Punish the kids, yes, but parents aren’t blameless

R. Eric White, Henderson

Monday, June 14, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.

My family and I were horrified reading Maureen Dowd’s column in Thursday’s Las Vegas Sun, “Why dangerous swagger can’t be ignored,” a testament to the appalling failure of parents everywhere who have relegated the raising of their children to entertainment, the media and technology.

Appalling, but not surprising. Our children are sold sex and brutality constantly, through music, movies, TV and video games. Then we put a ton of pressure on them to succeed in school (in order to meet some whacked-out federal mandate).

How do we expect our children to behave when we make sports out of beating the crap out of each other? Or show them the “real world” on reality TV, which mostly involves young people binge drinking and having promiscuous sex?

All the big pop songs are about girls kissing girls or riding disco sticks. And the pop stars are outlandish, hyper-sexualized automatons, the music all beat-heavy, repetitive and hypnotic. A television network with a young demographic has a new show whose plot revolves around a male high school student’s anatomy! And this is OK?

I guess I may be old-fashioned, but I have to say I am pretty ashamed of the world we have created for our children. Those young people in Maryland that Dowd wrote about should be punished. But we all share the responsibility for creating a culture in which sex and superficiality are pushed onto children at alarmingly high rates.