Amber Portwood, the MTV "Teen Mom" reality star, sits quietly in the Madison County jail in Anderson Ind. on June 6, 2012 as a crew from Good Morning America adjusts their recording equipment as they prepared to tape an interview. A recent poll shows that 77 percent of teens said that the show made them realize that parenting is really, really hard. (John P. Cleary/The Herald-Bulletin/AP)
Amber Portwood: MTV 'Teen Mom' a role model for better or worse?
The final season of the hit reality show "Teen Mom" begins tomorrow. This means viewers who appreciate a good train wreck can watch the full unraveling of star Amber Portwood, who was ordered last week to serve a five-year prison sentence on drug charges.
Ms. Portwood, who would have been able to avoid incarceration if she had completed a rehab program, told Good Morning America that she had been so depressed that she tried to commit suicide, and that she decided going prison would be the best thing she could do for herself. This despite the fact that she (of course, since this is why she’s “famous” in the first place) has a little daughter.
Now we get to watch the whole downward spiral leading to this mental state. Gee, sounds like great entertainment.
I know we’ve written about this before, but does anyone else out there find this a bit uncomfortable? Or just downright sad and depressing?
Last week we wrote about how the horrified glee directed toward the Bad Mommies of reality television seems like a social release valve for the stressed-out, anxious style of American parenting that's so common today.
But today I was wondering whether there could be any other purpose served by these tragic examples, perhaps something more positive.
As it turns out, there may be. According to a survey that came out last month by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, the MTV shows in which Portwood has appeared – “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” – have, for the most part, convinced other teens that pregnancy and parenting are really, really hard.
Within the survey, 77 percent of teens said that the shows helped them “better understand the challenges of pregnancy and parenting.” That’s probably a good thing, a reinforcement to the overall decline in US teen pregnancy rates. (Earlier this year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a record low birth rate for girls aged 15 to 19, at 34.3 per 1,000. These 2010 figures reflected a 9 percent drop from 2009 among teens 18-19 years old, and a 12 percent drop for 15 to 17-year-olds.)
Of course, the survey’s remaining 23 percent say Portwood et al make “pregnancy and parenthood look easy.” And adults are more skeptical about the shows’ cautionary messaging; 48 percent of adults thought the shows made pregnancy and parenthood look easy. (In fairness, though, there was not an option to say that the show didn’t impact one’s perspective at all.)
For the majority of teens, then, maybe Portwood is encouraging good choices.
OK, a bit of a stretch, but we’ll still take it.
Even with the "Teen Mom" influence, though, (whatever it may be) parents are not off the hook. In that same National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy survey, 38 percent of teens said that parents have the most influence on their decisions about sex, compared to 9 percent who said “the media” had the most influence. The second highest influential group was “friends,” at 22 percent.
In a recent poll, kids say that the problem with youth sports is adults. In this 1999 file photo, a coach exhorts his 9 and 10 year-old baseball players. Their team is The Giants, and they played in the Newton North Little League. (Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File)
Youth sports: The problem, say kids in a new poll, is adults
Nothing in a recent survey by the national youth sports franchise i9 Sports that asked kids about their youth sports experiences surprised me in the least:
– Eighty-four percent said they have, at some point, either quit or wanted to quit a team.
– More than a third have witnessed a verbal argument between adults at their games.
– A third wished adults didn’t watch their games because the adults put too much pressure on them or make them nervous.
RELATED: Are you a Helicopter Parent? Take our quiz!
A decade ago, while researching a story on youth sports for the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, I watched as a group of middle-aged men literally bid for the services of 12-year-old boys to play on their Little League teams, using points allocated by the local league.
Because points could be hoarded for future seasons, some were holding back waiting to build their dynasties. This “draft” was an annual ritual virtually unknown to the larger community and it took place in a poker game like atmosphere.
These men were already competing with each other, before the season even began. And once the male competitive ego enters the youth sports equation you have a recipe for disaster in which the needs of the children become subservient to the needs of the adults.
Bob Bigelow, a former first round NBA draft pick who played four NBA seasons, has been on a mission for two decades to give the games back to the kids. In speeches around the country he tells his mostly male audiences that their competitive egos mean nothing to the process and if they aren’t smiling at least 90 percent of the time they ought to resign.
