Our country will not have a future if we continue to ignore the investment necessary to develop our human capitol in the quantities and quality necessary for the future. Our country will not have a future if we continue to ignore the investment necessary to develop our transportation infrastructure. Our country will not have a future if we continue to ignore the investment necessary to develop our communication infrastructure. Our country will not have a future if we continue to ignore the investments we need in favor of continued unnecessary expenditures on an unproductive military-industrial complex. Our country will not have a future if we continue to ignore the necessary investment in families as opposed to direct tax subsidies for corporate businesses.
(c) Copyright 2006: George Wallace recently published a book on religion which lashes out at nearly all of the comfortable ideas about God, the trappings of organized religion, and the priesthood. His pithy comments and suggestions for a return to a God-centered personal religion will interest everyone. This article may be freely reprinted so long as all copyright attributions, and the full content of this resource box are included. www.OhGodIsThatYou.com
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