The day
I signed the contract to write Home Invasion
just so happened to be the day that six teenagers and I
set out in our 15-passenger van on a 2,000 mile
vacation. We always take other kids along with our own
three when we go on our legendary Hagelin road trips.
This time we were heading south from Virginia to visit
Disney World and the beautiful Florida Gulf Coast
beaches. (I always wonder at such moments why my
wonderful and wise husband, Andy, can't ever quite make
it for the "road" part of the trip-he always has to fly
and meet us at our destination…could it possibly be that
he doesn't want to spend 24 driving hours stuck in a van
with six teenagers? Hmm. As I said, he is wise. But I
digress).
It was easy to begin composing thoughts about America's
toxic culture as I drove my precious cargo down the
highway-painfully easy. Barreling down I-95, the
roadside was filled with tacky billboards screaming,
"Topless! We Dare, We Bare!" advertising the many
topless bars that now dot the countryside. There was no
escape from them, state after state. I wondered, "Ok,
I've got six teenagers in the car-what messages are the
billboards sending them about acceptable behavior? What
are they learning about the value of women in our
society?" After a few hours we pulled into a gas station
that had an ice cream counter. I left the teens to order
and made a quick trip to the ladies room. When I
returned to pay the bill, there were the two girls,
standing at the register devouring their ice cream right
beside a product called "Horniest Goat Weed: sex
stimulate pills for men and women." So a kid can't even
get a scoop of ice cream without being assaulted by a
sexual message? I waved the girls away while I paid the
bill, only to turn around and find them standing by a
magazine rack filled with pornography.
Down the road we stopped at a Burger King for dinner-a
safe place, at last. Or at least I thought it
would be an opportunity to just relax with the kids
while we munched on burgers and fries. We soon
discovered that mounted in the corner was a television
blaring the images and sounds of one of those
made-for-TV movies, this particular scene featuring a
naked man and woman bumping under the covers.
So a family
can't drive down the highway, get a scoop of ice cream,
or even eat hamburgers without being assaulted by
garbage?
Home Invasion
Everywhere we go, from the grocery store check-out
stands with their tacky women's magazines, to the mall
with windows filled with mannequins and photos of young
women in their underwear, to the video store with
ultra-violent and pornographic movies, to the sexually
graphic books many public schools are using to "teach"
our kids, our sensibilities are under attack.
But
tragically, the toxic culture that is poisoning the
hearts and souls of our families and our children isn't
just "out there." Often times the American home has
become the sump for cultural sewage.
It used to be that the home was the nurturing oasis
providing relief from outside dangers. It used to be
that a parent's greatest worry was looking out for the
guy in the trench coat lurking in the shadows at the
edge of the school playground. Well, that guy in the
trench coat is now in our homes.
Don't believe me? Log on to the Internet. According to
the London School of Economics, nine out of ten children
who go online, usually to do homework, will stumble
across hardcore pornography. Let me repeat: 90 percent
of children will fall victim to pornography in their own
homes. And then there's intentional porn consumption by
kids. Oh, children might pass around a pornographic Web
address at school, but it's in the safety of their own
homes-often in their own bedrooms-that they close the
door and consume hours of pornography. Over 50 percent
of kids who enter chat rooms-where conversation is often
raunchy and racy-say they have given out personal
information to complete strangers. Chat rooms and sites
such as MySpace.com have become playgrounds for sexual
predators, often luring kids to situations of abuse and
even death. Online pornography is more than a $10
billion a year industry, working 24/7 to make porn
addicts out of our kids-and too often succeeding.
Tired of Internet porn? Turn on the television and flip
to MTV. Why? It's what your teenagers are watching. As a
matter of fact, MTV is the number one viewing choice for
teen girls. And if you haven't seen MTV in a while,
well, let me just say that our kids are not just
watching artsy music videos anymore. Today's MTV
programming is filled with reality-based shows that
feature kids dressed in teeny-weeny bikinis licking
whipped cream off each other. Or "pooh diving"-a "sport"
in which teen boys swim in open sewers filled with human
waste. Or the infamous "pooh cams" where kids watch
other kids go to the bathroom. Think the problem is just
on cable? Why not switch to
Desperate Housewives, the third most
popular television show among today's teens. By the way,
a recent Kaiser Family Foundation Report on media uses
of teenagers reveals that 68 percent of children say
they now have a TV in their bedroom, and the vast
majority say their parents have no idea what they are
watching.