Mr. Bigelow decries youth sports systems that seek to stratify young athletes at a very young age in the never-ending search for “talent.”
He wants to abolish all-star teams, travel teams and “elite” teams for kids and he wants adults to understand that all their brilliant coaching is usually well over the heads of the kids.
Developmentally, younger children don’t yet have the mental processing skills that allow them to understand position play in games like soccer and basketball where you have many players and a ball in constant motion. This is why 22 six-year-olds in a soccer game will all congregate near the ball.
And if you don’t understand that, you’re only going to be frustrated, and that’s likely to lead to some unhealthy interactions with the children.
Above all, Bigelow wants the kids to have fun by their definition, not the adults’.
Shortly after my youth sports story appeared in print, I attended a league meeting in the town where I’d watched the “auction” for young players. Routinely, there were always a couple of kids deemed at tryouts not to be Major League material (Majors being the Little League level where most 12 year-olds play).
Those few who didn’t make it were usually crushed that they’d no longer be able to play with their peers and lost interest altogether.
Why not allow all 12-year-olds to play in Majors? I asked.
RELATED: Are you a Helicopter Parent? Take our quiz!
Incredibly, one long-time coach had an answer: Because, he said, it would dilute “the product” on the field.
When middle-aged men with general manager fantasies talk about the “product” when they’re coaching 12 year-olds you know you have a problem.
The days when kids organized their own games on the sandlot are long gone for the most part. Now adults in thousands of communities across the country spend untold hours organizing games for kids, and insinuating themselves into every aspect of the youth sports experience. Most are well-intentioned to be sure, but if you ask me what’s wrong with youth sports today, the simple answer would be this: adults.
Another dog joins the ranks of national heroes for saving an abandoned baby. In this 2005 file photo, Felix Omondi, an 11-year-old student with his dog, now named Mkombozi (Saviour), in a compound on the outskirts of Nairobi. The dog was foraging for food when it retrieved an abandoned baby girl in a forest and carried the infant to its litter of puppies. (Sayyid Azim/AP)
Dog hero in Ghana rescues newborn baby
It’s not just moms who can feel unworthy these days. This news tidbit is for my Labrador retriever, the one who regularly sneaks onto the couch and scams us into giving him two dinners.
This week, a farm dog in the west African country of Ghana is being praised as a hero hound after saving the life of an abandoned two-week-old baby. Madam Rosemary Azure, a regional director of health in Ghana, told the Ghana News Agency that the dog apparently found the baby under a bridge in the northern part of the country near the regional capital of Bolgatana. Rather than abandon (or eat) the vulnerable tot, the dog curled up next to him for the night, refusing to leave his side.
A search party (looking for the dog) found the duo the next morning. The dog's owner had become worried that the pooch hadn't returned home, and had gotten a group together to look for the pup through through the nearby woods and fields. They spotted the dog under the bridge, and then saw that a baby was nuzzling into its fur.
Authorities say they have taken custody of the child and are investigating how he got under the bridge in the first place.
There have been a few such doggy heroes in Africa.
Perhaps most famous is the Kenyan stray now known as Mkombozi, who was foraging for food in 2005 when she found an abandoned infant girl in a plastic bag. Mkombozi (which means “liberator” in Swahili) carried the baby back to her own litter of puppies – across busy roads, through a barbed wire fence and into one of the impoverished neighborhoods of Nairobi.
The dog became a national hero after residents heard the baby’s cries and found Mkombozi protecting her. People still talk about the Mkombozi. When I was reporting in Kenya earlier this year at least a half dozen people asked whether I had heard of her.
We wonder what honors are in store for the Ghana pup.
As for the baby – he’s apparently doing OK after his night with the pooch. That’s one sure dog person in the making.
Fred Rogers in the PBS children's TV show 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.' (Youtube)
Mister Rogers goes viral in PBS remix of 'Garden of Your Mind'
Thank you, Mister Rogers.
Thank you still, long after I’ve learned how to tie my shoes, decades since I confirmed that yes, in fact, I would like to be your neighbor.
Because there I was, at the computer early this morning, ready to read through my normal batch of celebrity mom news, reality star bad behavior, body image complaints, political spatting, blah blah blah, and instead I saw this video.
It’s called “Garden of Your Mind,” and it’s a remix of scenes from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood by Symphony of Science’s John Boswel. The haunting (and really quite catching) mash-up is part of an effort by PBS Digital Studios to revitalize some of its old school icons into new age stars.
