Hood Parent “Hood”

Parenthood.. wow. Probably the biggest one word life cycle in the universe. Becoming a parent is more stressful than the financial change it brings, more joyful than good times it brings, and more difficult than the conflict it brings. Kind of hard to explain to those on the outside looking in. A lot of people claim that the day a young person becomes a parent is the sign of the end of their carefree life, and that child birth signifies the merger between adulthood and childhood. In theory I agree. Parenthood SHOULD make people more mindful of their actions, more determined to be financially stable, and more dependently wise with their decision making. As a twenty something year old father who came from a single parent hold however, I am not oblivious to the ever popular trend of “immature parents”.

picture from bstephenson.com

Before proceeding, let me explain. No im not saying having at kid at a certain age, relationship status, or career level will determine a parent’s maturity level. Immature people and bad parents come in all shapes, sizes, races, ages, and with various financial statures. However in today’s society it has definitely become the norm to combine those seemingly unfavorable parenting settings with a rather laxed (to say the least) mind frame about the proper adjustments which should be made to raise a child. Children now a days are raised by television and peers. Little girls are taught to become women by music videos, reality shows and men’s magazines. Little boys are taught to be men by radio songs, fashion trends, and R rated movies. A lot of parents have forfeited the value of reading to their children, spending quality time to do family events, and teaching their kids that the images we all spend so many hours indulging into are purely for entertainment purposes and should be separated from reality.

For some, it is still very important to be a mixture of a parent and the person they were before parenthood. Which is another concept i partially agree with, but can be taken far over board and have costly effects on children. There are too many single young mothers who still want to be avid club goers. You know the type, looking for their mother to babysit ever few days so that mommy can go out and dance in the club or on dates with this weeks new “guy”. No I am not saying do not go out and have fun mothers, but it cant be a positive result to a child who constantly hears “Mommy will be right back”, night in and night out while you are off having drinks, or having to adjust to all the male suitors coming in and out your life every few weeks as you shuffle through new prospects (trust me I’ve been there). Fathers these days (and I use that term loosely) should be less concerned with retaining their former “player” mentality, spend less money on their rims, and more time with their children. A startling statistic is the connection between the number of children reported to grow up in broken homes and end up with children born out of wed-lock years later. Also http://www.associatedcontent.com reports:

Among adult children of divorced parents, only 60% marry, with 50% marrying before age 25 and most marrying people they had known only a short-time. 40% of them eventually divorce (in other words, only 36% of children of divorce are happily married)

“Adolescents who grow up in families under economic stress or with a single parent may be poorly supervised and often gain autonomy too early (Dornbusch 1985). These unsupervised adolescents according to Richardson (1993) tend to be more likely to engage in risky behavior such as drinking, smoking, using drugs, delinquency, or engaging in sexual activities.

We have to work harder as a society to be more conscious of who we create babies with!
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