They Need Parents

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As I drove to work this morning, I noticed something I found very odd. There's a section of my commute that passes through a series of rather handsome tenement housing blocks that house the city poor. Since I got stopped at every light for children to cross the street, I looked at them, and I saw that many of the children, despite the abject poverty in which they live, have cellular phones.

Children do not need phones, they need parents. Phones are an excuse to not be a parent, to not be present, to be able to reach out and touch them from far away and keep tabs on them without knowing where they really are. Children do not need presents or toys or privileges. They need values and morals and knowledge. They need to know they are loved because their parents are there for them, not because they can call them on a cellular phone.

With so many people in poverty in this city and so much talk of the economic malaise, this struck me deeply. What do you think the children are learning from the example of their parents? How likely do you think these children will be to innovate and design and make something of themselves? How much do you think they value what they have? What do their parents do for a living that means they can afford cell phones but not put a roof over their own heads?

What do children really need? Yes, I know very well I don't have any, but I was one once. I remember vividly when I was in elementary school coming home and calling out my mother's name. I didn't need anything per se; I just wanted to know she was there, with me, in the house. I remember another evening when I arrived home many hours in advance of my parents to a locked house. I was very lost and alone. What a child really needs is to know he is loved. Animals know this; I have a beagle at home who, no matter the hour of night, even if he doesn't get to see me long before I head to bed, jumps up and down for joy to see me. They crave attention, which you can only provide when you spend time with them.

What a child really needs is to be taught what is right. They need to see their parents do what they ought, even if it doesn't bear the fruit for which they hope. They need to learn about morality and faith, about the Source from which our hopes and rights really come. What would help them most is for parents to sit them down in the home regularly and discuss family, faith, and fortitude. They do not need friends; they have those at school. They need parents to show them the boundaries, to give them rules, to require things of them, and push them to do what they ought. Then, when they fall short, they need parents who love them, for who they are and what they did accomplish of the total required of them, who forgive them and comfort them and welcome them back and enjoy what they do and how they act.

Family is supposed to bring people together. Cell phones help keep us apart, because why should we have a face-to-face-to-face, when we can just mass text one another? Children need to know what really matters. They need their parents. They need good parents. They need parents to point them to goodness by virtue of their rhetoric as well as their examples. That will elevate their station in all the ways that really matter and make real men out of them in the end.