Had enough Internet and television porn? Check out the
video games our teen boys are playing. The second most
popular of these games is Grand Theft Auto, in which the
player actually becomes the character who steals cars,
rapes women, has sex with a prostitute and then clubs
her to death. And that's not to mention the decapitation
of policemen.
If that's not enough, check out the books.
Gossip Girls is one of the most popular
romance series for girls ages 12-16. Published by Simon
and Schuster, recurring themes are incest and graphic
sex among children. What about some of the books our
kids are reading for school-assigned reports? When I was
researching
Home Invasion, I decided to thumb through a
few books from a list of those recommended by the
American Library Association for ages 12-14. Good
teachers, well-meaning teachers, hand out such lists at
the end of every school year-I'm sure you're familiar
with the "summer reading list" concept. After that, good
moms everywhere drive their kids to the library and say,
"Honey, go pick out a few books to read this summer and
get started right away on that report. Go up to your
bedroom and read if you're bored, because I don't want
to hear you complaining that you have nothing to do."
Well, I pulled a few novels off the shelves and what I
found disgusted me. One described a sexual encounter
between fourth graders. Another was written from the
perspective of a 14-year-old boy who describes, in
detail, watching his first homosexual encounter. In one
book, you only need to get to page four for the first of
many uses of the term "motherf---in." So moms and dads
should know that sometimes when Susie is upstairs being
a good little girl reading her book, her mind is being
filled with rot. Of course you should also check out the
sex-ed class materials that may include contests where
kids race to put condoms on dildos and cucumbers.
And then there's the music. The number one music genre
of choice for today's youth of all races and
socioeconomic groups is the often verbally pornographic
and violent rap and hip-hop. According to the media
study I mentioned earlier, our kids are consuming
six-and-one-half hours of media every single day. And as
I've described, the vast majority of it is sexual,
violent, uncivil, and often plain stupid.
But what's the harm? Isn't this just entertainment?
Well, let's see. Corporations spend billions of dollars
every year on advertising. Why? Because they know that
media affects behavior. Today's youth are the most
marketed-to generation in the history of the world. Our
kids are spending an estimated $200 billion a year on
trinkets and toys and clothes and media. Marketing
executives at MTV and other youth-oriented media do not
brag about how they know what kids want, but about how
they have learned to manipulate the teenage mind. They
are selling a "lifestyle" to our children that robs them
of their innocence and their best futures, and
capitalizes on the natural raging hormones that mark the
teen years. Instead of helping channel that energy into
worthwhile activities, the media fuels the flames in an
effort to keep them tuned into the programming.
These
marketers are teaching our young girls that their lives
are all about their sexual power and our young boys that
life is all about who can be more crudely funny or
irresponsible. Sexual activity is expected and has no
consequences. Civility does not exist. And the only
brand of respect that's taught is a twisted brand of
"self-respect."
The harm, then, is that in addition to the obvious
degradation of our humanity; to the destruction of
common decency and morality; and to the virtual death of
civility; our children are paying a terrible price with
their bodies, their emotions and their futures.
A September 2004 report in the medical journal
Pediatrics reveals that children who watch
a lot of sexualized television have twice the rate of
sexual activity as teens who don't. One out of three
teenage girls will become pregnant at least one time
before she is 19 years old, giving the U.S. the highest
teen pregnancy rate of any industrialized western
nation. Twenty-five percent of sexually active teenagers
will contract a sexually transmitted disease that they
will carry with them for the rest of their lives. Half
of the new STD cases in this country every year are in
young people ages 15-24. The suicide rate among children
14 years old and under has increased 75 percent in the
last ten years. According to the
Chronicle of Higher Education, freshmen are
entering colleges in record numbers with clinically
diagnosed depression. The college suicide rate is the
highest it has ever been.
And have you ever heard of "cutting"? It's a
heart-breaking phenomenon of self-mutilation now common
in middle schools across the country. Our teenage
daughters are using razor blades and knives to make
slashes in their arms, just so they can feel alive.
Are we crazy? Has our culture gone stark-raving mad?
Taking
Responsibility
Before we point the finger at Hollywood, the government,
or the business community for what is happening to
America's youth, we must look at ourselves. I've worked
on family public policy issues for 20 years, and I know
the solutions to these problems do not rest in
Washington, D.C. Most of the solutions can be found in
active, loving parenting. It doesn't take an act of
Congress to take back your home.