The late Fred Rogers, PBS says, was an obvious starting point. His Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, which ran from 1968 to 2001, was one of the station’s most iconic shows.
"When we discovered video mash-up artist John D. Boswell, aka melodysheep, on YouTube, we immediately wanted to work together," says the description on the video on PBS Digital Studios' YouTube channel. "Turns out that he is a huge 'Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood' fan, and was thrilled at the chance to pay tribute to one of our heroes. Both PBS and the Fred Rogers Company hope you like John’s celebration of Fred Rogers’ message."
That message, if you don’t remember, is beautiful. It is about learning, and openness toward the world, and the belief that other people, even when they’re different – especially when they’re different – have much to teach us.
In many ways, the PBS video, which has started to go viral, feels like a manifesto. (A gentle, kind, Mr. Rogers-style manifesto.) It seems like a plea not just for a different sort of childhood, but for a different society; a message from the spirit of Mr. Rogers that we need to step back from what often feels like angry, divided and overly commercialized culture and refocus on creativity and human connection and loving your neighbors.
And on thinking.
“Did you ever grow anything in the garden of your mind?” Rogers asks, autotuned, over a funky beat. “You can grow ideas in the garden of your mind.”
He goes on.
“It’s good to be curious, about many things. you can think about things and make believe and all you have to do is think – and they grow.”
Thinking, curiosity, make believe. What wonderful things to ponder this morning.
Check out the video, and have a snappy day.
Here, Sophia Schmitz, uses the balancing beams at a neighborhood playground in Alameda, Calif. on Dec. 26, 2011. (Tony Avelar/The Christian Science Monitor)
Emergency room visits an overreaction to childhood scrapes?
Dear Free-Range Kids: My two-year old daughter face-planted while running on a sidewalk yesterday late afternoon. Now she’s got a scrape on her forehead and a “Groucho Marx”-looking mustache/skinned upper lip. We checked that her teeth and nose were fine, and she stopped crying before we got home.
But, I cannot tell you how many moms (of all people!?) have stopped me to ask if I took her to the emergency room. When I say no, they look at me like I’m crazy.
Look: She fell while running. It’s no worse than having a skinned knee, just in a bit more obvious place. We put ice and Neosporin on it, and she was back to herself by dinner time. Since when do we rush off to the ER for every scrape, bruise, and cut? It’s no wonder that medical insurance is skyrocketing if we rush off frantically to the hospital every time a child falls down. And, why react with a gasp and “Oh my gosh!” to seeing a child with a scrape and a scab on her face? It’s teaching her that something terrible happened to her, when it was really just a fall.
Seems to me we are instilling a culture of fear by reacting with such grandiosity to such a normal accident. Beyond that, I can’t tell you how many moms have told me that “because she’s a girl, you really should put [insert numerous product names] on it to minimize the scarring.” I just don’t think that I am (literally) scarring my child by keeping my reaction to a sane minimum. – Jen.
Dear Jen: I’ve wondered myself why I’m at the pediatrician’s office so much more than my mom was with me.
I think it’s all part of ”worst-first” thinking. We are encouraged to consider how every incident or sniffle COULD turn into the worst possible thing, and how terrible would we feel if we hadn’t addressed it with all guns blazing. ”Wait and see” has become “Wait and see how you feel when your child doesn’t recover and it’s all your fault!”
No wonder it’s so hard to resist the impulse to make a big fuss, or at the very least, spend a lot of time and money. – L.
The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Lenore Skenazy blogs at Free-Range Kids.
Disney Culinary Dietary Specialist Gary Jones, left, prepares a smoothie with Mickey Mouse at the Walt Disney Company's announcement for new standards for food advertising on their programming targeting kids and families on June 5, 2012. Disney's new ban on junk food advertising is an important public health step, but what about its move to brand "health food" with a Mickey Mouse label? (Gary Cameron/Reuters)
Disney bans junk food, Mickey Mouse brands health. Hmmm...
So, I’ve been thinking about one of our news items from earlier this week, and just can’t shake the feeling that the glass slipper doesn’t quite fit.
On Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama and Walt Disney Co. Chairman and CEO Robert Iger announced that as of 2015 Disney will ban junk-food advertising on its children’s television and radio programs.
