Hey, we don't need to know about what comes off your hands in a discussion about raising our children! :lol: :P

Fact is they don't have loving caring parents. They have the worst parents you can imagine. It is amazing to me how many people have reached out to help these kids with informal adoptions, tutoring, day care and just plain loving them. You can give up on the parents but the kids are worth helping. It's far from ideal for sure but you do what you can. The kids are screwed up and all we can hope for is a teeny tiny chance for them.

I don't see this type of thing in big cities where there are institutions to take abused kids. Given an institution (foster parents) or community help I think the community solution is better. Could be wrong...

I think Scott's point is that the name of the book was "It takes a Village" not "It takes a village if your parents suck."

Ok, this guy has finally started making sense now, not acting like such an idiot.

I think most communities have a high percentage of kids without great parents. Parents work too much, or one is missing, or worse. How do we deal with the resulting problems?

Are we talking about the name of a book? :oops:

Scott im sorry but I didn't read the book (I don't read books) so I must have been a little confused at what you where trying to state.
My perents where addicts, workahallics, and plain not there to raise me, it was easier for them to just pay someone to do it for them, thus I grew up gaining the knowlege and experences of many and not just two. I know one thing for sure I am way more confinate to talk to others because of this. I feel I can relate to more people sence the nine people that did help raise me all had different back rounds. It worked why? every one in my life had a heart felt love for me and my well being, thats the diffenece in my "village" LOVE. I am now in the same situation raiseing two twins that are my 3rd cusins. That same LOVE I got from others as a child I get to use now because I had it in my life.
My father was adopted from Germany as a child and even though he didn't turn out to be the greatest guy, ditching my mom and me when I was 3 never to return, he only had 2 parents who both worked to raise him. I just can only imagine if there where more people who cared about him maybe things would be different.

maybe I'm just trying to redifine the word to show that in a "village" there would have to be love for the childern and everyone in it to benifit from it. such as in my family now where we all try in are new life is to help one another when possible and to others in are church family.

This whole thread is a rather semantic debate. Scott's side (for the sake of simplicity) is saying that 2 good parents > good village > crackhead parents who beat the tar out of their kids and use them as drug dealers. Others are supporting the village>* theory.

Oh, and further clarification- I don't think any of us are trying to downplay the role of non-parents and non-family in raising a child. But they aren't option A as far as we believe.

Don't forget the distinct possibilty that you are just plain a good person. ;) The village or the 2 doting parents probably could have had very equal success raising people like you.

Okay, one last post on this topic then I'll drop it.

Hillary's idea regadring the "village" was a re-hashing of the old "communal" family idea. Basically saying that an entire community of people should take responsibility for the welfare and education of that community's children. This is a system that has been tried many times before and has failed in pretty much every instance. This "village" is *not* the case that Debbie, Mike and Theo are describing where extended family members fill in for missing or in addition to a child's parent(s) by providing love, instruction and compassion. The Hillary village is one where the government and it's agencies are help responsible for rasing all children. Basically schools, daycare, YMCA, churches, etc are all just as responsible for rasing a child as the child's parents.

The bottom line is this: the ideal situation for a child's healthy development is to be in the care of a male and female role model that provide the physical necessities for the child as well as love, affection, guidance, moral examples, etc, etc, etc. Deviations to this formula don't always mean a kid is going to grow up messed up, of course. There are plenty of single parents, or ay/lesbian parents, or foster parents, etc, that raise kids just fine.

However, Hillary's village says kids will develop better if they are raised by a communal effort instead of by their parents. It's just plain wrong. As mentioned in the article, kids raised in group environments with revolving parental figures tend to be anti-social, for example day-care kids vs. stay-at-home-parent kids. Of course I not saying that everyone should stay at home to raise their children... it's the nature of our society/economy that required the use of daycare, I'm just saying that staying at home is the ideal.

Attempting to mandate that people spread out the responsibility of childcare is just plain retarded IMO. In fact I feel that just the opposite is true. Because parents are the single most important factor in determining how good a kid will be once they're adults, I think parents need to be held to higher standards. Granted, by the time a child is a "repeat juvenile offender" it's probably too late, I'd just hope that knowing early on if you raise a hellraiser you're going to be help responsible for it. You might just do a better job in the 1st place... no more ignoring your kids, no more feeding them shit night after night, no more beating them like misbehaved pets.

The problem with our society is that abused kids grow up to be abusive parents. The village was a concept to use "love, peace and happiness" to break the cycle. Unfortunately, love, peace and happiness are not solutions, they're side effects of a solved problem. You can just encourage a neighborhood to join together and help raise happier kids. It needs to occure at ground level, where the rubber meets the road, with the parents themselves.

If I've offended anyone with my opinions, I'm sorry. I don't actually see anyone in our group that I would consider bad parents. In fact, I'm rather impressed by everyone's efforts. I'm not a father myself (which does mean my arguments are failry hypocrital) and I'm constantly amazed at the dedication you all put towards your children. In fact, that's why I know I'm not ready for kids. I've still got a lot of screwing around to do before I'd consider attempting to raise children. And when I do start a family, I know I certainly don't want some neighbor or school teacher or priest raising my kids. That's my job, and I'll be damned if I'm going to give up that responsibility to someone else!

I'd like to think that I can give my kids the tools they need to be unaffected by all the bad people out there in the world that would otherwise screw them up. I know my parents did that for me. I already knew the difference between right and wrong the 1st day I set foot in a public school. When I broke the rules (which occured occationaly of course) I knew I was breaking the rules. By 5th grade I knew enough to realize my teacher was a dingbat, and failable. Over the years I had friends that were troublemakers, yet I was still able to be their friends and keep my nose clean because I knew when to say "I better go home, I don't want part of this".

Anyway this has turned into yet another long rambling post.... I guess my point is simple: children should be raised by caring individuals not by some "village" of idiots.

I agree with you Scott. The goverment is not an alternative to parenting. If we let the government help raise our children we will be in big trouble.

yet we still let them teach?