your-children-are-under-attackYour children are undeamazon-five-starsr attack. This assault is not coming from terrorists within or outside our borders. It is not coming from disturbed people in our communities. This onslaught is coming from our own American popular culture. This assault is ever-present, intense, and unrelenting. This siege is also in disguise; most parents cannot sense the harm popular culture is inflicting on their children any more than a fish can sense that their ocean is becoming ever more polluted. Many of us seem to have been fooled into believing that popular culture cares about our children. It doesn’t! Popular culture cares about only one thing—money—and it will say anything and do anything to make more money. Popular culture can no longer be trusted actin your children’s best interests and communicate healthy, life-affirming values. Popular culture was once overseen by numerous public and private agencies, but those forces have all but disappeared. Now left ungoverned is the juggernaut of money and materialism. The Golden Rule has been distorted into: Whoever has the gold, rules!

As a parent you may ask, “Our generation had popular culture when we were growing up and we turned out okay.” Yes, the current generation of parents had popular culture, but it wasn’t the same as today. You had a handful of television and radio stations that were regulated in “the public

interest” and offered a variety of mostly positive programming. Today, kids have 100’s of TV and radio stations that offer entertainment that celebrates avarice, blatant sexuality, and violence, the Internet, DVD’s, video games, cellular phones, saturation advertising, and consumption-driven magazines lining the newsstands. There is nowhere for your children to hide from this mind-boggling assault.

The Office of Homeland Security can’t protect your children against this threat. The only hope of protection your children have comes from inside your home—from you. Your Children Are Under Attack is a “call to action” for you to wrest power from American popular culture and regain influence over your children’s lives. If you want your children to have a reasonable chance at developing into healthy and happy adults, you need to understand that your position as the most powerful force in your children’s lives is in jeopardy, being replaced by a voracious machine that genuinely has the capacity to destroy their chances to mature and thrive. Only by maintaining your stature in their lives can you forcefully, yet lovingly, guide your children toward a life that is not dominated by valueless dreams of wealth, celebrity, power, and beauty, but rather is grounded in life-affirming values that can contribute to your children’s possibility of leading lives of meaning and fulfillment.

For the last several years, I have been traveling the country speaking to thousands of parents at public and private schools in big cities and small towns. I have listened to the concerns they have expressed about raising their children in conflict with the values expressed in American popular culture. What has become clear is that many parents have lost their bearings, overwhelmed in managing their family’s overscheduled and stressful lives. I have sought to understand how and why American families seem to have gotten so lost in a world that offers so many opportunities. I believe that I have found the answer. Just as in politics, where the guiding principle is, “It’s the economy, stupid,” in families, the guiding principle must be “It’s the values, stupid!”

Your Children Are Under Attack will help you to regain your moral compass, identify and reconnect with your values, and make those values the guiding principles in your children’s lives. These values will provide the only reliable road map you can trust to lead your children to a solid future. These values transcend family, cultural, religious, or educational differences. The values I offer in Your Children Are Under Attack are meant to be broadly acceptable to every parent who wants his or her child to become a vital, successful, happy, and contributing adult (respect, responsibility, success, happiness, family, compassion). Your Children Are Under Attack will show you how to instill the six values in your children during the course of your family’s daily life.

The ideas I discuss in Your Children Are Under Attack come from real parents faced with serious challenges in raising their children in today’s complex world. Importantly, Your Children Are Under Attack offers you solutions that are clear, practical, and grounded in the real world of parenting in 21st century America. With the information and tools you learn from Your Children Are Under Attack, you will again have the power and the means to protect your children from American popular culture and ensure that your children grow up with the values, attitudes, and skills to become positive, strong, and caring people.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: A Call to Action!
Section I: Battle Lines are Drawn
  • Chapter 1: Know Thy Children’s Enemy (Beware the Dark Side)
  • Chapter 2: Know Your Values (Armor Up)
  • Chapter 3: Create a Family Value Culture (Construct a Defense)
  • Chapter 4: Stock Your Arsenal (Lock and Load Love)

Section II: Waging the War
  • Chapter 5: Respect (R-E-S-P-E-C-T)
  • Chapter 6: Responsibility (You Got the Power)
  • Chapter 7: Success (Finding the Real Pot of Gold)
  • Chapter 8: Happiness (No, Money Can’t Buy it)
  • Chapter 9: Family (Make the Joneses Jealous)
  • Chapter 10: Compassion (It’s Not All About You)

Section III: Win the War
  • Chapter 11: Taking the Offensive (Behind Enemy Lines)
  • Chapter 12: Victory (Winning the Big One)

Afterword: Creating a New American Value Culture

EXCERPTS

The Power of American Popular Culture

There is no more destructive force in your children’s lives than American popular culture. It promotes the worst values in people, and disguises them all as entertainment. Reality TV, for example, has made the “seven deadly sins”—pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth—attributes to be admired. Throw in selfishness, deceit, spite, and vengeance—all qualities seen and revered in popular culture—and you have the personification of the worst kind of person. American popular culture makes heroic decidedly unheroic values, characters, and behavior.

Most parents realize that popular culture conveys unhealthy messages to their children. For example, in a recent survey conducted by Common Sense Media, three-fourths of parents believed that materialism and the negative influences from television, movies, and music were a “serious problem” in raising children. It further reported that 64 percent of parents believe media content today is inappropriate for children. Over 85 percent of parents believe that marketing contributes to children being too materialistic, sexual content leads children to become sexually active at a younger age, and violent content increases aggressive behavior in children. And sixty-six percent of parents think they could do a better job of supervising their children’s media exposure.

Popular Culture’s Two Lines of Attack

American popular culture conveys its values through its many media. Though diverse in its tools of persuasion, popular culture relies on two primary avenues for communicating their messages and influencing your children. The first type of message that popular culture uses is what I call “loudspeaker” messages, in which the messages are deafening, constant, and ever present. The shrillness of these messages can heard, seen, tasted, or felt, and can not be readily avoided. Just driving down the street in most cities, towns, and suburbs exposes children to bright and flashing lights aimed at luring them into stores (where they can buy products they don’t need) and restaurants (where they can eat food that is unhealthy).

The second type of message that American popular culture uses to seduce children are what I call “stealth” messages. These messages are usually hidden behind characters, images, words, and sounds that are fun and engaging, but are designed to subtly tap into children’s unconscious needs and wishes. Messages that create positive emotional reactions, for example, dancing while drinking Pepsi, or winning a basketball game wearing a pair of Nike’s, resonate at a deep and unconscious level with children, causing them to want to feel that way too.

Examples of the unhealthy value messages that American popular culture conveys to your children are ubiquitous. Reality TV, a recent spawn of American popular culture, is currently the hottest property on television. The values communicated on Reality TV are truly destructive. Shows, such as Survivor, encourage deceit, manipulation, back stabbing, and “look out for #1” and “win at all costs” attitudes. Reality shows, such as American Idol and The Weakest Link, though ostensibly about achieving the American Dream of wealth and fame, places great emphasis on the rejection and humiliation of its losing contestants.

Video games, such as Grand Theft Auto and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, aggrandize criminal behavior, stereotyping, violence, and murder without consequences. Grand Theft Auto III: Vice City, exemplifies the kinds of lessons violent video games teach children. “This phenomenally popular video game allows you to hijack cars, shoot cops, kill women with baseball bats, have sex with prostitutes (and then kill them too)…In this game, you don’t kill the bad guy, you’re the bad guy,” writes the New York Times Magazine’s Jonathan Dee, “…it therefore seems undeniable that video games, compared to other forms of entertainment, are disproportionately concerned with violence.”

Battle Lines are Drawn

The only chance your children have in winning the war against American popular culture is if you take sides with them. Use your power to protect them from the hypnotic allure of popular culture’s damaging values, beliefs, and attitudes. An essential part being their ally is to know your enemy. American popular culture is a master of disguise that can slip through your defenses and attack your children without you or they realizing it. Popular culture is also a massive and unrelenting force that can overwhelm your defenses and reach your children before you can regroup.

The healthy value messages that you communicate to your children protect them against American popular culture. Every message that you convey that emphasizes the values you want your children to live by gives them the values and perspectives that will enable them to see popular culture for what it is, what it believes, what it wants from them, and how it can harm them.

Good values and healthy messages aren’t enough in the face of American popular culture’s constant and concentrated assault on your children. It’s easy to get worn down by American popular culture, lose hope, and surrender to its the unflagging assaults. You must have a deep and resilient conviction in doing whatever is necessary to safeguard your children. This resolve is necessary because popular culture never rests and neither can you. You must become your children’s allies who they know will stand by them in the siege.

Waging the War

One of the most common themes in science fiction and fantasy movies and video games is that of a monumental threat to the future of humankind from alien or inhuman armies. The goal of these dark forces is to enslave or destroy the human race. This genre of entertainment is also a metaphor for what American popular culture is trying to do your family. Like the Terminator, popular culture is programmed to do one thing—destroy human life as we know it (okay, perhaps that is a bit melodramatic, but you get the idea)—and, every time it gets knocked down, the Terminator—and popular culture—gathers itself and keeps right on coming. Popular culture is also like the Orcs of the film, The Lord of the Rings. There seems to be an unending supply of popular culture’s foot soldiers—television, movies, music, magazines, advertisements—with which to attack your children. For every one that is destroyed, ten more seem rise out of the earth and join the battle against your children.

Yet, an important lesson can be learned using these two popular culture staples: that ordinary beings have the power to turn back overwhelming threats to our way of life and emerge victorious. What enabled the humans and hobbits, respectively, to triumph over their threats to humankind, and what will allow you to protect your children and overcome popular culture, is a deep conviction in what is right, an unerring commitment to their values, perseverance in the face of unimaginable odds, and a dogged determination to defeat their enemy.

