Posted by Editors on March 23, 2008 at 08:14:48:
How is Capitalism Killing the Kids?
An illustration of how this capitalist culture has affected our kids…
*** On the surface is all seems natural enough until, in this preschool nursery, a little 4 year old boy , zooming from toy to toy, sees a little girl picking up a toy truck. He yanks it from her hand and bashes her over the head. Heedless of the girl’s shrieks, and his teacher’s warnings, the boy rushes to another corner of the room, to another toy , and when someone manages to pick him up to discipline him, his body stiffens. He kicks and screams***
A child who is consistently callous and emotionally distant, seemingly immune to the rules and feelings of others, is what psychologists call “unattached.”
Who’s to blame for kids without a conscience? Violent kids in preschool classrooms, with no remorse. No loving bonds in the first two years of life because parents must work at two or more jobs to keep the apartment, or the home mortgage, contribute to dysfunctional families that result in more children with a “conscience “ as time goes by. In addition, criminologists and child development specialists believe that the combined effects of poverty and the resultant crime produce children who are emotionally distant, manipulative and selfish to the extreme.
“Such children are likely to commit violent crimes, “ says Michael Rustigan, a teacher and writer currently at the University of San Francisco State…, himself a criminologist of note…, Rustigan attributes some of the problem to where the kids are forced to live. Inner cities offer no hope for the young , thus the drug scene, and the crimes that support that temporary drug escape.
“In terms of crimes committed, our society is five times more violent than Europe, and ten times more violent than Japan,” said Rustigan, and that observation was back in 1990! We can only speculate on how much more exacerbated is this societal cauldron of violence today.
But the sources of child disattachment are not limited to ghetto children. Children can be detached from parents on any and all economic levels. Mom and Pop breadwinners, who work 12 hours a day to keep up the “success” image, and who “warehouse” their children to day care centers, can create a precarious situation for as young child. Day care centers hire workers who come and go, and leave child attachments in limbo, and the child becomes dispossessed. Of relationships that had potential bonding benefits.
The “economics” of low wages causes day care centers to have a high turnover of “concerned” workers.
All of the problems discussed have their origins in the economic lives of the VICTIMS, who ultimately, become ALL OF US, for we must be in daily contact with those who are scarred by their backgrounds, and who walk among us, and are prone to act out whatever tendencies have been developed and enforced by their upbringing.
The economic system produces the poverty that creates the inner city ghettos, as well as the fierce, so-called middle class drive to get the big bucks that make for “security” in a very hostile and insecure system. The children that result from such a system can only reflect the insecurities and values of their parents, who, themselves are victims of the system.
“What drives America today is money, power, paranoia.”
These words were spoken not by a critic of the system of capitalism, rather by Dr. T. Berry Braselton , one whose concerns are for the growth and development of kids.
Dr.T.Berry Brazelton is rightfully disturbed about the way kids in our society are forced to grow, He’s no new kid on the block . He was a clinical professor emeritus of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and founder of and chief of Child Development Unit at the Children’s Hospital in Boston.
More on Dr. T. can be accessed at …http://www.brazelton-institute.com/berrybio.html
T. Berry is no radical. . He recognizes the problem and the circumstances, but curiously overlooks the cause, or else Dr. T. would not be begging for the U.S. government to come to the support of kids who lack positive family life experiences. Were T. Berry an objective social scientist, he would be calling for changes in the present economic institutions which provoke all the conditions which affect our kids in so many negative ways.
“American families are at a crises stage,” Dr. T says, …”and parents must demand more support services from the government if the family is to survive.”
Like too many of us who are dismayed by the societal conditions which produce the family break up…, the criminality on all levels of society…, the Doctor never poses the question:
“What are the systemic factors that have brought this economic system to a point where the family unit is at the crises stage?”
The divorce rate in our society is over the 50% mark, which means that more than half of all the marriages have failed to sustain a secure base for children in those marriages. It also means that the same conditions that have led to the breakdown of the U.S family are still operative.
A society whose system cannot encompass all aspects of society’s needs…, and it should be apparent to all that capitalism has failed miserably in this context, is destined to produce social upheaval. The divorces, the homeless numbers…, the impoverished children throughout the land…, the perennial unemployment numbers , the crime statistics, and the day to day insecurities that plague all levels of society…, are directly attributed to this system…, capitalism.
Dr.T and his fellow pediatricians and child psychologists are invited to join us in bringing about the replacement of undemocratic Capitalism with an economic democracy. The academic community can be of tremendous help to alert We, the People, to form the required organization to make it happen. The Constitution gives us that opportunity. Our generations have the principled, program to implement a real democratic society … OUR legacy to our kids and theirs.
Educate and organize is not merely a slogan. It’s an aim and an objective . We who have promoted this site, and this movement, want to hear from our viewers of how their own local direction toward a genuine social and economic democracy is being pursued. We can all help one another in countless ways.