Once the new regulations are in effect, food and beverage products will have to meet nutritional guidelines for serving size, calories, and fat and sugar content. Which means no more cartoon characters peddling sugary cereal or mass-processed cookies in the middle of Saturday morning kids programming.
This is, clearly, an important step. Not just because Disney is getting rid of junk-food marketing, but because of the implicit acknowledgement within its move that that the way companies advertise to children does impact their health.
(Mrs. Obama made reference to this herself at the press conference, saying that “for years, people told us that no matter what we did to get our kids to eat well and exercise, we would never solve our childhood obesity crisis until companies changed the way that they sell food to our children.”)
But there’s another big part of Disney’s new program that is getting a lot less attention – and to me feels a wee bit disturbing.
On Tuesday, Disney introduced what it is calling the “Mickey Check,” which it described as a Mickey Mouse icon “tool” that “calls out nutritious food and menu items sold in stores, online and at restaurant food venues at its U.S. Parks and Resorts.” It may be coming to a store near you, soon, too, appearing on what Disney described as “licensed food products.”
That’s right. Disney is working to brand health. And apples.
Smart business move. Disney is already deep in the produce business, reportedly selling billions of Disney-branded servings of fresh fruit and vegetables. But now it’s moving in on healthy eating overall, equating its brand with “good for you.”
And sure, some parents might find this helpful. “Look, toddler, of course you want the apple slices. Mickey says so!”
But it just seems to me to be ... I don’t know. Problematic? Aren’t little kids bombarded with enough advertising messages? Does healthy eating – such a huge public health issue given childhood obesity rates, and one that goes to the intimate heart of families – need to be connected to the whole host of Disney (or any other company’s) consumer products?
I called up Josh Golin, associate director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, to get his thoughts. (And to see whether I was just stuck in the tower on this one.)
“We think teaching kids to eat based on characters is counter productive,” he said, although he wanted me to make clear that he believed Disney’s overall announcement was positive, in large part because it shows that junk-food marketing has become stigmatized.
Golin said that it's important for children to learn about healthy eating by understanding what’s good for them; not by mindlessly following a brand.
Besides, he said, using beloved cartoon characters to target children is manipulative. Developmentally, he said, children have real love for the characters they know from stories.
“I think it’s wrong to take a child’s love for the character and leverage that love to get them to buy something. Even if it’s a product we think is ‘good.’ If children don’t understand the process of what’s happening to them – if they don’t understand the way their own love is being commodified and leveraged – that’s wrong. It’s manipulative.”
Besides, he said, if eating choices are taught to be brand-based, what’s to keep kids from going after another brand that’s used for less healthy foods?
The Mickey Check is not surprising, of course. As Iger acknowledged earlier this week, Disney’s move might be socially beneficial, but it’s also good business. And for those of us with kids, it means yet another area where we are going to have to worry about marketing.
Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth announced their engagement to People magazine today, sparking debate about whether they are too young to get married. Here, Hemsworth poses with Cyrus at the premiere of his film "The Hunger Games" at Nokia theatre in Los Angeles, California on March 12, 2012. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)
Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth: Too young to get engaged?
A 3.5-carat diamond ring and an Australian fiancé sound like a fairytale marriage, but teen pop star Miley Cyrus's engagement raises questions about the idealized dream she's modeling for the average teenager. In other words: Can teen marriages last?
Ms. Cyrus, 19, best known for her role as Disney channel’s “Hannah Montana,” recently got engaged to Liam Hemsworth, who she has dated since she was 16 and he was 19. Hemsworth, 22, is one of the three young stars of “The Hunger Games.”
People Magazine broke the news of the engagement Wednesday morning, which the Associated Press later confirmed. Cyrus told People, “I'm so happy to be engaged and look forward to a life of happiness with Liam.”
However, marriage statistics show that a lifetime of happiness hasn't worked out as well for other teens who marry.
According to a report on first marriages by the National Survey for Family Growth, women and men who get married in their teen years (before 20) have a lower probability of their first marriage reaching its 20th anniversary than those who wait until they are older. The study, released in March, looks at the trends and data in the timing of first marriages and their outcomes based on data from 2006 to 2010. The median age for first marriage in the US is 25.8 for women and 28.3 for men.
