How can governments or the media encourage parents to keep their kids off the streets?

Question

When children are left to "bring themselves up" with their friends, they learn how to fight, exclude, steal, brag and swear. Just the worst possible that you can find in human nature. It takes patience, time, love and care to bring up a child, the street just cannot give him what he needs. We're reaping the results of years and years of neglect. Some people even say outright "I let my kid fight for himself, that way he learns how to live in our society"! Isn't that putting the cart before the horse?

Couldn't we put out warnings, like health warnings, little stories during the ads like the AIDS/Condom series to get people to protect themselves? From the answers so far I'd say we haven't thought much about the problem yet, and it will explode in our faces. By the way, no group or class of people has a particular IQ, eugenism went out with the 20th century.

Answer 1

I have just deleted what i thought was great advice for your question , as my teen son came home and I asked him . he says that by providing safe (ok he did not use that word) places for teens to meet would certainly help. he goes within walking distance to a youth centre which has a skatepark, so he is fulfilled. but i suppose there are many other kids who don't have something which is fun and safe.

the media does help a bit by having the reality shows ,which hopefully teches parents what not to do, as opposed to showing children that some others get away with apalling behaviour ,so why shouldn't they.

perhaps radio stations could have a professional on once a week ,who discusses specific problems and then takes calls from parents or children. i don't know if that is already done.

also many couples work and don't have anywhere for teens to be ,and they don't like to sit at home like a puppy dog waiting for their parents to come back. inevitably they will start messing about in the streets.I may be daft , but I have not seen any advert locally offering a drop in or place for teens for after care and long holidays. Perhaps people are of the opinion that once a child can make toast , a cuppa and formulate some of their own ideas , that they are ready for being responsible for them selves.

parents need to be educated about the horrors of leaving their kids unattended and not knowing where they are. a cel phone may make them feel safer , but it really can't help in an etreme situation. yes the media can perhaps help here , by highlighting the dangers of leaving kids alone. it seems parents quickly forget all the young murders and violence , believing that nothing ill will become of their children.

Answer 2

by being proper parents that are respected by their children. Allow kids their space but let them know who the boss is. A lot of adults are not concerned with what their kids are or aren't doing, so they r free to occupy themselves. Plus most kids are busy trying to emulate adults so adults should lead by example. The media influence the kids and the government pick up the pieces when the get shot or wasted on drugs. If the parents realise this they should take precautions against it. Adults need to help kids organise and supervise events out of the home like sports or music activities etc.

Answer 3

This is a toughie and requires a tough answer, I'm afraid. The lower socio-economic group just shouldn't be permitted to breed, as they do so indescriminately and then leave their offspring to fend for themselves on the street.

At the very least, if sterilisation were not an option, then the parents should be hauled before the courts and forced to .....WORK FOR A LIVING until they gain control of their kids. Believe me, the dole-ites just wouldn't want to be doing this!

But I prefer the idea of sterlisation, as this would control the population in the sink estates.

Answer 4

Government is not the solution. Strong parenting is. Some people should not have children that is a given. It is truly related to degraded moral values as the result of the feminization of society. Men need to grow spines and we need to get back to corporal punishment in schools, we need to abolish "no fault" divorces, and work to keep families together.

Answer 5

Something tells me you haven't really grasped the issues at stake here. Children and teenagers throughout all the centuries have met on the street, indeed some would have there own friendship gang or Circle of friends. Some of these youngsters would have no intention of harming anyone or commiting a crime, this is a modern concept that we should fear youth, so we label them troublesome, louts, vandels,criminals, drug addicts or whatever. The majority of the young do not fall into this at all.

A peer group for the young is the young - not those a decade or so ahead of them. Our forefathers played on the street, played 'hopskotch, marbles, jacks, tiddly winks, pitch and toss, a skipping rope to skip with was always great fun. Hide and seek, blind man's buff, charades, tiggy', the list goes on. If you can't remember these games whatever happened to your childhood?

Here's a few games that were always that bit more risky knocky nine door, bonny white horse, and the staple of the North East, football. These were risky because the washing was hanging on the line in the lane, tempers would flare at the absence of a caller at the door which may repeatedly knock, (you know the invisible thread trick) or what about the newbie on the block whose initiation of being tied to the gate whilst the rest of the group make a roudy din then ran off leaving poor bonny white horse to the flaying temper of the irate Mrs Mop.

