Children are family, and families, it has been widely rumored, are in trouble. This section is longer than the others since the potential decline of the family may have a high correlation to social and personal stress. Prevention’s survey found that many people have constant anxiety regarding their children, no matter what the age of their children. If they’re young, there are all types of safety issues.

If they’re older, there are potential problems related to sex, drugs, alcohol, driving, and so on.Columnist John Leo, writing his usual commentary in U.S. News and World Report, reflected on the increase in “modern primitives” in society–one of them may be in your household. Leo says, “The days when body piercers could draw stares by wearing multiple earrings and a nose stud are long gone.

We’re now in the late baroque phase of self-penetration. Metal rings and bars hang from eyebrows, noses, nipples, lips, chins, cheeks, navels, and for that coveted neo-Frankenstein look, from the side of the neck.

“A new primitivism,” he continues, “ seems to be emerging in body modification as in other areas of American life. It plugs into a wider dissatisfaction with traditional Western rationality, logic, and sexual norms, as well as an anger at the impact of Western technology on the natural environment and anger at the state of American political and social life.”

Anthropologists have a term for people who modify their bodies in irrevocable ways–self-mutilists. In a world of six billion human beings, with fewer and fewer apparently having a clear sense of identity, many people yearn for a way of standing out, being distinctive. One of many measures of seeking identity, however odd it may seem, is getting tattooed–nobody has exactly the same tattoo in the same place. For those with low self-esteem, the uniqueness of a tattoo may be quite appealing, while disturbing for the parents.

Behaviors That May Signify Loss of a Child’s Search for Identity:

• Wearing name brands to relate to a commercial image.
• Wearing letters of a sorority or a fraternity, or sports team, etc.; gang members wearing the same colors or clothes.
• Joining an organized religion in the hope for instant meaning and purpose in one’s life.
• Over-engaging in fantasy, entertainment, role-playing games, escapism.
• Adopting a transient lifestyle; feeling wanderlust.
• Leaving established tradition behind.
• Seeking to recapture a youthful identity, wondering “is that all there is?”
• Creating/buying art that makes a statement rather than being purely aesthetic.
• Feeling pressure from family and friends as to whom they have to be.

Leo reminds us that, “The yearning to irritate parents and shock the middle class seems to rank high as a motive for getting punctured repeatedly. If your child is starting to look like a witch doctor, take heart. Recent data shows that at least 40% of people who’ve been tattooed want to have them removed, presumably once they regain their senses.

If you’re among the modern primitives, regardless of what stress you’re experiencing now, I predict that your future stress will be in the area of finance. It’s tough to get a high paying job decked to the nines. But then, if you are so adroitly adorned, getting a high paying job probably wasn’t one of your goals anyway.

Certainly the continuing breakup of the nuclear family hasn’t helped in terms of making home life less stressful. In Fatherless America, author David Blankenhorn elaborates on what many believe to be societies most urgent social problem. Blankenhorn says that after several decades of denial and neglect, America is finally awakening to one of its most urgent social problems–the rapid spread of fatherlessness:

• Never before have so many children grown up without knowing what it means to have a father. More than half of all children in America will live apart from their fathers for at least some of their childhood.
• For sons, the father defines masculinity. If the job of defining masculinity is left to mass culture, masculinity may be seen as being sexually predatory and violent.
• For a daughter, the father is the first man in her life. If that father is absent, it may be hard for her not to conclude anything other than that men are basically unreliable.
• Growing up without a father puts the child at much greater risk of dropping out of school or getting in trouble at school.
• A mother by herself does not parent the child. A father by himself does not parent the child. Together, the mother and father parent the child.
• The most important thing to change is our belief that fatherhood is superfluous. Every child deserves a father and we have to change our public policies, our private behavior, and the institutions of civil society to maximize the possibility that every child will have a father.

Around the world, families aren’t faring much better. Journalist Tyler Marshall, writing for the Los Angeles Times found that in Eastern Europe, “Communism has been replaced by a mixture of economic uncertainty and social confusion, producing what some analysts call a values vacuum that frequently leaves parents incapable of addressing their childrens’ questions on what to do with their lives.” In one area of India, where many fathers spend months working overseas, the divorce rate has jumped 350% in only one decade. There are similar occurrences all over the globe.

Marshall says, “Against the backdrop of shifting economic conditions, which have brought millions more women into the labor force” and generated a competition for jobs that frequently sends potential bread winners away for months at a time…it is getting tougher to raise a family.

“People who respond to the fundamental instincts to share and have a family today are very much challenged by the environment in which we live,” says Cynthia Lloyd in a study published by the Population Council in New York. “The majority of Americans appear ready to see links between less stable families and appalling statistics that show a tripling of teen suicide and homicide rates, a doubling of overall juvenile crime, and sharp drops in college entrance exam scores for the past generation.”

For a Stronger Family

Linda and Richard Eyre are authors of Three Steps to a Strong Family. If your family is no where near what it could be, and doesn’t offer each member of the family the nurturing and support that he or she needs, read closely! The Eyres say that parents can develop the three fundamental essentials for any institution that seeks to thrive and apply them to the most important institution, the family.

These fundamentals include: A family legal system for settling disputes, a family economy to teach children to earn, save, and spend, and a set of meaningful traditions that provide a sense of family identity and the opportunity to foster and celebrate shared values.

Family Legal System:

• The process begins with setting clear, simple, family laws that foster safety, calmness, and a more orderly household. The laws also teach children how to manage their time and to make choices. The Eyres, in perfecting this task, ended up with five one-word laws that their young children could digest:

Peace: don’t fight, don’t lose your temper or yell;
Asking: don’t go somewhere without asking;
Order: take care of your things, do things in the right order (homework before TV);
Respect: be polite; and
Obedience: mind your parents.

• Next, parents need to devise consistent rewards or penalties for adhering to or breaking these laws, underscoring the relationship between action and consequence. raising and rewarding good behavior and providing children with an opportunity to repent and make amends for unacceptable behavior are important to success.
• To exact repentance from children, send them to a repenting bench, where they sit until they each explain why they were at fault. The most effective punishment is directly associated with the behavior. For instance, a child who goes out without asking is not allowed to go next time.
• Parents can foster good decision-making skills by allowing children to make decisions about saving and spending money. Another tactic is to ask children to make a list of important decisions, such as “I will not smoke.” By writing down and discussing the decisions, children will be prepared to act in their own best interests in years to come. The Eyres also suggest role playing so that children will be prepared to respond appropriately to peer pressure and to handle difficult situations.

A Family Economy

• The goals here are to develop ways for children to learn discipline, to earn their own money, to save, invest, and earn interest on their money, and to show them how to set priorities and make decisions to spend money wisely. The Eyres suggest that children as young as eight can earn money for necessities, such as clothes, and can even begin saving for their college educations.
• Families need to decide how monies are to be earned by holding a family discussion about the division of family responsibilities. The Eyres instruct parents on how to develop a recording system to help children keep track of their responsibilities, and how to establish a payday, when payment is made according to how consistently a job was completed.

Family Traditions

• “Traditions are the magic that holds your family together like glue,” the Eyres say. “By thinking about our traditions and trying to make them the very best they can be, we are acknowledging our children and our homes as our top priority. We are recognizing our families as the most important and most lasting of institutions.”
• Some of the family traditions they share are celebrating ancestors’ birthdays, marking the first day of each season with a seasonally appropriate activity, and holding a “Five Facet Review,” in which parents can devote a quiet evening once a month to reviewing each child’s development.

Implementing these steps can bring your family closer and will reduce your social and personal stress at the same time. There is nothing more important or as stressful as our families.