Respect

Professional athletes are revered in American popular culture. Children want to be like their sports heroes. They put their heroes’ posters on their bedroom walls, wear their jerseys, and try to copy their athletic moves. Because of this influence on children, they are highly vulnerable to what athletes say and how they behave. What messages do acts of celebration convey to your children? One message is that they should celebrate for simply doing their job. Can you imagine a college professor doing a “touchdown dance” after giving a particularly good lecture? Or can you envision an auto mechanic taunting fellow mechanics after diagnosing and repairing a car problem? How about a ten-year-old doing the “Icky Shuffle” (a celebratory dance by the former NFL running back, Icky Woods) if he won a spelling bee? It sounds ridiculous and such behavior would never be tolerated in the “real” world. Yet this behavior is not only accepted, but admired, in the world of sports.

What lies at the heart at these messages is a profound lack of respect. These celebrations have the more powerful effect of demeaning the opposition. Beyond the diminution of their opponents, this behavior is disrespectful to the celebrating athletes themselves (though they obviously don’t see it that way), to the fans who come to see quality athletic performances (though admittedly many enjoy the antics as well) and to the sport itself (though league officials only take token steps to stop such behavior). And this disrespect isn’t limited to sports. It can be found, in some form, in popular music (e.g., hard rock and hip hop), on television and radio talk shows (e.g., Jerry Springer and Don Imus), and in politics (e.g., negative campaign ads).

Success

It’s the American Dream: Success! America: Land of opportunity. The rags to riches story. The kid in the mailroom who works his way up to the boardroom. The ability of anyone willing to work to achieve success is the foundation on which our country is built. Men, such as Ken Lay and Jack Welch are, in many ways, exemplars of the American Dream; hard working, self-made, hugely successful. Yet they also epitomize the American Dream gone bad, where more than enough is not enough, where perspective is lost and greed and excess rule. In 1887, Lord Acton observed, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” His words are just as relevant today.

Certainly, success is one of the most desirable and sought-after objectives in America today. Success is a powerful statement about who people are, what they value, and their commitment and hard work. It can foster a life full of meaning, satisfaction, and joy. Sadly, the pursuit of success can also lead to a life of frustration, disappointment, and unfulfilled dreams. Whether your children realize the success you envision for them or crumble under the weight of pursuing an unattainable image of success depends on the values you attach to success and the dream of success you create from your values.

Family

American popular culture wants to destroy your family. With your family in ruins, it can more easily shape your children in a form of its own choosing that fulfills its own needs rather than your children’s. Popular culture can take over as the dominant force in your children’s lives and instill in them the values that it wants them to have, not ones that are best for your children.

So American popular culture convinces you to push your children maniacally to excel in every aspect of their lives, to over schedule them, to plan weekend soccer tournaments in distant cities, to eat fast-food dinners between activities, give children unfettered access to video games, DVD’s, and television, and have no free time for your family. Is this road good for you and your family? Clearly not. Does it feel like this road has no exits? Probably so. So who benefits from such an unhealthy family? Isn’t it obvious, American popular culture. The busier and more stressed out you and your family are, the more you’ll turn to popular culture for convenience and relief. And for American popular culture, it’s all money in the bank—at your expense!

A New American Value Culture

Raising your children with healthy values is not just about resisting American popular culture, but also creating a new “American value culture” with which to replace it. A new American value culture is grounded in and driven by life-affirming values on which this country was founded, but, sadly, has lost sight of in the last several decades. Examples include integrity, accountability, hard work, kindness, fairness, primary concern for children, and a fundamental emphasis on always acting in the public interest. An American value culture identifies, highlights, and pursues values, goals, interests, and priorities that reflect the highest common denominator of American society, not the lowest. It involves persuading families, schools, houses of worship, big business, and local, state, and federal governments to return their priorities to those that care deeply for children. An American value culture is devoted to creating an environment that places your children’s needs and best interests ahead of all else.

Much like the suffragist movement of the early 1900’s and the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, starting a revolution against popular culture and replacing it with a new American value culture has to begin at a grassroots level; in families, schools, houses of worship, neighborhoods, and communities. You must recognize that America is heading down a bad road that can only lead our children—and our society—to a disastrous end. If you join the resistance, and with other converts, an army willing and capable of fighting against American popular culture and for an American value culture will grow. As this groundswell builds, resistance to and repudiation of popular culture will also increase. Over time, the tide will turn against American popular culture and, just as it has for past movements, the values of a new American value culture will emerge victorious.


MEDIA

Television interviews

WFAA, TV-8 (ABC), Dallas, 3/15/05
Fox & Friends, Fox News Channel, 3/21/05
Fox News Channel, 3/27/05
WBFF, TV-45 (Fox), Baltimore, 4/5/05
WKYT, TV-27 (CBS), Lexington, KY, 3/2/06
KLEX, TV-18, (NBC), Lexington, KY, 3/6/06

Radio interviews

KPRI, San Diego, 3/7/05
KRNJ, Hackettstown, NJ, 3/9/05
Westwood One, Jim Bohannan show, 3/9/05
Liberty Broadcasting Network, Newark, 3/14/05
Louisiana Network, 3/14/05
WATD, Marshfield, MA, 3/16/05
Family Life Network, Jamestown, NY 3/16/05
KBUL, Billings, MT, 3/16/05
KFCD, Dallas, 3/16/05
KTRS, St. Louis, MO, 3/16/05
KNX, Los Angeles, 3/17/05
WEEZ, Mankato, MN, 3/17/05
WOR, New York City, 3/22/05
WWBA, Tampa, 3/23/05
Accent Radio Network, Clearwater, FL, 3/24/05
Louisiana Network, 3/24/05
American Urban Radio Network, national syndication, 3/25/05
WJR, Detroit, 3/27/05
KDKA, Pittsburgh, 3/28/05
KGAB, Cheyenne, WY, 3/31/05
Talk Radio, Atlantic Beach, NC, 4/1/05
KTSR, Traverse City, MI, 4/12/05
KFI, Los Angeles, 4/12/05
KOA, Denver, 4/12/05
KSFO, San Francisco, 4/13/05
WFAS, Cleveland, 4/13/05
KFTK, St. Louis, 4/13/05
Sirius Radio, 4/20/05
KNWZ, Palm Desert, CA, 4/23/05
CRN Digital, Los Angeles, 4/27/05
WILD, Boston, 5/1/05
KGO, Ron Wilson Show, San Francisco, 5/5/05
KUTR, Salt Lake City, 5/20/05
KWCT, Bowling Green, KY, 5/20/05
KLPW, St. Louis, 5/25/05
Wisconsin Public Radio, 5/26/05
WAGM, Albuquerque, 5/26/05
KGAB, Cheyenne, 6/18/05
Sirius Radio, 6/22/05
WLNK, Charlotte, NC, 8/16/05
WMET, Washington, DC, 9/8/05
KOIT, San Francisco, 10/23/05
WGMS, Washington, DC, 10/23/05
WLAP, Lexington, KY, 2/28/06
WVLK, Lexington, KY, 3/1/06
WTLN, Orlando, FL, 4/13/06

Web site postings

WebMD.com
educationnews.org
familyresource.com
keepkidshealthy.com
womenof.com
babycenter.com
canadianparents.ca
mommasaid.net
SheKnows.com
iParenting.com
toddlerdad.com
storknet.com
realtimemoms.com
pregnancy.com
healthywealthynwise.com
Womensweb.ca
Parentingbookmark.com
Justformoms.com
chartjungle.com
momshack.com
pregnancy.com
womencentral.net
justmommies.com
ediets.com
familiesonlinemagazine.com
bluesuitmom.com

An Interview with Dr. Jim Taylor
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Michael F. Shaughnessy
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico

Every once in a while, a book comes along that truly captures what is transpiring in America, and in contemporary culture. In this book, Dr. Jim Taylor cogently summarizes what our children are being exposed to in terms of values, and issues and describes what our children are being exposed to and what they are learning.

1) What prompted you to write the book “ Your Children are Under Attack”?

Since the publication of my last parenting book, Positive Pushing: How to Raise a Successful and Happy Child (Hyperion, 2002), I’ve been traveling the country speaking to parents, students, and educators. The overwhelming consensus from all three groups—even the students—was that popular culture had become an overly intrusive and unhealthy influence on the lives of young people. And no one seemed to have many clear ideas about how to combat this influence.

2) In the book, you place a good deal of blame on American culture. When in your mind, did our culture, go wrong?

In previous generations, popular culture was a reflection of our society and its values. And our society was, at its core, guided by what was “in the public interest.” Now popular culture dictates those values in a very unhealthy way and there seems to no longer be any concern for the public interest. Popular culture’s turn to the “dark side” seemed to coincide with the first Star Wars movie, in which George Lucas was the first to harness all forms of media to market and sell products to kids. The accelerating emergence of communication and technology also made it easier for popular culture to influence children, now with movies, TV, DVD’s, the Internet, cell phones, and fashion and celebrity magazines. With these changes, the influence on young people grew exponentially along with a focus on profit at any cost and away from the values on which our country was built.

3) You indicate that TV, video games, and movies are responsible for a good deal of media violence and sexuality. What is all this passive watching doing to our kids?

Contrary to the empty arguments of the sellers of these media, there is significant evidence that watching violent and sexist TV and playing such games do shape children’s still malleable minds. But, being realistic, very few children are going to become violent or promiscuous from this exposure. My greater concern is the destructive values that are hidden in many aspects of popular culture, for example, disrespect, irresponsibility, dishonesty, greed, indifference, and distorted views on success and happiness.