Though there are several demographic factors that impact first marriage longevity – education level, cohabitation and timing for babies – the consensus is that those who marry after age 25, statistically speaking, have a higher probability of staying married longer.
Cyrus needs only look to her famous peers to realize that young marriage in Hollywood has some well-known failures that have become public spectacles. A few examples: Britney Spears who married Kevin Federline at 22, Ashlee Simpson who married Pete Wentz at 23, Reese Witherspoon who married Ryan Phillippe at 23, Kate Hudson who married Chris Robinson at 21, and Drew Barrymore who married Jeremy Thomas at 19.
The report says that marriage “is one of the primary events during the transition to adulthood.” Growing up as a famous teen, Cyrus has struggled with public perception about her transition from teen role model to mature (and also rebellious) adult. In a recent interview on Amanda de Cadenet’s Lifetime show “The Conversation,” Cyrus admitted that the media spotlight has influenced her own self-image about how to be successful in Hollywood, evidenced by her increasingly sexualized outfits and open conversations about sex.
Cyrus and Hemsworth met in 2009 while filming their movie “The Last Song,” based on the Nicholas Sparks novel. The movie made its cable television premiere on Sunday as part of a Nicholas Sparks marathon including “A Walk to Remember” and “The Notebook.”
Sparks’ novels (and their movie adaptations) showcase highly romanticized notions of love and relationships. Sure his characters deal with relationship and personal “problems,” and despite some depressing storylines, he does not portray marriage in a way that conveys the day-to-day realities of what it takes to make it work. But who would go to see that movie anyway?
Marriage and relationships in movies, especially those targeted for teen audiences, do little to teach impressionable teenagers about the maturity of adult relationships. Parents should be aware of the messages their kids receive from teen stars, both in real life and on the screen.
Allow for some unstructured time in your kids' summer schedules and let them use their imaginations to pretend and create their own free entertainment. Sejla Imamovic, 7, right, and Abby Carr, 10, do jumping jacks as they play with neighborhood friends on May 10, 2012 in Twin Falls, Idaho. (Drew Nash/The Times-News/AP)
Free games: the power of a kid’s imagination vs. gigabytes
Parents these days enroll their children in lots of enriching summer camps and classes. Lucky kids. And other lucky kids just putter around their homes or yards pretending. "Let's pretend" were the words that commenced most of childhood play for generations. With rich imaginations children created exotic and fantastic worlds in which they were the main players.
Empty packing boxes became all kinds of little shops and vehicles. A line of chairs in the dining room became a bus or train. A bedspread thrown over a sawhorse became our tent on the Amazon. In our own attic was a box of fancy dresses, suits, hats and old jewelry. We became mom and dad or duke and duchess.
I have nothing against the kind of "enriched childhood" many parents are trying to create. I just don't want kids to miss the richness that comes from their own unique imaginations.
When I see the kindergarten children in a school where I'm the psychologist with baskets of dress-ups in their play area, I am grateful. This may be one of the few places where these developing minds get to exercise the capacity to imagine. Too often these days children's imaginations are hijacked by television or by toys that require a specific story line.
As children we often had as much fun making our toys as we did playing with them. When I wanted to play secretary, I spent an entire afternoon making a typewriter from a little black box and circles of paper that I carefully cut out, labeled with appropriate letters and glued on the box. When we wanted a swimming pool we spent a whole day digging a hole, placing a tarp and running water. All for about 30 minutes of splashing. Our mother had suggested the location of the "swimming pool" and a few days later a big lilac bush was planted there. (Guess mom had a little imagination too.)
Children still have these impulses and with a little unstructured time will organize an activity, create and pretend. My daughter was one of those children who absorbed all the tape and cardboard in the house into her creations. One year I gave her a shoebox filled with tape, scissors, cardboard etc. as a Christmas gift. She loved it, managed to use it all up in short order and continued to gather the tape from her parents' secret hiding places.
I became convinced that one of the ways we encourage imagination is by tolerating messes. Sometimes the imagination of my children resulted in chaos in the living room, where every stuffed animal and piece of doll equipment became part of some elaborate setting. I must confess that it was often tempting to just let them watch cartoons because it created less mess. On the other hand the mess created from too much media can be in their heads rather that on the living room floor. Much harder to clean up.
