What Do Parents Do These Days?

Let's talk about personal responsibility.

When a child becomes an adult, one of the things he learns is how to be responsible for his own actions. If you stub your toe on the door, you don't get pissed off at the person who built the house and put the door in the way of your foot. Another part of personal responsibility is accepting when you make mistakes and figure out ways not to repeat them.

After having had time dealing with both parents and their children on a rather personal level, I have come to the conclusion that there is a generation of people who have become parents while remaining children, themselves. They constantly and consistently refuse to take responsibility for raising their kids or their kids' actions and mistakes.

Here is an example that happened to me recently. A while ago I returned from a youth convention. A parent called me and yelled at me because her son had taken medication to the convention (without my knowledge), medication for ADD that has an enormous street value, left it in his room and 16 pills were stolen. On top of that, he was taking the wrong dosage - he was taking two pills a day instead of one. I actually heard his mom on the phone yelling at her son for not reading the directions on the bottle of pills! She was mad at me for not telling her that the pills are supposed to be kept with one of the staff, she was mad at me for not receiving information (all participants received information over a week before the convention, I sent out information to participants in addition). She blamed me for not having sent her any forms to fill out about the medication - in fact, the form to be allowed to go to the convention required this information and she signed it. She blamed the convention leaders for not making an announcement to the kids that their medication belonged with an adult.

Here is what I don't quite understand. How can a parent allow her child to take medication while away from home without being one hundred percent sure that this child understood the dosage? How can a parent send her child off to a convention full of teenagers and expect the child to guard medication that is apparently worth a lot on the street? And then how could she yell at her child as if this were his fault, and yell at the youth director for not being a psychic and knowing to ask her child if he was carrying medication with him and checking to make sure that his roommates were not stealing the valuable pills.

(As an aside: to be completely honest, though he was supposedly taking the wrong dosage I think he was actually better than most days that I have known him. He seemed very calm, focused and friendly. He was able to move from group to group of people, joke around, give hugs and more. He was great the whole time with no instances of over-stepping social boundaries.)

A few more examples:

The religious school in the synagogue has taken up the responsibility of teaching children how to act at Bar and Bat Mitzvah parties. They have seminars talking about what is and isn't appropriate. There are classes on the importance of not bullying other kids and what to do if you are bullied, classes about sex, and more.

Not to mention the fact that the parents are sending their kids to religious school and not bringing Judaism into the home, and therefore pushing that responsibility off on to someone else as well. Most of these families do not even recognize Shabbat in any small way; many even drop their kids off at shul for Junior congregation and go shopping while their kids are busy. At the beginning of the year I would email the parents once a week to tell them what we did in class so they could bring that into their home. I actually had parents request to be taken off the list!

So I ask you: what do parents do these days? What are they teaching their children?

At least, speaking in terms of Judaics, it seems the vast majority of parents do the minimum: pay the hundreds of dollars to send their kids to religious school and then wash their hands. There are many parents who don't even do that much. In terms of behavior and etiquette, it also seems that parents do the minimum. Why is it the job for schools and synagogues to teach your child not to have sex at 13?

I have seen parents sign up to volunteer to help at events (where their children ARE attending) and then not show up and not call to warn me that they aren't going to show up. I have had parents who have allowed their kids to reserve a space at an event but then not force them to call me to tell me that they aren't coming (and then get mad when I charge them for the ticket anyway).

Where did this generation get the idea that they have no responsibility for their actions? That the world revolves around them? No wonder there are these awful shows like Nanny 911, where the children are completely out of control. Their parents have neglected them, neglected to give them rules and show them how to be people, and they have turned into animals. This does not happen in the minority of families who are stupid enough to apply to put themselves and their families on national TV. I have seen this across the board, regardless of family income or education. Children who act like the world revolves around them, have absolutely no concept of personal responsibility or respect for anyone.

I don't have a solution for this, I just had to get it out of my system. Sometimes I just sit back and wonder.

Death of a High School Degree

I knew this was coming, and maybe it's been around for a while, but I have finally come to the realization: A Bachelor's degree is worth what a high school degree used to be worth. Which therefore means a high school degree is really worthless. The only kind of jobs where this is not the case is a skill-based job, such as one in Graphic Design, where they look at your portfolio and your ability to use the software before they look at your resume.

I am applying for jobs all over the community, not just the Jewish community, and all jobs require a Bachelor's degree. For example, I have applied for an administrative job in an office, where my main duties would include managing schedules, answering phones and doing office slave work (filing, copying, etc). High school degree required, Bachelor's preferred. I am not one hundred percent sure what it would be that I would be doing that would require that I obtain a Bachelor's degree. I have a Bachelor's degree, so applying for administrative jobs does not seem to be an issue, but any other position "prefers" [requires] a Master's degree! So because so many of these jobs require Master's degrees, people with Bachelor's degrees are forced to apply to jobs that used to be staffed by high school graduates, which raises the standard of those jobs. And what about people who could not afford high school, or could only go to community college (which is an Associates degree)? Retail, restaurants, etc. Basically, you can't even break into the "white collar" working world without spending thousands of dollars on a degree, because you can't even get hired to file papers without one - even if you studied something random like under water basket weaving.

So, here I am, a college graduate with experience, fantastic resume and references, and the best I can hope for is an administrative position or possibly a part time, after school teaching position. I could also put myself on the list for substitute teaching in private schools.

I am feeling somewhat negative about my search this week because I am not receiving much response from anyone. I have had two interviews for one job, after which I was informed that the position I thought they were advertising was a tentative position and may not have been approved for next year. Another place had me come in for an interview, but after a week had not contacted me. I called to "check the status of my application," only to be told that they were still considering. Knowing this place and having heard through the grape vine how many people were applying to this position, it almost sounds like they are keeping me tethered to them while waiting for another candidate (maybe one who has a Master's in underwater basket weaving).

I am beginning to have fantasies of running off to Israel for a while. This is not realistic in any way possible. I could staff a birthright trip and then stay there, but this is irresponsible, considering I have pets and recently moved into a new apartment. I literally dreamed last night that I did this and stayed on a kibbutz for a few weeks.

Anyway, the conclusion I have reached is this: I can no longer function in this world without a Master's degree. I will never be happy with the kind of positions that say "High school degree required, Bachelor's preferred" or simply "Bachelor's required." Even though a Master's could cost thousands and thousands of dollars and only open doors for me to get jobs that bring in less than 50k/year, I just don't know how it would be possible to live otherwise. The issue for me is that I have to figure out exactly what I want to do and where I am willing to move to do it.

Word of warning to anyone who might read this who is currently working on an undergraduate degree: do not stop going to school until you have that Master's.