Reality TV alone exemplifies everything that I find troubling about popular culture. It takes the Seven Deadly Sins and makes them attributes to be admired. Plus reality TV is really mostly mean-spirited humiliation TV.

4) We seem to be preoccupied with Paris Hilton, Hilary Duff, Lindsay Lohan, Britney and all these individuals. How are we going to indicate to our children that the local doctor, pharmacist, nurse, and local teacher are all to be more respected than rock idols and celebrities?

And all of these celebrities have zero positive value in the lives of children. Though I would love big business and our government to help protect children from this culture of celebrity worship, sadly, that’s not likely to happen. The responsibility lies in schools, houses of worship, and, most directly, parents. Parents must more clearly and consistently communicate and instill healthy values in their children. They must weave values into the fabric of their families so their children don’t fall for the seductive messages of popular culture.

5) We seem to be inundated with Cosmopolitan and other magazines that extol physical beauty, make up, hair styles, breast implants and cleavage. I know that business makes money from all this, but what about hard work, persistence, and character. How does this influence our values?

Those magazines make me sick because they actually hurt girls. The research indicates that girls who read fashion magazines are more insecure about their bodies, more likely to exercise and diet excessively, and are more likely to develop eating disorders. These days those positive values that you mention don’t have great value and we see it in the decline in achievement scores of our children compared to other countries. The messages about what success and happiness from popular culture are so narrow and harmful to children (e.g., success and happiness are about wealth, fame, power, and physical attractiveness) because most children can’t achieve those rigid definitions and, even if they did, they wouldn’t find what they were looking for. I’m especially scared these days for young girls (I have a daughter) because we seem to have taken a giant step backwards in how women are viewed and the renewed importance of beauty and sexuality in every aspect of our society.

6) Our kids seem to be inundated with violence, crime, pathology and the like on television and on the news. What does this flooding of murder and mayhem do to the psychological apparatus of our children?

All of this murder and mayhem can have two harmful effects on children. First, when they’re very young, kids may develop the perception that the world is a very scary place, which can create anxiety, fear, and inhibit their natural curiosity and desire to explore. Second, violence has become so commonplace that children may become desensitized to it and simply accept it as normal.

7) Fast food, junk food, fatty foods seem to permeate our culture. How are we going to foster good nutrition, and sensible eating habits?

We live in a culture that encourages unhealthy living, as seen in the sedentary lifestyles of many people, the ready availability of bad food, and the epidemic in obesity. Changing this culture must start in families in which parents offer healthy foods, limit junk food, and encourage exercise. Our federal government must play a role by providing clear nutritional information to help parents make informed decisions. Schools must ban fast food, candy, and sodas from their cafeterias and vending machines, and reinvigorate gym classes, recess, and other physical activities.

8) Violence in sports is pervasive. Basketball players attacking fans, hockey players going wild and baseball brawls are the order of the day. What ever happened to a good old fashioned handshake at the end of a game?

Sports used to be a wonderful source of values, life skills, and healthy hero worship. Now sports heroes exemplify everything wrong with sports today. Athletes, such as Terrell Owens, teach disrespect by trash talking and touchdown dancing. Widespread use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs sends the message of ‘win at all costs.” Pampered athletes who are never held accountable for their actions communicate irresponsibility and entitlement. The really painful thing is that these behaviors and values are appearing in sports at increasingly younger ages. Youth sports used to be about fun, but now it is about preparation for professional and Olympic sports careers, however unlikely they are (only six in one million kids reach that level). Charles Barkley once famously said, “I am not a role model.” Well, saying that doesn’t negate the fact that children look up to and imitate professional athletes.

9) And the coup de grace- what is more important-? Allowing children to feel good, and enhance their self esteem, self- concept and self worth, or allowing them to work hard and earn respect and responsibility?

Self-esteem is the most misunderstood and misused developmental factor of the last 30 years. For so long, parents have been told that the way to build self-esteem is to always make children feel good about themselves (make them feel like they succeeded even if they didn’t, e.g., getting trophies and ribbons just for showing up)and to protect them from feeling bad about themselves (never letting them fail). But this approach actually takes away the very thing that builds real self-esteem. In addition to feeling loved and valued, children also need to develop a sense of competence, that their actions matter, that their actions have consequences. With this sense of competence, they learn the value of hard work, persistence, and responsibility, and, importantly, that they have the power to change things in their lives that they don’t like. This is how children learn to really feel good about themselves and develop real self-esteem.

10) So with such an ugly landscape offered by popular culture, what can parents do?

Parents must start by examining their own values and making sure that they are healthy for their children (many parents have been seduced by popular culture too!). Next, they must create a family value culture that surrounds their children with healthy values. This culture includes parents walking the walk on their values, talking to their children about values, and having activities so their kids can experience positive values. Then, parents need to teach their children value tools that will help them fight off popular culture themselves, for example, awareness of the unhealthy messages from popular culture, critical thinking and healthy skepticism about those messages, and good decision making to help children make good choices when faced with the temptation of popular culture. Lastly, parents must expand their army to create a community value culture, in which they enlist like-minded families, schools, and houses of worship who can further envelop their children in a “force field” of healthy values. Parents can’t protect their children from popular culture forever, but they can ward off the assaults until their kids are mature and prepared enough to resist the attacks on their own.

Print media
Pop Culture Notebook
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
by Phil Kloer
May 30, 2005

3 books take decidedly different tacks on how entertainment impacts our lives

If ol’ Barney Fife, Andy Griffith’s deputy, were critiquing contemporary popular culture, he’d pop out his eyes, get that tremor in his voice and warble, “This is big! I mean, this is really big!”

The vast breadth of what we call pop culture is astounding. From Tony Hawk to Tony Soprano, 50 Cent to Nickelodeon, Harry Potter to Paris Hilton, “World Series of Poker” to “Grand Theft Auto,” there’s so much of interest to talk about that no wonder we sometimes end up yelling about it.

For some, the culture wars are an even bigger tent that covers political issues like abortion and gay rights. But there’s enough going on just on the entertainment front — anyone have an opinion about Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl? — to get us all riled up. And, if we take a breath and take time to read any of three new books about pop culture, we might get a little smarter as well.

“The state of the debate right now in pop culture,” says Steven Johnson, author of “Everything Bad Is Good for You,” “is that one side thinks pop culture is so bad the federal government needs to be called in, and the other side just thinks it’s really, really bad.”

If you watched much of “American Idol,” it’s hard to disagree with that assessment. But there are a lot more interesting, insightful, provocative things to be said, and these three books all break some fresh ground in the debate, although they could not be more different in their approaches.

•Johnson’s “Everything Bad,” which has gotten the most attention, posits that some aspects of pop culture — especially video games and the Internet — are making us smarter rather than dumber.

•Harold Schechter, a literature professor at Queens College in New York City, argues in his “Savage Pastimes” that critics who think that today’s culture is too violent have no sense of history — they should have taken their family, little kids included, to a public hanging in Victorian England, as thousands once did.

•Jim Taylor, a California psychologist, sometimes seems like he’s playing the familiar role of establishment scold in “Your Children Are Under Attack,” but there are surprising wrinkles in his book that play against our expectations, such as his inclusion of dirty-dealing corporate moguls who help lower society’s moral tone as much as the National Enquirer does.

In “Everything Bad Is Good for You,” Johnson takes up arms against the conventional wisdom that pop culture is getting dumber. Yes, he’s seen “The Apprentice,” and yes, it will turn your brain to pudding, but is it really worse than “The Love Boat” or “Who’s the Boss?”

Of course not, he argues. And a good chunk of television today — the complicated, multithreaded hit shows like “24” and “Desperate Housewives” — is more challenging than ever, even if there’s still a lot of fluff. A fan who grooves on the silly soapiness of “Housewives” simply cannot watch a rerun of “Dallas” — it’s excruciatingly slow and simplistic.

That’s the effect, though, not the cause. Johnson argues that the main cause is video games and the Internet — the whole PC revolution, in fact — which are making us smarter and more demanding of challenging fare in the rest of the culture.

“It’s not what you’re thinking about when you’re playing a game,” he writes (i.e., “gotta shoot more mutants!”), “it’s the way you’re thinking that matters.” Video games have become so dense and complex that their critics don’t begin to understand the extent to which they force the player to make thousands of decisions, to explore totally new terrain, even to figure out the rules themselves.

They teach kids to think, in other words, in exactly the same way that algebra teaches kids to think.

Critics see kids sitting slack-jawed and goggle-eyed in front of their TV or Xbox and think they’re just passively soaking up mindless entertainment. If the brain really wanted that, Johnson writes, “then the story of the last 30 years of videogames — from ‘Pong’ to ‘The Sims’ — would be a story of games that grew increasingly simple over time. . . . Of course, exactly the opposite has occurred.”

Fine, fine, says the conventional wisdom, but there’s no denying that video games have gotten grotesquely violent, with people’s spines being ripped out of their bodies. And then there are slasher movies and hip-hop lyrics and that through-the-vein-cam on “CSI” that is just nasty.

“People who make these charges,” counters Schechter, author of “Savage Pastimes,” “have no knowledge of what American popular art has consisted of and of how violent it has been.”

So he tells us, in colorful detail. From Edgar Allan Poe to the pulp comics of the 1950s, from dime novels to Disney’s “Davy Crockett,” our pop culture has always been knee-deep in guns, guts and gore.

In one amusing sequence, he takes aim at “Crockett,” which in 1954 became the first real pop sensation of the boomer generation. He went back and watched it on DVD and found it “contained a staggering amount of graphic violence” that was “embraced by the entire country as wholesome family entertainment.”

