mummywheresmywoowoo on Wed 25-Jun-08 20:55:42
'Children today are no longer children, everything is sexed up and children can't wait to be grown up, sadly today that seems to mean drinking, having sex and stabbing each other.'
Do you suppose it was better in the Middle Ages? Children led armies in those days. Henry II was 14 when he invaded England, trying to dethrone his uncle. There were endless problems with young men starting riots. That's what the Crusades were mainly about- exporting troublemakers. Leading churchmen of the day admitted it openly.
'We have a ferile generation, broken homes everywhere you look, familys consisting of mother, several children by several fathers, absent fathers knocking out more children with any woman silly enough to sleep with them.'
Have you read any statistics of family composition, illegitimate children etc in Victorian England? My history tutor once told me that there were more children born out of wedlock in my home town in 1880 than in 1980.
'School girls having babies, and god forbid if you frown upon them, that makes you a bigot. oh and if you say the word God that makes you a loon. But look at the state of the world, teenage pregnancy up, abortion up, drinking and drug use up, un married mothers/broken homes absent fathers up, how many more children are going to be stabbed or shot before we say enough.'
Whereas in the olden days the girls who were married off at 13 would never had had a chance to go to school at all. Dickensian London isn't really a place we want back. The London mob existed and was a scary thing.
'The state in not an endless free for all and can't cope, the NHS is falling apart, I am dreading getting old as poverty looms.'
But the state of medical care seems to have improved somewhat since my FIL was prescribed whiskey for his supposedly broken rib (turned out to be pneumonia), and my dh had healthy teeth extracted to gain his dentist points on the pay system.
'On a world wide scale AIDS is wiping out a nation and the pope still deems contraceptive as evil, children die because they do not have the basic food, clean water shelter. Child soldiers are given guns and sent to kill, corrupt goverments are left to goven, unless they have oil. Mothers watching their children die, mothers being raped going for drinking water, babies being raped to cure AIDS, it is never ending, a new war every day, a new bit of land a new god a new power to fight for.'
Yes, but some of the most horrendous conflicts and famines that plagued our own childhoods are gone. India is now a flourishing country, South Korea is no longer starving. There is no Cold War. The war in Iraq is still going on but the War in Vietnam is over.
And going further back, no smallpox, bubonic plague is contained in a few small pockets and there are very few cases of TB in the west. And healthy people no longer die of pneumonia, pleurisy, measles etc. Which they did do two generations ago.
'I saw some children sing last night, African children AIDs orphans, they were brill, and I thought how wondreful that these children who have nothing, who have lost parents, some of whom have HIV themself were happy and smiling and so greatful for what they did have, puts out binge drinking, sleep around undre age sex benifit living british to shame.'
there are horrendous problems with child crime in many parts of Africa too.
But you won't have to go far to find happy singing children in this country either- try the nearest school concert! There is lots of happiness and caring wherever you care to look. But the newspapers aren't going to be looking.
Anyone can be part of a caring community- the person who takes a bowl of soup round to a sick neighbour, who invites their children's friends around to play, who helps out generously at the local fete. It's not rocket science.