Some children are natural directors in pretend plays. "You be the princess, and you be the horse and you be the dad." My daughter was one of those directors, and to be allowed to play with her and her friends she would tell her little brother, "You be the monster". It's hard to know what impact her training had on him, but there were times when he played that role too well. Fortunately he escaped the type casting and is now the most wonderful grown son a mother could want.
Toys that have multiple uses and, even better, time in the great outdoors can spark the "pretend potential" in children. I hope every child gets to make mud pies at some point in their childhood. Even pretending with them can help. I'm certain that our now grown children became the creative cooks they are because of the hours we spent pretending to be restaurant patrons and ordering wildly exotic dishes.
One of the best friends of imagination is boredom. We have to let kids be bored every now and then and let them find inspiring materials around to create their own fun. In these critical times we need rich imaginations to solve our many problems and equally important to bring joy and laughter into the world. Even if it means more messes in the living room – it's a small price to pay.
The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Susan DeMersseman blogs at Raising kids, gardens and awareness.
Amber Portwood, the Teen Mom star, was sentenced to prison on a drug charge. drug Troubled moms, elevated to celebrity – like Octomom Nadya Suleman (pictured here in May 2012) who is considering stripping for money – have become parodies of our greatest social problems. (AP)
Amber Portwood, Teen Mom star, sentenced to prison. Are you sad?
Ok, so am I the only one here who thinks the rapt media attention this week on some of pop culture’s most troubled moms is.... well.... sad?
I don’t mean sad as in “pathetic,” although one could certainly make that argument, too. I’m thinking “sad” here as in heartaching.
I'm not trying to be preachy. But really, let’s take a look at some of the news that’s come out this week about Teen Mom reality star Amber Portwood and “Octomom” Nadya Suleman – moms who pretty clearly fit that “troubled” category.
Yesterday, a judge ordered that Ms. Portwood, who starred in the MTV reality television shows “Teen Mom” and “16 and Pregnant," serve a five year sentence for a felony drug charge. (Her sentence had been suspended on condition of finishing drug rehab, but she dropped out of the program.) Prosecutors say the now 22-year-old mother was arrested on May 24 after she failed and lied about a urine test.
Meanwhile, Octomom is publicly wavering about her new solution to strip to earn more money for those 14 children. Celebrity news reports say Ms. Suleman had booked a gig at a Florida strip joint (where she would only have to take off her top, she insisted), but that she backed out after she felt the club owners weren’t showing her enough respect. This comes after she filmed her own porn movie (due to be released this summer), which she called the “most liberating thing I’ve ever done.”
The Internet world and celebrity media are loving every second of these mama train wrecks, with posts, news tidbits, comments, you name it.
And it all kinda makes me want to cry.
Because, you know, both of these women have kids. They may have turned themselves into caricatures (or maybe we turned them into caricatures for our own enjoyment and ridicule), but they’re still people. And mothers. I mean, Portwood has a three-year-old daughter, whom she will for the next couple of years see primarily in a detention center waiting room. And Octomom said she got into the commercial sex industry – however positively she spins it for the media – because she was broke.
“If it’s a job, and it’s a well-paying job, and it’s going to allow me to get out of here and move in a safe, huge home that they [her kids] deserve, I’m going to do it,” she said.
So, we have moms with drug problems. Incarcerated parents. Impoverished women selling their bodies for money.
It should be sad. Even more so because these are real, important, and troubling social issues that impact scores of women across the country, albeit not often in the spotlight of television cameras.
Maybe you'd think we’d use these gruesomely public examples to delve into a debate about solutions for the underlying social problems. Or maybe we could just take a look at our own lives, say a blessing for how fortunate we are, and resolve to think more of – maybe even try to help – the less fortunate.
But no. We watch instead with horrified, judgmental glee.
Maybe this is because public moms like Portwood and Suleman are outlets for all our privileged mommy angst; a release after worrying about which car seat is the best for baby, or whether we’re doing well by Junior to put him in soccer practice rather than extra art class.
It’s like the snarky media coverage of New Jersey’s Tanning Mom, Patricia Krentcil, accused of endangering her daughter by taking her into a tanning salon. (Coverage that is still as glibly nasty today, with new photos of Younger Tanning Mom, once an aspiring model, making their rounds online.) We love to bring a Bad Mommy – usually one lower down the socio-economic ladder, always caught in the media glare – to a public hanging.