The last time I checked, a 13-year-old boy didn't have
60 bucks to buy a video game unless his daddy gave it to
him. Eleven-year-old girls can't drive themselves to the
mall, nor do they have the cash to buy trashy clothes
that make them look like street walkers. And who pays
for the cable television, orders the Internet connection
and buys CDs for Christmas presents? Well-meaning moms
and dads who are too busy or too absorbed with their own
lives to see that their kids need them to push back
against the toxic culture, not invite and pay for it to
invade their homes.
Many parents are more concerned about being their
children's friend than they are about parenting. But
kids don't need more drifting friends; they need their
moms and dads. Our children are feeling around for
boundaries, for a firm foundation on which they can
build their lives, for love and nurture.
We should remember that it is adults who create
pornographic Web sites and spam our children's inboxes
with pornographic e-mail; adults who design and build
trashy billboards and run topless bars; adults who
design thongs for ten-year-olds; adults who create MTV
programming and own the record labels and publish trashy
teen romance novels. In other words, our battle is not
with our children, but with adults who hold a corrupt
view of the purpose of life.
Please hear my heart on this matter: Modern technology
is not the enemy. I believe that modern technology has
the potential to be a great liberator of families,
allowing more parents to spend more time working from
home. My goodness, the world is at our children's
fingertips, enabling them to access information and do
research in minutes that used to take hours to complete.
But there are a lot of people who use this technology
for harm, too. We must harness the good and filter out
the bad. I wrote
Home Invasion as a wake-up call to parents
and as a handbook for how to take back their homes. I
didn't want just to talk about our societal problems; I
wanted to provide resources to help people fight back.
So it lists counseling organizations that can help if
someone in the family is addicted to pornography;
resources on educational choices; information about
controlling Internet infiltration; and research on the
tremendous impact that simple acts like having family
meals together can have on children.
Probably the single greatest safety act you can perform
today is to download an Internet filter. The one I use
takes a few minutes and a few keystrokes to download,
and costs about 50 bucks a year. As far as the
television, don't throw it out; just monitor how it is
used. If you subscribe to digital cable television, you
can obtain parental controls at no charge by contacting
your local cable provider. What about the movies your
kids see or rent at the video store? Be smart. Check out
movie reviews written by people who share your concern
for decency. Internet sites such as pluggedinonline.com
are excellent tools in this regard.
There are several practical resources available to help
us make wise choices for our kids. But the best tool we
can use is our expression of our love for them as
people. And sometimes, that commitment is difficult. I
know what it's like to have my 13-year-old daughter look
at me with tears streaming down her face and say, "But
Mom, all my friends are going to that movie." It rips my
heart out. But in those moments, I sit Kristin down and
I say, "You know what, Kristin? God made me your mom,
and I love you more than anybody else in the world could
possibly love you. I have to do what I think is best for
you. Please allow me to be your Mom, allow me to love
you, allow me to protect you the best way I know how. I
might make mistakes, but as long as there is breath in
me, I will be here for you." And then, we always find
something else to do that's fun for her.
Those situations could easily turn into ugly scenes
where I scream, "No, you're not going to that movie and
I don't care what you say! Go to your room!" Or they can
turn into moments where I give in, too tired to fight
another battle, sending my daughter off with the message
that standards only apply when I'm not worn out.
Instead, when I remember that I'm the one who is
supposed to model love, forgiveness and integrity, those
situations turn into wonderful bonding moments that we
both cherish, and that children desperately crave.
We must remember that our kids want us to be involved in
their lives. They don't really want or need another
gadget or the hottest video game. What they really want
is more time with Mom and Dad. They need us desperately,
not to build walls around them that shut them off from
the world, but to build within them a moral compass that
will guide them when they go out into the world each
day. Not only will they be spared much harm having this
compass, but they will succeed better as adults. And
maybe, just maybe, if enough of us commit now to taking
back our homes, there will one day be enough adults to
reclaim our culture.
REBECCA
HAGELIN is vice president of
communications and marketing for the
Heritage Foundation. Her weekly column,
"Heart Beat," appears on several Web
sites, including
TownHall.com.
She appears regularly on television and
radio, publishes in several magazines
and newspapers, speaks frequently to
civic, church and school organizations,
and maintains her own Web site at
www.HomeInvasion.org. Most
recently she is the author of Home
Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a
Culture That's Gone Stark Raving Mad.
The following is adapted from a
luncheon speech delivered in the Dow
Leadership Center at Hillsdale College
on March 6, 2006. |
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Reprinted
by permission from IMPRIMIS, the national speech digest
of Hillsdale College,
www.hillsdale.edu.