And what became of the tykes who watched “Crockett” and went out to buy the toy guns? They grew up to become the peace-and-love hippies.

There is a part of us that is attracted to violence, Schechter argues. The whole history of art and entertainment is proof; the 11th-century Bayreuth Tapestry was the “Saving Private Ryan” of its day, depicting “soldiers with their guts spilling out of their bellies.” What changes is the technology. But remember, he cautions, that whatever medium that earlier populace was experiencing — a painting, a novel, a comic book — to them it was as immediate as it could be.

“Thirty to 40 years from now,” Schechter says, “when video games have evolved into virtual reality, and you’re being spattered with gore, people will look back on ‘Grand Theft Auto’ as this innocent, simple game.”

At this point, it appears pop culture is both smarter and tamer than we had imagined, a regular “Mister Rogers Neighborhood” from coast to coast. So why do many parents feel it’s a toxic stew that slimes their kids?

Because it is, argues Jim Taylor in “Your Children Are Under Attack.” A psychologist, Taylor does not fit easily with the usual pundits who cry that the sky is falling every time some rapper or celebri-skank sparks the outrage du jour.

“The discussion of values has been hijacked by politicians, media talking heads and the religious right,” Taylor says. “This culture war has been created to divide people. And our kids are the casualties.”

He goes after some of the usual suspects — professional wrestling, Ozzy Osbourne — but a lot of unusual ones as well, such as fast food companies that push junk on kids and CEOs (Enron, et al.) who send a message of anything goes to society at large.

His argument is not based in religion or politics. “These are not red-state values or blue-state values,” he says. “If anything, it’s economic. This is what capitalism does.”

Big corporations will push whatever sells.

“I don’t blame big business in popular culture for doing what they do,” he says. “Making money is their reason for being. They’re amoral.”

Parents, however, are charged with raising moral, healthy, responsible kids, and Taylor’s book veers from being a pop culture critique to being an empowering book on how to raise healthy kids in an unhealthy culture.

Taylor brings one more thing to the debate that everyone could stand to have: a sense of humor.

He’s expecting his first child later this year and realizes that soon his strong ideas on how to raise an upright young person will be put to the test of reality.

“In 10 years, maybe I’ll write a book,” he jokes, “called ‘I’m Sorry, They Seemed Like Good Ideas at the Time.’ ”

Children discover it is parents who are the bad sports
London Telegraph
by Catherine Elsworth
May 20, 2005

Cheering on their children from the touchline is no longer enough for America’s sports-mad parents.

More and more are pushing youngsters to perform like professionals, and are attacking anyone who stands in the way of their offspring’s success.

Incidents of parental passion escalating into violence towards referees or rival players have shocked the nation, most recently on Wednesday when a father in Connecticut, apparently distraught over his daughter’s suspension from a softball team, was arrested for allegedly beating her coach with an aluminium bat.

A girls’ rugby match in California descended into a fist fight last weekend involving eight fathers, two coaches and the referee. One coach was left bloodied and unconscious.

“I never saw them coming,” said Craig Stewart, the Alameda High School Riptide team coach. “They just started kicking me in the head and the face.”

Joe Darracq, a former assistant coach for the same team, said: “When parents can’t spell the words ‘values’ and ‘principles’ this is the kind of thing that happens.”

The excessively competitive parent has become such a fixture of American life that he is satirised in Kicking and Screaming, a new film starring Will Ferrell as “a soccer dad gone bad” when forced to coach his son’s football team.

The explosion of “sportscentric” parenting has been blamed on the worship of American football and baseball celebrities as well as the highly-organised nature of American youth sports, which introduces an adult-like competitive edge to games.

“I don’t want to be melodramatic and say it’s everywhere, but this is a very big strain running through America,” said Bob Bigelow, a former basketball player.

Mr Bigelow is the author of Just Let the Kids Play: How to Stop Other Adults from Ruining Your Children’s Success and Joy in Youth Sports.

His generation – parents in their 40s and 50s – were the culprits, he said.

“We’re the ones demanding we have a child in uniform by five, their first play-off by six and a trophy soon after.

“These people have lives that are vapid – failing marriage, jobs that stink. This is how they get their jollies, they live through the athletic achievements of their kids, and there’s nothing sadder.”

Sean Heyman, who coaches a girls’ softball team in Westchester, California, said it was not uncommon for parents to confront him during games. In one recent instance “an extremely angry” father berated him over his daughter’s position on the field.

“Everybody wants their kid to be a great player. They feel after the amount of time they’ve put into their child developing that if somebody is an obstacle to that, they become an enemy,” he said.

“Everybody is very intense these days. It may be competition is at an all-time high.”

Jim Taylor, a San Francisco-based psychologist, has treated numerous cases in which sports-related pressure placed on children by their parents is so extreme that it causes “significant harm”.

“It has increased and in the last 10 years I have seen it on a regular basis, not always extreme cases but frequently where parents are hurting their kids with the pressure.”

Often parents refused to recognise that they were the ones in need of help, not their children, he said. “They say ‘It’s not my problem, you’ve got to fix my kid’.”

Intense “micro-managing” of children could lead to low self-esteem, depression, eating disorders and even suicide, Dr. Taylor said.

“Parents have to put things in perspective,” he said. “The chances of their children becoming professional is almost nil.

“The best advice I ever give to parents is ‘get a life’.”

Sporting behavior
Los Angeles Times
by Timothy Gower
Monday, May 16, 2005

Parents who obsess about children’s athletics are a growing— and potentially troublesome—phenomenon. One therapist’s advice: Get a life.

A few years ago, a man showed up in San Francisco psychologist Jim Taylor’s office with his daughter, a competitive figure skater. “You need to fix her jump,” he told Taylor, explaining that his daughter had been struggling to execute a new move on the ice.

After meeting with the 15-year-old girl a few times, Taylor says it became clear that it was her father who was the problem. Her dad was on hand every time she practiced or competed, the skater explained, and if she performed well, he lavished her with gifts. When she faltered, he became angry. On a few occasions, her father had barged onto the ice to challenge her coach’s advice. Father and daughter fought constantly.

Taylor spent time with the father and learned that he was unhappy with his marriage and bored with his job. Under the guise of helping the daughter’s skating, he was masking his own inner pain. “All parents love their kids,” says Taylor, “but some are misguided.”

Not long ago, this kind of behavior was practically unheard of among parents of kids who play youth sports. Today, psychologists and coaches agree that many parents have become more passionate — obsessed, in some cases — about their children’s athletic pursuits than mothers and fathers of the past. Micromanaging a child’s sports career and agonizing over his or her success on the playing field may be the most public expression of the so-called “helicopter parent” phenomenon; that is, the tendency of today’s moms and dads to “hover” over their children.

Parents who belong to this new breed are easy to spot. They shout more on the sidelines, barking directions at their children, and often struggling to control their emotions. They pester coaches about their kids’ playing time. They complain more loudly if a child isn’t chosen for an all-star team. Thanks to the rising popularity of travel teams — which compete against teams from other communities, often very far away — some parents find themselves devoting entire weekends, and even vacations, to shuttling their sons and daughters to tournaments.

This new ultra-devout sports parent has become a cultural icon of sorts, lampooned in a new movie, “Kicking & Screaming,” in which actor Will Ferrell plays a mild-mannered dad who turns into a ranting, obnoxious buffoon on the sidelines of his son’s soccer games. What’s more, a television series scheduled to begin airing on Bravo in June, “Sports Kids Moms & Dads,” will follow the travails of several parents of aspiring young athletes.

For some, the rabid commitment simply interferes with other family priorities, occasionally frustrating less obsessed spouses. For others, it becomes an unhealthy fixation. Why do youth sports matter so much to parents today? And how does this new, deeper emotional investment affect relationships between parents and children? While it’s the rare violent episodes that tend to grab the headlines, such as the Texas man who shot his son’s football coach in April, most coaches can tell stories about parents who crossed the line of acceptable behavior while stopping short of actual violence. More frequently, this behavior is marked by fits of anger or menacing words from an out-of-control parent.

Sean Heyman, 42, of Westchester, who coaches a girls’ softball team, says one father angrily confronted him after a game. “He completely lost it. He was frustrated,” says Heyman. “He was loud, aggressive and ready to fight.” Heyman was baffled by the man’s ire, because the young girl had played the entire game. His complaint? The man wanted his daughter to play shortstop, but Heyman had assigned her to the outfield.

While today’s sports parents come in all stripes, most are content to leave the coaches alone, instead directing their emotional energy to their children.

It’s natural to feel pride when your child hits a home run or scores a goal, or sadness when his or her team loses, says Dr. Ian Tofler, a Los Angeles psychiatrist. Tofler, coauthor (with Theresa Foy DiGeronimo) of “Keeping Your Kids Out Front Without Kicking Them From Behind,” says it’s healthy for parents to identify and empathize with sons or daughters, even to live vicariously through their exploits.

However, explains Tofler, trouble starts when parents rely on their child’s athletic success to boost their own self-esteem or fulfill other personal needs and aspirations.

“When your own identity becomes caught up in the child’s performance, that’s a clear red flag,” says Tofler. “The child becomes more a means to the parent’s end than a separate individual with his or her own needs and goals.”

Parents who struggle to maintain a healthy perspective are often aging ex-jocks who push their children too hard because they are reliving past athletic accomplishments, or perhaps chasing glory that eluded them in their own youth. These mothers and fathers often believe that their budding star can be the next Michael Jordan or Annika Sorenstam, despite the astronomical odds. (Estimates vary, but most sources say that less than 5% of high school varsity athletes end up playing on college teams. Among college athletes, about 2% make it to the professional ranks, though the average pro career lasts only a few years.)

