The Family

Awhile back, I grabbed this book, The Public Orphanage, from my bookshelf (published in 1995) and started flipping through it. I had read it years ago, but now I am shocked by it all over again.



(available for purchase here)

On the very first page is a most interesting paragraph.

Probably the biggest and most subtle shift in discussions about the family came in the last two decades. During that time educators and policymakers began to refer to families instead of the family. They became more sensitive to the diversity of family configurations.

and...

To make people feel better, the trend is to define a family as just about any configuration of people living together who care for one another. We've solved the problem of broken families by declaring that no family is broken, just different.

The Public Orphanage describes the many ways that schools are attempting to become the new American family. It used to be that children helped to boost the family income and then would help to care for their parents in old age. But as fathers increasingly began to work away from the home, children were no longer contributors to their family's business. Today, many women have entered the work force, divorce has increased, and the old version of "The family" has withered away into nostalgia. Children have become a burden. Or so we are led to believe.

With such problems in the family, the school has become the answer for all of our needs. It "cares for children, all day, from birth (daycare to preschool to Kindergarten) to school age, and after school every day until parents return from work, and in some cases, all summer. Those who say they are "pro family" now are probably thinking that these schools should be for everyone. What that boils down to is a full-service school (including breakfast, since parents are too harried to even feed their kids in the morning) which allows "field trips" home in the evenings and weekends. In other words, a "public orphanage."

Instead of looking for ways to bring the family back to front and center and suport it, it too often has unburdened parents from their responsibilities.

It is hard to believe, isn't it. How much more government intervention can we take? I've had enough. This is one of the many reasons my children are at home. They don't need a government nanny when they've got Mom and Dad. Even if you still want to keep your kids in school, this is a great book to read, to help you be aware of the myriad of government programs and its experiments on our children and our schools.

I pray that the parents of today will wake up and once again realize the blessing God has given us - our children. They are OUR responsibility. Not the government's!