It shows that the rest of us might be struggling moms, but we’re not Bad. Not like Tanning Mom. Or Octomom. Or Teen Mom.
No, we’re Good Mommies, at least in comparison.
And because we feel self satisfied, the social problems underneath those Bad Moms’ struggles can continue.
A child looks at a laptop displaying Facebook logos in Hyderabad, India. Facebook currently prohibits children under 13 from having their own profile, but millions have gained access by lying about their age. Facebook is testing ways to allow kids to use Facebook under parental supervision, by connecting parents' and kids' accounts. (Mahesh Kumar A/AP)
Facebook access for under-13 kids is good – if parents involved
You may have noticed a Wall Street Journal article on Monday about Facebook “developing technology that would allow children younger than 13 years old to use the social-networking site under parental supervision.”
If so, that’s great news. A year ago, Consumer Reports did a study finding that 7.5 million children under 13 are using Facebook, so why would it not be good to have a social site suitable for kids under the “brand name” they love? They’re already there! And – though, in compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, Facebook says it deletes thousands of under-13 accounts a day – it’s clear that the federal law has not put much of a dent in under-13 use of social media. So what’s needed is a service actually designed for them, and that’s what Facebook is working on, reportedly.
Parents right there with them
The research shows parents aren’t unsupportive. Pew Internet reported last summer that adult use of social networking had doubled since 2008, and an earlier study from TRUSTe found that 95 percent of the 80 percent of US parents who have social networking accounts are on Facebook – and of that 95 percent, the vast majority (86 percent) are friends with their teens in Facebook.
Then researchers looked specifically at the underage question, finding that a lot of kids under 13 have their parents’ blessing. A study last fall, “Why parents help their children lie to Facebook about age,” found that, among parents of 10-to-14-year-old Facebook users, 84 percent were aware their children signed up and, of that 84 percent, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) even “helped create the account.” The study was led by social media researcher Danah Boyd, who for a CNET interview told my ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid what she heard from parents of these young Facebook users:
"'They want their kids to have access to public life. Today, what public life means is participating in commercial sites. They want to help their kids get on these sites and use them responsibly. These are not parents who are saying, ‘Oh, get on Facebook’ and then walk away,' Boyd continued. She’s found from talking with young people and their parents around the country in her field work that “these are parents who have the computer in the living room, they’re having conversations with their kids, they’re often helping them create their accounts to talk to Grandma. They’re helping them actually negotiate all of this. And they want to do it often in the middle school years, when they can actually have reasonable conversations about how to act responsibly and where they can be present in this."
That presence and guidance from caring adults is even more important for kids of younger ages who are just beginning to negotiate social life on their own. Purely logically, a social network service designed for younger ages and supportive of parental engagement – rather than one with neither of those elements – would be better for the under-13 kids already there. Better than leaving kids to work the online part of this challenging part of growing up completely on their own. And if the service supports parental engagement, parents not already using social media will get on-the-job training.
An educator’s view
“I approach the idea of ‘restricting’ use of these newer social tools in any way with great reservation,” Hawaii educator and behavior health specialist Donnel Nunes told me two years ago. He continued:
"In a perfect world, parents would keep the computer in a visible area and monitor usage and that would solve so many of the problems that we see. As this is rarely the reality and sometimes parents are the ones modeling the problematic behavior, I understand the sense of urgency in trying to find a solution to protect kids. I fully support that urgency. I’m also a little cautious about making correlations between social networking and deviant behavior. I don’t believe there is any evidence to support that social networking = bad choices, bad behavior, etc. I do believe that mobile devices and media have created an opportunity for impulsive behavior to have greater consequences. I also hear about behavior from seventh and eighth graders that, when I was a kid (forgive me for that), did not really start happening until 11th, 12th, and beyond. I like to encourage adults (myself included) to really think about how the paradigm of social interaction has changed with new mobile devices and online tools (such as Facebook, etc). My experience with kids has led me to believe that these forms of communication are every bit as valid as the old way of doings things (face-to-face, phone calls…)."
It’s time for Facebook to do this – and listen to feedback from parents and educators, as well as their young users, so together we can figure this next, much more sound phase of social media the way it logically should be done: in and with participatory media.
The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Anne Collier blogs at NetFamilyNews.
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