For such parents, the money and the fame are the allure. Parents are seduced,” says psychologist Taylor, author of “Your Children Are Under Attack.” A generation ago, few parents saw sports as a path to wealth and celebrity for their children, says Taylor, because few professional athletes earned big salaries and sporting events only received modest coverage in the media. Parents of a talented youth athlete may come to regard him or her as little more than a status symbol. “My house is bigger than yours. My kid is going to excel in sports, and yours is not,” says Dr. Dilip Patel, a professor of pediatrics and human development at Michigan State University in Kalamazoo. Still other parents push their kids too hard to succeed in sports to fill an emotional void, says Taylor. “They’re people who have very little meaning and satisfaction in their own lives. They are often very unhappy.” In his practice, he often finds that parents who are obsessed with their children’s sports achievements are stuck in failing marriages or hate their jobs.

Even parents who say they don’t push their kids to play sports can go a little overboard. A generation ago, few parents attended every one of their child’s youth-sports games, says psychologist Rick Wolff, chairman of the Center for Sports Parenting, a website affiliated with the Institute for International Sport at the University of Rhode Island. Today many parents attend all their children’s games — and practices. “We’re the first generation of parents who are so hyperactive,” says Wolff.

But hyperactivity isn’t necessarily always a bad thing. Scott Forbes says his heavy involvement stems from having three kids who all love playing sports — a desire he wants to support. “If they want to do it, I’m all for it,” says Forbes, 44, of Westchester. But with three children playing at least two sports each this spring, he spends about three hours a day shuttling the kids around town and attending every practice and game he can. “It’s like a part-time job,” says Forbes, who keeps his children’s schedules on a Palm Pilot.

Forbes’ wife, Ana, also 44, attends her kids’ games and does plenty of chauffeuring too. But while she and Scott made a New Year’s resolution to go out to dinner or see a movie without the kids at least once a month, there’s little room in their schedules for such outings these days. “We need more time for ourselves as a couple,” says Ana.

Darrell Burnett, a Laguna Niguel sports psychologist, says highly involved parents need to check themselves and ask whether they are beginning to see a son or daughter not as a person but as a first baseman or halfback. Burnett worked with one high school football player who injured his knee, dashing hopes for a college scholarship. In a session with Burnett, the burly youth burst into tears and said he had considered suicide, partly because he felt rejected by his parents. “The only way they related to me was as a jock,” Burnett recalled the youth telling him.

Parents who are too emotionally invested in their children’s athletic careers may also need to examine whether their obsession is replacing an inner void. “The No. 1 piece of advice I give to parents is ‘Get a life,’ ” says Taylor. “Parents need to have something in their life other than their kid that gives them meaning, satisfaction and happiness.”

Sidebar: Rules for the Sidelines

How to be a better fan and parent:

Stop hollering: That’s the coach’s job, and you’ll only confuse the players. Besides, with younger children, you’re wasting your breath. Few 5- or 6-year-olds understand the concept of a team, much less admonishments such as “Stay in position!” or “Take the low post!” Says Dr. Dilip Patel of Michigan State University, “No matter of yelling or instructing is going to change them.”

Avoid the negative: Try not to make negative comments, and keep cheering whether your child is playing well or poorly.

(Try to) look relaxed: Psychologist Jim Taylor advises parents on the sidelines to sit and try to seem relaxed; appearing tense will distract your child. Also, wear a hat and sunglasses, says Taylor, “so they can’t see your gnarled expression.”

Skip the postgame analysis: After the final out or whistle, give your child a hug and praise his or her performance, says psychologist Rick Wolff. Remark on a specific play he or she made to show that you were paying close attention. But resist the temptation to critique a child’s performance in detail. “Let the kid relax and enjoy the moment,” says Wolff.

Pop culture’s threat to kids
Chicago Tribune
Sunday, May 1, 2005
Orlando Sentinel
June 30, 2005
by Devin Rose

American popular culture cares nothing about your children and is just out to make tons of bucks, writes Jim Taylor, author of “Your Children Are Under Attack” (Sourcebooks, $18.95). Let your kids be immersed in TV shows, magazines, video games and the Internet and they might turn into miserable narcissists who are always grasping for the latest product. Buy his premise (and he makes a good case) and you’ll want to help your child maneuver this minefield.

Taylor’s solution is for parents to create a family life steeped in more life-affirming values. Among them are:

Respect. True respect, he writes, comes from living a life of integrity and hard work.

Success. Our culture concentrates so keenly on results, Taylor writes, that kids get little satisfaction even when they achieve something, because the chance of failure is just around the corner. Instead, children should be encouraged to have reachable goals and to find meaning in the process.

Happiness. Money can’t buy it. Instead, self-esteem and a feeling of belonging contribute to it.

He really means it: “American popular culture is the single greatest obstacle to your children’s happiness.”

Taking the heat off Mom
Albuquerque Journal
by Leann Holt
May 8, 2005

Parents and experts ask whether the rush to provide kids with activities has gone too far

Moms, listen up. In addition to all the diaper changes, nose wiping and elbow Band-Aid-ing that comes with your job, you are also expected to turn out exceptionally successful children. Above average just won’t cut it anymore.

But, then, you probably already knew that.

You might also know that exceptional children are a product of lots of enriching extracurricular activities. That’s why you drive the soccer-karate-ballet-piano circuit most every day. And give up weekends for kids’ games. And know the pizza delivery number by heart.

But what if you, the good mom, have been sold a bill of goods by popular culture? Is it possible you can raise exceptional children and be home most evenings? Could playing Monopoly with the family be as crucial as art class? Some parents are starting to think so.

San Francisco parenting and sports psychologist Dr. Jim Taylor said a “counterrevolution at a grassroots level” is gaining steam as parents revolt against the frenzy of activities they find themselves obligated to. Taylor said the “runaway train” of children’s activities Americans have created from their “more is better” attitude is not what children really need. “Go for a hike, go to a museum, play a game, talk,” said Taylor, author of “Your Children are Under Attack: How Popular Culture is Destroying Your Kids’ Values, and How You Can Protect Them.” “Those are shared family experiences where everyone benefits. The runaway train includes stress and interferes with normal healthy interaction.”

The concept of “less is more” could be a hard sell. Many Albuquerque moms say their children need extra activities to compete for good schools, colleges and, ultimately, jobs. “Expectations have changed,” said Hilma Chynoweth, a mother of four with a full-time job. “If kids don’t do more than just school, they’re at a disadvantage. Society expects children to be much more well-rounded and perhaps over-extended than a previous generation.”

Taylor agrees that enriching activities can be beneficial. But not all at once, and not at a young age, he said. “Culture has told us we can accelerate our children’s development,” he said. “That’s impossible. They don’t need to be wildly successful at a young age.”

Frenzied pace

Until two years ago, Rio Rancho mom Janice Berthelson kept a schedule that could make even the most ambitious mother swoon. Her five children were involved in soccer, Cub Scouts, 4-H, theater, piano, and play groups in Jonesboro, Ark. In addition to shuttling them to practices, games and meetings, Berthelson coached soccer, trained scout leaders and was on the PTA and 4-H boards. “Even when I was with my kids, I couldn’t stop and spend time with them,” Berthelson said. “They had to schedule time with me to do something they wanted to do, like read a book.” Berthelson said the frenzied pace began to take a toll on her family. Behavior problems and “meltdowns” escalated. It took a move to New Mexico to get unhooked from all the activity. Today, the children, ages 15, 12, 9, 5 and 2 1/2, are in one activity each. Berthelson said after the initial shock, the children came to appreciate the slower pace and do not seem to miss the old activities. The family is home most nights and usually shares a home-cooked dinner. “Slowing down was the best thing to do. I made a choice to give my kids my time instead of getting caught up in the rat race,” Berthelson said. “As long as the kids have parental support at home, they’ll be OK. I know that flies in the face of everything that’s going on, but it’s what I feel.”

Perfectionism

Taylor said the “perfection mentality” feeds on parents’ fears that they are somehow bad parents. “If parents aren’t doing everything they can to help their kids be successful, they’re bad parents,” Taylor said. “There is a perfection mentality that says you have to be the best. Above average is no longer acceptable.” But that kind of stress can hurt a child’s brain development, said Ross Thompson, a psychology professor at University of California-Davis. “The best advice I can give is give children untroubled, unhurried, sustainable interaction with a caring adult — child focused and sensitive,” Thompson said. “It feeds the mind. It feeds the heart. It feeds everything.”

Mandy Tapia of Rio Rancho, who was a fourth-grade teacher before her now 2-year-old daughter was born, said she never planned to be a pushy mom. But the pressure to expose her daughter to “all kinds of things” has resulted in a summer schedule that includes tap, ballet, art and swimming. There are also Spanish videos to watch and a new baby on the way. “It’s almost like a competition sometimes,” she said. “Moms always want kids to excel.”

Pushing too hard too young can backfire. Taylor said that, between ages 10 and 13, 70 percent of children drop out of organized sports. The No. 1 reason? It’s not fun.

Overscheduling in an effort to produce creative children can also backfire. “Middle-class children in America are so overscheduled that they … have no time to call on their own resources and be creative,” said Diane Ehrensaft, a developmental psychologist in Berkeley, Calif. “In our efforts to produce Renaissance children who are competitive in all areas, we squelch creativity.”

