Since CP is affirming and has yet to post, I will do the honors.
And it'll feel great to tee off on society in general and what a harsh place it is to raise kids. As a young woking man with a wife who is a 1st grade teacher in an urban district, I hear an awful lot about the toll society is taking on children.
1. Society, as is relates to kids, is a hypocricy.
Kids are taught to share. Kids are told by teachers "if you didn't bring enough for the entire class, don't bring one in for just yourself and your friend." Basically, kids are infused with a healthy dose of communism while their parents are scrapping for the money to buy
food, shelter, coach purses, Blackberrys, and Fubu clothing.
2. Rules of the streets vs rules of the family
Children, especially in inner-city America, (and I am sure in many other cultures) grow up in single family households. Why? Because fathers / male figures often bail completely, leaving the mother to care for the child and work two jobs (rendering her uninvolved in their child's life) or because the father is dead or in prison. This isn't a racial issue, it's a socio-economic issue. As a result, many of these children drift away from the underfunded school systems and onto the streets where crime, poor gun control, and drugs dominate their lives.
Here's a quote I found in a terrific article:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_18_127/ai_66965695/ said:
American parents spend so much time either keeping the culture at bay or working actively to counteract its effect on their children. I'm not sure I would have the necessary energy.
Instead of living in a culture where parents can allow the society to play a role in the raising of their children, parents have to find ways and methods to sheild their kids FROM that society. Private schools. Home schooling. Why? Because there are so many negative aspects of society, and it stems from the aforementioned break down of the family system.
3. Raising children properly is damn expensive.
Most of society is middle class. So let's actually use my wife and I as an example. I work as a HR Staffing Manager, my wife as a teacher. We have no kids. Our two incomes allow us to own a condo in a nice area and have some spending cash, though we still budget a lot of things very carefully.
Assume for a second we have children. Neither of us make an exorbitant amount of money, so what are our options as a middle class family?
a) continue with both of us working, and pay for day care, the cost of which can be extremely high, nearly negating one income.
b) one of us stays home and does not work, eliminating one income.
Cost of living has climbed so high in some areas of the country, it's almost impossible to adequately raise kids on a middle class family annual earnings. Here's a statement from another article I read:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/989420/raising_children_in_todays_society_.html said:
Third, there are the current events of the world that affect today's society and families. With so much changing, it is almost impossible to raise kids today. I mean, you have to worry about everything! How to pay for gas to get them places, how to pay for insurance if they get sick, how to pay for the things they need for basic survival! And it's only going to get worse. Things aren't going to go back to the way they were when we weren't at war and fighting with everyone. It's scary to think of subjecting our children to that and sad at the same time.
If you need evidence that society is a shit hole of a place to raise decent kids, just turn on the news. The success rate for raising well adjusted, good, respectful kids is very low, and dwindling constantly as more chinks in the armor of the American family start to show.
I could keep going, but I'd like to know what my opponent will say about how our society is adequate to raise kids. I find it hard to believe there's much out there that is substantive, but I'd LOVE to be pleasantly surprised.
