McDaniel College Professor Thomas J. Zirpoli contends that kids are meaner today because their parents are meaner.
“In the United States today, there is a pervasive tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults.”
-Thomas Szasz
In a media-saturated society, where egotism, bullying, irresponsibility and bad behavior is often depicted as normal, appropriate and worthy of imitation – the obvious question many parents ask is, “How do I raise ethical, socially conscious, morally responsible children in the face of a tsunami of bad examples?”
When Michael J. Stovall, a professor of sociology at Carroll Community College, was asked a similar question, he responded with a chuckle: “That’s a tough one. I wish I had the answer.”
Stovall told students in one of his classes to read an article about whether or not it is “OK to break the rules.” The article, Stovall said, notes that children and adolescents are exposed to unethical behavior by sports figures, business leaders and politicians, who are on the fringe of acceptable behavior, or who flagrantly violate the rules. Not only are they not punished, they are publicly rewarded.
“Most students will admit they get their values from their parents,” Stovall said. “Media is now ever-present, and with social media it is even more present than before. I saw an article the other day that said 30 to 40 percent of adolescents get up in the middle of the night to check Facebook. If you are a parent, you have to compete with that constant presence of peer influence from friends, literally 24 hours per day.”
Respect for any form of authority, whether parents, teachers or other community leaders is lacking in many reality-based television shows. Instead, young people often act as if they have equal standing with adults when it comes to behavior, Stovall said. They disdain any commentary on their conduct, other than that of their own and their peers.
With the growth in technology and, according to Stovall, what appears to be an increasingly competitive society where the focus is on winning, the challenge to parents to combat the constant barrage of media morality is intimidating. At times, it may appear that ethics and morality are quaint, antiquated obstacles to be cleared in the quest for success.
“Living in an information age, children and adolescents can get information on a computer or a cell phone all of the time,” Stovall said. “The question is: Is that information any good? Do they know to attribute the actual source – they illegally download music; and, in school, it is a cut-and-paste world, where they think everything is available to everyone. They don’t think they should paraphrase it. They don’t know where to draw the line.”
Cases of authors fabricating so-called real experience books is setting an example of skirting the boundaries of ethics, Stovall said. The message seems to be that when the real story is not interesting enough, it is acceptable to make it up.
At one time, cellphones were considered a luxury for students. High school students without cellphones today feel that they are underprivileged, Stovall said. Parents may face the unenviable task of refusing to pay for the service as a behavioral modification tool.
Parents set standards. Modeling ethical behavior is the first line of defense, Stovall said. At some point, parents must say no. That may mean withholding privileges to use the Internet or cellphones. It may require that parents limit their own access to technology.
“The number one thing parents can do is appropriate modeling of ethical behavior,” Stovall said. “If they are not willing to do that themselves, even if it inconveniences themselves, it becomes almost impossible to hold kids to ethical standards.”
In their book, The Biggest Job We’ll Ever Have (Scribner, 2002), Malcom and Laura Gauld, state that “a person’s character is more important than their innate abilities. Unfortunately, the ethical element is overlooked in today’s “results driven culture.”
The Gaulds contend that focusing on the end results is damaging both to education and society. Students are encouraged to take less challenging courses, so they can maintain higher grades. They see their parents, teachers and country’s leaders cheat and bully and get away with it.
“Similar troubles emerge in the home when the principles that most parents believe they value – honesty, responsibility, accountability – don’t actually govern family life,” said Laura Gauld. “In fact, it’s often difficult to determine which ideas do lie at the heart of a family, since many of us are so focused on avoiding the mistakes our parents made that we unwittingly neglect to devise a positive parenting plan of our own.
“In a sense, we’re steering without a rudder, and each time the desire to Ôget along,’ to placate a volatile family member, or to quickly repair a problem that someone else has created, overrides our purported principles, parents and children veer farther off course. Cynicism and hostility creep in along with secretiveness, making each new challenge that much more difficult to face.”
The Gaulds advocate an educational program based on character building, in conjunction with academics. Their book offers a 10-step road map to navigate the tough job of responsible parenting.
Thomas J. Zirpoli, a graduate professor at McDaniel College and author of Parental Wimp Syndrome and a number of textbooks on child behavior and behavioral management techniques for teachers, affirms that unethical behavior of kids is a direct result of parental influence.
“Why are more kids bullying other kids today than in the past?” Zirpoli, who also writes a weekly column for The Carroll County Times, said the answer is simple: “Kids are meaner today because their parents are meaner and the adults in their life are meaner than they have ever been.”
Meanness is reinforced through popular reality-based television series, which use a competitive setting and where winning is everything, Zirpoli said. Competition is in and cooperation is out. The survivor is the winner and everyone else is a loser, with no middle ground.
“It’s always competition, competition,” Zirpoli said. “First, parents need to control what their kids are observing on TV. Then they have to regulate use of the Internet.”
Regardless of TV, the Internet or peer influence, parents are the most important factor in the lives of their children. Parents must be willing to reinforce ethical behavior, discuss what constitutes ethical behavior and emphasize the importance of decent behavior, he said.
“As situations come up as teachable moments, parents must encourage kids to do the right thing,” Zirpoli said. “Long-term, the ethical people end up winning because life is about relationships. People observe what you are doing and if they observe unethical behavior, they won’t trust you.”
The lessons of the current political arena seems to be that the “meaner” the candidate, the higher the poll numbers, Zirpoli said. Examples of intolerance, unethical behavior and straight-out mean-spiritedness flood the airwaves during political campaigns.
To teach tolerance of religion, culture, race and differing world views, parents must demonstrate tolerance, Zirpoli said. Parental modeling begins at birth.
“How do you interact with people as part of your daily routine?” Zirpoli asked. “What type, (if any), volunteer work do you perform? Show empathy. Go to a soup kitchen and help out. What does that teach kids? So much of what kids learn comes from watching us.”
Pragmatically, children need to learn that the world is filled with unethical, self-absorbed, malicious people who will literally do anything to get what they want. That is the “real world,” said Zirpoli. Parents cannot and should not try to protect their children from reality. But they can use examples of ethical and unethical behavior as tools to promote meaningful discussions about right and wrong, winning and losing.
“Kids don’t have a value system other than what they pick up from families and other sources,” said Stovall. “You have to be pretty strong and stand up and say that it’s a tough thing to do, but it’s the right thing to do.”