At the same time, there’s a myriad of reasons for kids being in numerous activities:
* Working parents who would rather have their child in an activity than left with a babysitter or home alone.
* Peer pressure from kids’ friends who participate in an activity and want others to join.
* Pressure from those who run the activities. If a child shows promise, gymnastics classes, for example, might expand to three nights a week instead of one.
* And, of course, the stiff competition for scholarships and admissions to top colleges. Both look for top test scores, honors, community service, athletics, etc. And the race starts early, as kids compete to get into local private schools.

Bucking the trend

Valerie Myers said an unplugged friend with four children gave her the courage to buck the busyness trend with her two children, who are almost 6 and 4. “I did feel the pressure to get them in all these activities,” she said. “It’s like I’m a horrible mother if I’m not running them around everywhere crazy.” Myers said she doesn’t buy into the popular idea that a kid has to go to a top-notch school like Harvard or Yale to get a good job. It’s more important to have the time to listen, she said. “You need the time to think about what they’re saying and how they’re acting instead of running them everywhere.” Myers said she frequently has to defend her decision not to send her youngest child to preschool. She worries that people will think she’s an overprotective mom. And she’s been told that if her children don’t start playing T-ball when they’re 5, they won’t be good enough to compete when they’re 7 or 8. “I don’t know where all this came from,” she said. “It seems like it’s too much, but it doesn’t go over well when I tell people that.”

Healthy moderation

Ultimately, families need to take a step back and look at the costs and benefits of activities, Taylor said. Keep in mind that the point of sports is to have fun and build life skills rather than prepare for a professional or collegiate career, which rarely happens. Taylor recommends no more than two activities a season, and never more than one activity a day. Activities should not interfere with school or family time, which should include sit-down dinners on most nights. Don’t put children in competitive sports before age 7, Taylor advised. Children should be ready to specialize in a sport or activity by 12 or 13, if they are so inclined. “This is not about blaming parents but waking parents up,” he said. “It’s about seeing what is really healthy and not healthy.”

Chynoweth said she constantly weighs the pros and cons of their busy family life, which includes several sports, drama and dance. She said she will pull the plug if the activities begin to erode the fabric of their family. “It’s easy to let it overwhelm you,” she said. “You have to place limits on what is an acceptable level of activity. “But I’d rather be trying to keep up with what we’re doing now than to think my kids’ lives are passing them by. I don’t want to lead a mediocre life.”

Advances in electronic surveillance have given new meaning to keeping an eye on the children
Newsday
by Pat Burson
Monday, May 2, 2005

With the right technology, parents can watch everything their kids are doing on the Internet – every keystroke they make, every Web site they visit and everychat room they enter.

Mom and Dad can also screen their kids’ incoming and outgoing text messages, make sure they’re not ditching school or falling behind, and tell where they’ve been and how fast they were going while tooling around in the family car.

But while the latest gadgets allow parents to track their kids from afar, should they even try to?

Absolutely, says Rebecca Hagelin, author of the new book “Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture That’s Gone Stark Raving Mad” (Nelson Current, $22.99).

“Technology came along, and I don’t think a lot of adults were prepared for it,” says Hagelin, a mother of two sons, 17 and 16, and a daughter, 13, in Arlington, Va. “It’s been abused a lot, but this [new technology] could be a good use in today’s dangerous world to keep safeguards on your kids.”

Hagelin says she uses an Internet filter to review when they’re online and what sites they access – to protect them from pornography and predators. “It’s allowed my children to enjoy all the benefits the latest technology has to offer them, and it’s allowed me to protect them from the dangers of some of the new technology,” she says. “It’s a win-win.”

Not everyone sees it that way. Unless parents have a specific reason, such as keeping a closer watch over the comings and goings of a child with special needs, Queens parent Michael McCann says using technology to monitor their whereabouts is a bad idea. Parents run the risk of communicating not that they want to keep their children safe but that they don’t trust them, he says.

McCann, a former city police officer who spent 11 years as chief of security at the United Nations and is now with a Manhattan-based security firm, says computer- and Internet-savvy kids can find ways around even some of the best computer-filtering devices.

And if not, he says, they can go to a friend’s house or an Internet cafe where no safeguards are installed.

“If you’re giving up your parental responsibility to other things, you’re probably not doing the right things,” he says.

Jim Taylor, a San Francisco psychologist, says companies making surveillance, monitoring and filtering products are profiting from parents’ fears fueled by media coverage of kidnappings, abductions and molestations.

Fear factor

Parents are scared, and they are going to want to protect their children at any cost, he says. “So they are going to buy this monitoring device and this tracking device,” he says. “But is it in the best interest of the children and the family?”

It is – when predators are using the Web to lure children into dangerous liaisons, says Michelle Ascher Dunn, a Manhattan psychoanalyst who specializes in children and families.

“We’re talking about predators who are invisible because they hide in the technology,” Dunn says, “so we have to have technology to find them.”

Teen driving and child abductions are the biggest concerns parents raise when contacting Jack Church’s company, Teen Arrive Alive. In one of the most popular tracking devices the Florida company sells, a computer application is downloaded into a cell phone – the company uses Nextel – that transmits a signal to the nearest cell tower. The signal is sent to GPS satellites, which provide a physical location of the phone. Parents can access their PIN-protected account over the Internet and see a map that shows the phone’s location and, if the phone is in a moving vehicle, the direction of travel and speed. They can also retrieve this information by phone by calling the company’s locator center and entering a security code.

Rather than exploiting fear, Church sees his work as a service to families. “It is our responsibility to do whatever we can to protect our kids from the decisions of their youth because they’re not always going to make good decisions,” he says. Some may call that Big Brother, but he calls it good parenting.

Whether or not parents would agree, they need to strike a balance between their desire to protect their children and the ultimate lessons they hope to teach, Taylor says.

Sooner or later, he points out, children are going to go out on their own. “If you’ve played cops and robbers with them instead of student and teacher, then they’re not going to be ready for the real world,” he says. “So this is all about preparing kids to face these challenges as young adults and adults.”

Though they may be split over the use of tracking technology, experts agree that parents should talk to their children early on about rules concerning computer use and driving behavior.

Parents on watch

Debbie Cala, a computer programmer from Plainedge, likes to know that she is able to monitor her son Nicholas’ attendance and grades by inputting a user name and password and signing onto a secured Web-based system called PowerSchool SIS that his high school offers.

“Before that Web site existed, you would have to call up the teacher to find out what’s going on,” she says. “A lot of times they’re in class, and I’m at work, and it makes it hard for me to get in contact with them. [Now] I can access the Web site on my own, or if I don’t find the answers there, then I can definitely give them a call.”

Nicholas, 16, a junior at Plainedge High, says he’s glad his parents have a way of checking on him. “They should know anyway,” he says.

Wanting to shield their daughter Jordan, 11, and sons Derek, 14, and Jake, 10, from pornography and violence online, Jeffrey and Diane Sutton of Woodbury decided to install computer-monitoring equipment in their home. They arrived at their decision about a year ago, after Jordan was searching for photos of puppies on the Internet and an image of a naked woman with two furry canines covering her breasts popped up. They looked into several products before purchasing software from SearchHelp, a Bethpage company.

“If they go into a chat room or if someone says certain phrases or words, it sends an alarm to my wife and me at work and my cell phone. I can read it instantaneously. I could immediately shut down the computer … from wherever I am,” says Jeffrey Sutton, 42, who is head of sales at a chemical development and manufacturing firm. He knows it’s not a big hit with his kids.

“I don’t like it,” says Jordan, though adding that she doesn’t miss the pesky pop-ups. “I don’t have any privacy.”

Sacrificing his kids’ privacy is a price Sutton says he’s willing to pay to ensure they’re protected from online predators and objectionable content.

“My wife and I want to give our kids the freedom to be on the Internet … and still have the sense that we are parenting and looking over their shoulder and making sure the content they’re looking at is appropriate.”

Jackson trial is becoming a test case for what audiences can stomach
The Dallas Morning News
by Tom Maurstad
Sunday, April 24, 2005

Michael Jackson has always been a celebrity trailblazer as the boy wonder turned King of Pop, the eccentric billionaire who created his own Neverland and transformed himself with bizarre plastic surgery.

So it seems almost inevitable that his trial pushes our culture’s last taboo, pedophilia, into the mainstream spotlight.

In an era when celebrity trials are treated as hit reality TV shows, the Michael Jackson child molestation trial at first seemed destined to be the ultimate event. Here was the world’s biggest celebrity caught up in society’s most controversial scandal.

And in the wind-up to the trial, that’s how it played. The media masses camped outside the California courtroom; loyal fans lined up behind barricades to cheer and wave signs; Mr. Jackson’s every arrival was its own minispectacle: the outfits, the entourage, the dancing on rooftops.

But as the trial nears the end of its second month, abstract accusations have become specific descriptions, and the details of testimony just get creepier and creepier. The procession of prosecution witnesses over the last few weeks provided a growing list of ghastly images that make adults shudder and parents lunge for the mute button.

There’s been testimony about Mr. Jackson showering with and groping boys, and licking one boy’s head as he slept. A maid reported finding adult and children’s underwear discarded in a hot tub after one of Mr. Jackson’s many sleepovers.

The Super Bowl-styled coverage that typically follows this sort of celebrity scandal has become a tricky business, whether you’re producing or watching the coverage. Endless color commentary can so easily stray into an area that people reflexively back away from – call it a cultural gag reflex.

“We’re in a new territory of coverage,” says Dr. Jim Taylor, psychologist and author of Your Children Are Under Attack, which deals with protecting kids from pop culture’s excesses. “This trial is providing a litmus test of what we can stomach.”