So Ok we live in the moderrn age, computers have taken over where the games have left off, but only for those who can afford them.

The motorcar has taken over the roads so the street as a playing area has been lost, this leaves corners free and a few other meeting points available in the urban sprawls outside of the city.
Public land and public buildings are lost to private enterprise, so communities lose out. I recently went to a meeting and placed my objection at the sale of a public building for the purpose of some modern day yuppie apartments or flats with restaurant. The building was 'Heaton public library'.

There is a battle on for decent jobs in the job market, it is a cruel world. The suggestion or hint that an increased amount of love and affection can make this easier is a fallacy. It is not a fallacy however that there is diametric argument here. Children born into wealthy families who live in wealthy neighbourhoods who may have a private education are expected to do better in life than those born in the urban working class neighbourhoods. Which to an outsider will always look like or represent some kind of no mans land, no go area...err, where pardon me 'decent people don't live or want to live'. This in truth is where the writing is on the wall. As these modern estates were the sites of previous industrial development full of prospective workers for the factories of our Victorian forefathers.

The railways quartered the cities not just in terms of Geographical topography. Factories then had to find there territory this left little for living space and housing development. The merchants who were once members of the working classes move into the residential parts just outside the walls or the city. Leaving an overcrowded and unhygenic city for the workers to live there struggle.

Today we have a different struggle, which has developed as a result of our regional histories. The old industries are gone, and we do have the rise of a fourth class. A class that has never worked, and there off spring also don't work. Some of the members of this fourth class are not just the poorest in terms of wealth, but are also the most unhealthy and least likely to ever be in a position to work. So they struggle on as the least educated, the outcasts of modern insular society..

You are probably a product of insular modern society each to their own, who sees it as neglect from the government for the failings of society.Some of us also lay this problem at the feet of government, when the reality is closer to home. This does not mean that governments can't help, but whatever legislation is passed needs to be fair and reasonably possible to enforce with ease and minimal cost.

If young people must have children without financial security of a home and a job, you are going to see a rise in single parent families and 'latch key children'.

Should the government make it illegal for women to have more than two children?

Should the government make it illegal for a girl below the age of 16 to keep a child and organise adoption proceedures for those couples desiring to have children who can't?

Isn't it time we realised that some of these issues really lie with parents, an improved educaton system, and real work opportunities?

Otherwise, this statement could well be true "I let my kid fight for himself, that way he learns how to live in our society". This is also somewhat reminiscent of the theory connected to 'the survival of the fittest', that is sadly Conservative Darwinism. which also accepts that the poor will always be with us.

The answer to the probem lies in the age old staples of primary socialisation which a great number of us want to know little of feeling that the government is the genie to solve all those problematical areas of life. But what of the staples of socialisation is it not from such we develop our moral codes, and practices which enable us all to have a good life. Think Family, Education and Work.

Where are you without them?

Or are you the avenger from your comfortable office chair post earning the salary of three. Are you an alright Jack from whom your Eugenistic origins you proport to have no bearing?

If one of the three staples was missing in your life where would you be? No family, no education, no work.

Answer 6

Put the in the stocks.. bring back the birch... hang 'em... this liberal-civilised society is failing us all....

We don't want non-secular schooling either!

Good grief the world is falling apart... it's time to take to the barricades..

ASBO's dont work either...

Seriously... there isn't a simple answer.. forced steralisation of the lower IQ people and trouble makers sounds draconian but it would soon sort the problem out.

Answer 7

Government's seem to encourage the kids to live like that, or else why would they insist on paying them a living away from home allowance? It's crazy!!!!

Answer 8

what is missing is displin , i was let out by my perants yes i swore and had fights and braged about it but i new where the line was and if i crossed it i new what would happen to me ,
yes you have to let your kids out thats where they start to learn how to meet people and get on ,but what is missing to day is the displin, you are told by law you can`t hit your kids and you can`t lock them in there rooms so what do you do

Answer 9

Summary execution for loitering with intent