Home-Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes

Rating:
Summary: Busy Moms & Dads pay attention...
Review: Eberstadt actually focuses on parents (that's plural) both Moms and Dads, deadbeat Dads, as well as divorced parents who use toys and junkfood for short-term rewards or to compensate for the face to face time that they can't have with their children.

She talks about busy parents who use junk food, videos, video games, locked houses, and perscription drugs as substitutes for their attention.

She talks about the dangers that she sees with the early socialization of children before they're really ready. (i.e., putting kids in Daycare before the age of 3).

She talks about the dangers of kids who come home from school and are alone until parents return from work.

She also devotes considerable time to the rise in childhood obesity and how the above factors contribute to that.

This is certainly not a mere "Blame the mom" screed as some might call it. THere is a nuanced and deep look at parenting in these busy times.

Rating:
Summary: Finally Someone Frames the Issue Correctly
Review: Eberstadt challenges popular thought with a penetrating and powerful message:

It's not about adults. It's about what is best for children.

Specifically, what separates or unites adults and children, and what that means for them both.


Rating:
Summary: Home-Alone America
Review: If you think our schools are bad today - read this book. If you think throwing more money at our schools will help, read this book. If you think everyone else is at fault except the parents with regards to today's children, read this book. This is by far the most profound book of the century. Mary Eberstadt is a genious! The problem with our schools, our children, our society is THE PARENTS! I take responsibility for my kids, for their actions, for their grades, for their troubles because I am at home raising them to be good sound citizens and human beings. I do not blame the schools, the government and mother earth...it is me! I wish every teacher, every mom and dad, every person even thinking of becoming a mom or dad would read this book. It's the best book I've read in my entire 30 years of studying and taking care of children. Mary Eberstadt is telling the truth - it is about parents taking responsibility. I would give this book the highest mark available. I would recommend this book to everyone that has any dealings with, or contact with, children...

Basically this book is about how no one is watching the children, referencing them as ferel kids. Children of today are raising themselves then we expect the schools to do all the disciplinary duties when in actuality it should have been done already at home. Teachers of today can't possibly teach a room full of children that are totally unable to sit still in their chairs, that lack respect, and that are either too tired or too hung-over to learn and pay attention. Looking at children from the 50's and today's children, there is a very strong and common thread of unsupervised kids...everyone wants to go to work, pursue their careers while leaving the children for some stranger to raise, or worse yet, locked up in their own homes alone after school. Do people today even know why babies cry when mommy leaves the room - why? It's a built in safety-valve that tells mom to stay close, to be there, to love and nurture. It wasn't there just to push mom's buttons! It's there to tell mom and dad that they NEED them! Nothing more, nothing less.

Ms. Eberstadt's other most astounding fact is the importance of the music of today. Everyone blames the music - read her chapter on this matter and you'll see that the kids themselves have written the music because this is what they live, this is what they see, this is how they FEEL and this is how they are poorly parented, if at all! Songs of yesterday were about beaches, hot cars, relationships, love, the Beatles and the Beachboys...today's songs are about being alone, witnessing abuse, neglect, drugs, and about dad's leaving and especially about divorce. Wow! It's not what the music's doing to the kids - it's what we parents are doing to our children! They are sending a very profound message to us all. We just don't get it!

I hope that Mary Eberstadt will write more on this very basic and forgotten art...being a plugged-in mom and dad. If one or other parent can't be home to raise their own children, why have them? We won't even let our neighbor borrow our family car, but we turn our most valued, treasured and blessed offspring over to some strangers for the better part of the day to raise. Why?

Rating:
Summary: View from a Liberal, Stay at Home Mom
Review: Many of Eberstadt's points are very astute and worth considering, and for that, I give her three stars. For instance, the amount of medication our children are taking to make them "normal." The rise of aggression in our youngest children. The rise in childhood obsesity, because we no longer live in a world where children play, outside of highly structured, controlled events.

I don't disagree with anything descriptive she says about these issues. (And in fact, her chapter on GenX and Hip Hop music is quite well done.) But she blames this on a current culture where women (and men) leave their children in daycare, too focused on their own careers to care about them.

And given her personal experience, there is much that probably bears this out. She lives in Washington DC, in a very nice, very expensive neighborhood. The mood around her is definitely a liberal, career driven one.

However, I live in a red town, in a red county, in a red state. I live in a neighborhood of stay at home mothers, and fathers who are able to attend games and volunteer for boy scouting events. And what do I see? Children who are aggressive. Children who are obese. Children who are on medication. Most children do not play outside on our cul-de-sac because it "isn't safe." (I honestly have no idea what that means -- it is far safer from anywhere else I've ever lived.)

So even the right knows there is a problem with parenting. They blame the left, perhaps because they live in a left-wing world themselves. But for those of us who are NOT living in left-wing cultural milieus, those explanations fall flat.

But the parenting problem remains in the US today. One of the few things the left and the right agree on.

Rating:
Summary: Moderate stay-at-home-mom who sees the point.
Review: The premise of this book initially annoyed me. The cover of the book annoyed me. How come a dad leaving isn't pictured on the cover? Once I shook off my initial consternation over having my feminism attacked and opened my mind, I recognized that the author's overall premise is true. Children are over-medicated and under-nurtured AND under-supervised. I also agree with the author that the Hip-Hop culture is hardly helping to create emotionally well-balanced kids. Urban lyrics can be violent, hateful, negative, obscene or just plain inappropriate for children. Given the digital age we can pick and choose one track over another - that will send a message to the music industry faster than anything. If it doesn't sell it won't be sold.

Yes I found the book to be thought-provoking and I agree - overall - our society promotes instant gratification for grown-ups at the painful expense of those who have no voice - children. However, I do NOT agree it is because of "liberal" parents; the author loses her credibility by insinuating it's conservative moms who have some sort of monopoly on well-balanced kids. Kids are in trouble because we're all falling short of our responsibility to our children who need to come first whether a parent is liberal or conservative - period.

Rating:
Summary: We all have a stake in this - so let's talk about it.
Review: There is a lot of noise in our society about our troubled young. And that is well because it is true. There are also an almost infinite number of suggestions on how to "manage" these problems: counseling, more counseling, medication, raising daycare standards, yet more counseling and more medication, and on and on it goes.

This powerful book asks a somewhat different question. What if the problem isn't the kids? What if their reactions are reasonable responses to a toxic environment of outsourced childrearing (to daycare and medication), of absent fathers, of transient relationships in their relationship role models, and in consistently bad advice given them on sex, careers, and marriage?

She points out the current themes in popular music are abandonment, hurt from missing parents, rage against parental neglect, and the need for oblivion to escape the pain of loneliness. It isn't rebelling against mom and pop anymore. It is more like where are mom and dad and why don't they care about me. This is sad and painful on all fronts.

Mary Eberstadt is clear and honest in her facts and analysis. She admits there is neither simple panacea nor even a complex solution. She advocates beginning with a new consensus that it would be better for both children and adults if more American parents were with their kids more of the time. I know that sounds simplistic, but it is not simple. Given the financial burdens most families have taken on, it is very hard to make something like this happen. However, if we decide we believe we need our kids and they need us and that time together is important, we can make adjustments in our lives to make that happen.

I hope this book is widely read and widely discussed in thoughtful ways rather than just the normal political yelling at the other side. The topic affects us all. We all have an important stake in this and we all shoulder some of the blame. So, let's get at it.