“The cynical presumption has been that we as a culture have an insatiable appetite for the grotesque and perverse,” he says. “But I think what’s coming out of this trial is really challenging that presumption and, I hope, proving it wrong.”

Given the wall-to-wall coverage that has followed other sensational trials, from O.J. Simpson to Scott Peterson, the muted quality of Jackson trial coverage is striking. The day-after-day, blow-by-blow coverage, that inescapable everywhere-ness that marked, for instance, the peak of the Peterson murder trial, is missing.

Cable news, with its 24-hour churn, still devotes hours to it, particularly Court TV’s many commentators and celebrity justice fanatics such as MSNBC’s Dan Abrams.

But there have been few magazine covers (People has thus far devoted one cover to the Jackson trial) or entertainment news specials. This latest trial of the century has been relegated to inside-news stories and daily updates.

“Let’s face it. What’s being talked about in that courtroom is pretty tough stuff,” says Ted Harbert, CEO of E! Entertainment, the cable channel broadcasting daily re-enactments of the trial. “I do think we all feel a real sense of uneasiness about some of the things being talked about in there, and that’s having an effect on media coverage.”

So, let’s see, adultery, kidnapping, murder – even of a husband’s pregnant wife – are fine talk-show fodder, fascinating even. But pedophilia? That’s just too much.

“All of those other things I think people can place in their moral universe. There is some feeling that most people can relate to or understand jealousy, greed, anger,” says Tim Burke, a cultural anthropologist at Swarthmore College.

“But pedophilia is like the Hitler of sexual behavior. There’s no relating to it. It just leaves you feeling icky and wishing you didn’t know what you know.”

Is there, finally, a line beyond which we will not go or let ourselves be pushed? Given the synergistic relationship between human nature and pop culture, probably not.

“I think another big factor in how this trial is being covered is no cameras in the courtroom,” says E!’s Mr. Harbert. “I’m sure we’d be seeing a lot more if there were video that the news channels could show. Because as creepy as some of this has gotten, that’s when the ratings on our re-enactments go up.”

Before you start despairing about the Gomorrah-ification of our society, consider that pushing pedophilia into the spotlight may not be a bad thing. It could even be a good thing.

“The hardest part of dealing with the problem of pedophilia is getting companies and people to talk about it,” says Dave Allburn, director of Safe Harbor Resources, a non-profit group dedicated to protecting children from sexual predators.

“But maybe getting pedophilia in pop culture will give us a way to talk about it, to peel back the titanium shell around it that we haven’t been able to break through before.”

The armor-piercing potential of pedo-pop culture may get an extra charge if the star of this show takes the stand. With the prosecution’s case winding down, the world waits to see whether Michael Jackson will testify in his own defense.

Most expert commentators think it unlikely, but the image of the Peter Pan of pop being grilled in some Perry Mason moment over sharing showers, porn and “Jesus juice” with young boys has an irresistible allure to our 24/7 media marketplace.

It could be that Michael Jackson’s celebrity trailblazing isn’t complete. He may map out another uncharted dimension of weirdness in pop culture, leaving us to decide whether we will tune in or tune out.

New York Daily News
by Julian Kesner
Wednesday, March 16th, 2005

Psychologist and author Dr. Jim Taylor has spent more than 20 years working with children, parents and educators in a variety of settings. His new book, “Your Children Are Under Attack” (Sourcebooks, $18.95), takes on violent video games, reality TV and other unsavory aspects of popular culture – and how worried parents can cope with such influences.

Q: Are there any positive aspects of popular culture nowadays?

A: First of all, let me say that not all popular culture is bad, and I make a point of that in the book. My concern is when popular culture teaches unhealthy values, is physically unhealthy, and becomes the guiding force in kids’ lives. There are many wonderful books, movies and even video games that can be very beneficial, but an underlying aspect of popular culture is that it usually involves sitting on one’s butt. That keeps kids from physical activity and from doing other things that are probably healthier. I’m not saying there should be a law against popular culture. It simply needs to be balanced. Parents really need to study popular culture and see beyond the superficial messages. Parents are intelligent people, and they know what these ads and video games and movies are trying to sell, but they don’t really connect how bad it is. To 6-, 7- and 8-year-old kids, it’s not so obvious. They simply don’t have the tools yet to be able to think critically.

One thing I really emphasize with kids is teaching them healthy skepticism. We don’t want them naive, because then they’ll believe everything. We don’t want them cynical, because then they don’t trust anything. But parents should want their kids to not take these messages at face value.

Q: Is there a particular aspect of popular culture that is most destructive?

A: First is the overwhelming presence of popular culture. Every day, kids are bombarded with unhealthy messages. But as far as blatant destructiveness, it would have to be video games, where the messages about violence and sexuality are just profoundly unhealthy – of course, not all video games, but just the most popular ones.

Q: Why are games such as “Grand Theft Auto” so much more appealing than, say, sports games?

A: It’s an act of rebellion, and asserting power over their world – and the fact is, it’s incredibly stimulating. It’s an adrenaline rush. “Going to the dark side” is incredibly alluring for kids. That’s the cool thing, although so unhealthy.

Q: Who is more to blame, parents or the marketers who propagate these kinds of messages?

A: I don’t really blame the marketers. They’re just fulfilling their existence. Their job is to make money. It’d be like asking a fish not to swim. Would I like to have some sense of social responsibility from them? Sure. Do I expect it of them? No.

It is ultimately the parents’ responsibility, and that is the fundamental message in the book – that they’re not going to get any help from business, and they’re certainly not going to get any help these days from our government; they have long ago sold out to special interests and money. The three places where kids can really get support are their schools, their houses of worship and, most basically, from their parents.

Q: So what are some of the basic things that parents can do?

A: It starts with clearly understanding what parents value, and make sure those values are healthy. Unfortunately, parents are just as easily seduced by popular culture as their kids are. Remember, who buys these video games? The parents do. There’s a parenting culture of laziness and expediency, rather than figuring out some fun games.

So it starts with getting parents to understand what they value, and then to make deliberate decisions about what’s in their children’s best interests. I talk a lot in my book about that notion of “best interest” – what will then enable them to become successful, happy, value-driven, compassionate kids, instead of, “nah, that’s easier,” or “we’ll just do drive-thru McDonald’s” or “I don’t have the time, let’s just do what everyone else in the neighborhood is doing.”

Teaching values is not just a one-shot deal or occasional thing. It’s talking about them, living them, giving children experiences from these values every single day. That doesn’t mean you can’t ever go to McDonald’s or ever play a video game – that’s just not realistic in our culture.

But as long as the parents are making mostly good decisions for their kids – and the emphasis there is “mostly,” not “perfect” – they’ll come out okay.

Pay attention to your kids and get rid of the guns
The Trenton Times
by Jeanne Jackson DeVoe
Tuesday, April 05, 2005

The headlines were heart-wrenchingly familiar. A deeply troubled young man opens fire at his high school, killing students, teachers and then himself.

As parents, we see the headlines about 16-year-old Jeffrey Weise in Red Lake, Minn., last month and we feel heartbroken and sickened by the waste of lives. Last week, another youth, 16-year-old Roger Jourdain, was arrested and charged with helping plan the attack.

Coming six years after the Columbine shootings that claimed 15 people, we also feel helpless. The headlines start to feel inevitable.

We shake our heads, assure ourselves that our kids are normal and our schools are safe. We turn the page.

And all that’s natural. We feel weary. As a country, we did a lot of soul searching after Columbine, but it seems whatever lessons we learned weren’t enough. And here we are again.

But while the tragedy of Weise’s life and the rage in his soul may seem far away from our daily lives, we can no longer afford to pretend these are isolated incidents. We have to force ourselves to go back and figure out why it happened.

The obvious answer starts with Weise’s very troubled young life. His father had committed suicide, his mother was in a nursing home. Since he slashed his wrists a year ago, he’d been getting treatment for depression.

We’ll never know whether the Prozac he was prescribed may have had some role in the tragedy. A federal panel found last year that antidepressants such as Prozac could cause some children and teenagers to be suicidal and the FDA now requires warning labels on antidepressants. But the drugs haven’t been linked to violence.

While Weise was receiving some help, no one seemed to realize how disturbed he was or pick up on the numerous clues he gave that he could explode. “You’ve got these in your face as warning signs as we’ve had so many times before,” said Mary E. Muscari, professor and director of Forensic Health at the University of Scranton in Jesuit, Pa., and author of “Not My Kids: 21 Steps to Raising a Non-Violent Child” (2002, University of Scranton Press). “With kids we have this whole trail of breadcrumbs. They tend to like to brag about it before they do it.”

And there were signs beyond the gothic black clothes and white makeup he wore, beyond the fact that he was a loner with few friends. There were the violent pictures he drew of bloodied bodies and guns and the story he wrote about a school shooting spree and his fascination with Hitler and the Nazis.

There were very clear warnings passed along to other students, who said Weise often talked of an attack. But young people have a “kid code” that dictates that you never “tell on” other kids, so no one ever told adults what they had heard.

Like the youth in the Columbine massacre, Weise was an outsider who had been left back and was teased for being larger than other sophomores in his class. He had been tutored at home because of his issues, according to school officials.

Children who have been bullied often become bullies themselves, explains Muscari.

“A lot of these kids do have a lot of rage,” she says. “You have to think about some of the circumstances these kids have. Think about what it’s got to be like for a kid when for eight hours a day you feel tortured.”

The Columbine shootings prompted a lot of schools to start programs to combat bullying, Muscari says. But funding for such programs, as well as youth recreation programs and mental health for children, are always among the first to be cut, she says.

While Weise was receiving some help, “when there’s a suicide or abandonment like this, they need to have massive grief work or intervention,” says Jane Middelton-Moz, author of “The Ultimate Guide to Transforming Anger” (Health Communications Inc., 2005), who has also written about bullying and childhood trauma.

Middelton-Moz puts some blame on the fact that our communities have become so isolated. The network of friends and family in the neighborhood who could step in if your kids were in trouble or tell you what they’re doing wrong is disappearing, Middelton-Moz says.

“I just think our level of isolation is killing us,” she says.

Weise’s fascination with violent movies, Hitler and Nazi Web sites was also a warning sign. Although he was often seen on the computer, no one seemed to know about his life on the Internet until after his death.

Dr. Jim Taylor, author of “Your Children are Under Attack: How Popular Culture Is Destroying Your Values and How You Can Protect Them” (Sourcebooks, 2005), believes that both the school culture and the pervasive violence in the media played a role in the shootings. “There is a culture in school of cruelty and humiliation and disrespect where different kids are ostracized, creating sadness, desperation and anger,” he says. “Popular culture also contributes . . . Violence is everywhere, violence sells, so violence becomes acceptable.”

Even the media attention surrounding the Columbine shootings and the intensive news coverage of the shootings in Minnesota send the wrong message that glorifies violence and fame, Taylor says. A troubled kid like Weise “knows after Columbine that he’s going to be famous, even if it’s posthumously,” he explains.

There’s another aspect of the shootings that no one talks about: its connection with guns. In this case, Weise killed his grandfather, a police officer, and stole his gun, so you can’t blame the killings on banned weapons as you could with Columbine. But it only makes sense to acknowledge that guns kill people and that automatic weapons make it a lot easier to do so.

One story that came out of the shootings last month is that the National Rifle Association called for teachers to be armed. This is breathtaking in its stupidity. It would make more sense to make it impossible for young people to get hold of guns to begin with.

But all our soul searching is useless if we don’t keep thinking about how we can do better by kids like Weise. Here the sense of helplessness sets in again. How do we change the world?

We start in our own little worlds, of course. It all seems to come down to being aware, being involved and communicating with our kids. The word “values” gets bandied around a lot, but if we can try to teach our children to empathize with other kids and to take a stand against bullies, that’s a good start.

We can’t shield them from the violence in our culture, but we can talk how we feel about guns and violence.

Then, when we catch our breath, we can keep pushing for programs to combat bullying, for recreation centers and counseling programs for our young people. We can keep calling for strong gun-control laws.

Maybe kids like Jeffrey Weise will always fall through the cracks, but I can’t let myself believe that. If we start thinking this terrible violence is inevitable we doom ourselves to never changing the headlines.

[top]


REVIEWS

A Must for Parents, May 9, 2005
Reviewer: Dr. Michael Brody (Potomac, MD)

Dr. Taylor’s book is a must read for parents of kids of all ages. The material is fresh, practical and informative. Because of the amount of time our children spend with Popular Culture, it is imperative that we understand it’s impact. The good doctor provides us with this understanding, as well as some real world suggestions. As a child psychiatrist, I find this the best parental guide on the subject of media to date. Excellent read.

A MUST Read for Parents, May 8, 2005
Reviewer: Dr. Michele Borba (Palm Springs, CA)

Jim Taylor has done it again. His latest book, YOUR CHILDREN ARE UNDER ATTACK, is not only a compelling read but also filled with statistics, research and just plain, good sound advice that tells us today’s culture is toxic for our children’s moral growth. But what makes Taylor’s book especially profound is that he offers doable ways to help parents take back the control of our children’s lives and make sure we do plant the kinds of values that will help them become compassionate, humane, and ethical individuals (despite the popular culture). I highly recommend this book (as well as the author’s previous work, Positive Pushing). Both should be on every parents’ nightstands these days.

Neither right nor left wing, just anti-junk, May 4, 2005
Reviewer: Phil Kloer (Atlanta, GA)

I started Jim Taylor’s book “Your Children Are Under Attack” thinking it would be along the lines of the traditional right-wing attack on pop culture as put forth by Bill O’Reilly, William J. Bennett, Jerry Falwell, etc. While fans of those writers may find common ground and reason to celebrate Taylor, there are some pretty big differences, enough so that liberals (gasp) may get plenty out of it as well.

Taylor is not really coming from a political point of view, and he is definitely not coming from a Christian point of view. He does not mention religion, nor Republicans, nor Democrats. His concern is children, only children, and what our popular culture does to children if parents don’t take steps to hold it at bay and model values.
(That’s right, parents, it’s not enough to turn off “South Park” and say ‘Don’t watch that trash’ to your kids. You have to walk the walk and sit down with them at dinner and be a model of adult love and responsibility.)

Taylor is intense, and not given to shades of gray “There is no more destructive force in your children’s lives than American popular culture,” he writes, and he doesn’t just mean Britney Spears’ belly button, although that’s part of it. It’s the whole business model of American capitalism that sells young people crappy stuff and shallow, transient feelings, and then sells them a slightly different version of the same thing next week.

“Under Attack” can be repetitious, but a lot less repetitious than 800 million commercials for the next Fox reality show. I’ll vote for Taylor.

A Call to Arms to Caregivers, Teachers, Counselors, et. al. , March 15, 2005
Reviewer: Ray Rubino (Amherst, OH), Top 500 reviewer

This jeremiad is written primarily for parents and caregivers; yet it is apropos for anyone concerned for the state of the well-being of the American child today.

Dr. Taylor’s razor-sharp insightful book gives the reader an inside look at all of the influences that are on the offensive against anyone who is looking out for the welfare of our future; namely physically, emotionally, and psychologically healthy children.

Point-by-searing-point he guides the reader down the rot that has eaten away at our society mores; from pop culture, to corporate greed that finances everything from rot-gut music, to fashion that sexualizes children and fosters values that tells our kids that they “must have” everything in order to be happy, successful, fit in…you name it.

This book is a must have, must read for anyone raising a child, no matter what the age. Dr. Taylor is an important voice in the national dialogue on child-rearing that, after the publishing of this book, will have to be listened to.

Buy this book today…in fact buy two and give a copy to a friend. The future of our country depends on it.

Extraordinary Toolkit for Today’s Parenting Challenges, March 15, 2005
Reviewer: Anne Leedom (El Dorado Hills, CA)

A timely and well- thought out solution to the crisis of morality our kids face everyday. Dr. Taylor provides practical insight and real strategies to protecting our kids and giving them a solid chance at success in a challenging world. Every parent and teacher will find answers and hope in his original and inspirational words. – Anne Leedom, Editor-in-Chief, Parentingbookmark.com

Having a Great Family in Spite of the Culture, March 16, 2005
Reviewer: Gerald Sindell (Napa, CA)

Dr. Jim Taylor is probably America’s greatest defender of the family as the essential place where healthy children are raised. And he has recognized that American popular culture has slipped from just being crass and commercial to something much more dangerous – it has begun to destroy the most vulnerable, the children, in the society it thrives within, just like a cancer killing its host. Dr. Taylor sees that parents can and must protect their family from the corrosive effects of popular culture by raising children to be strong from within. That means parents need to understand their own values first, and then take command of their family so that those values can be the core of their children’s sense of themselves and the world.

As Dr. Taylor wrote in his book, “Positive Pushing” parents can raise happy healthy children who grow into self-reliant and happy adults. He has identified exactly what it takes to raise these thriving children, and shown that any and every parent is capable of being a successful parent.

Full disclosure: I am the parent of four adult men who are strong independent thinkers and who are living the lives that they have chosen for themselves. As Dr. Taylor might define happiness, they are striving for valuable goals and will have ownership of their failures and successes. Dr. Taylor and I are close friends, and his ideas have helped me considerably over the years in raising my children, and my knowledge of publishing has in a small way helped him reach an ever-expanding audience.


TESTIMONIALS

“Kids have a new best friend in Dr. Jim Taylor. In stressing values, respect and responsibility as antidotes for a toxic popular culture, Dr. Taylor provides a must read for all parents.” Michael Brody, M.D., Chair, Television and Media Committee, American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

“I have a confession to make. I began reading your book out of a sense of duty and with, not skepticism, but a sort of preconception that I was about to read what I had read before, another commentary on young people rebelling against nearly everything and their parents at loose ends, sort of a scholarly take on “Rebel Without a Cause.” And those demons, television, and violent video games, would be the culprits.

By the way, you do a great job of rehabilitating the much overworked word ‘values.’ There’s no better word, but the radio commentators and politicians have turned it almost into a cliché.

By the time I was a quarter of the way into your book, I realized that you were truly on to something. You don’t just wring your hands and wish for the ‘good old days,’ you provide specific instances that illustrate your concerns (the highlighted passages at the beginning of chapters really work) and then you actually give parents some rational—and workable—advice. By the time I had reached the chapters on success and happiness, I was a full-fledged convert. You needn’t thank me for sharing my thoughts about your book. I should thank you for allowing me to be associated with a project that so effectively articulates my own feelings.

A few sound bites to summarize my thoughts about Your Children are Under Attack:

1. America is fighting a war at home between traditional values and popular culture—with your children in the balance. Dr. Jim Taylor identifies the enemy and tells the reader how we can win our children back.

2. If you read but one book this year, read Your Children Are Under Attack. It may be the most important book you’ll ever read.

3. Before it’s too late—and pray that it’s not too late—read Dr. Jim Taylor’s no-nonsense expose’ of popular culture’s insidious assault on your children.

4. ‘Popular’ culture was once a benign aspect of our world, reflecting the values and traditions that made America. Today it has turned malignant and its target is your child. Dr. Jim Taylor tells you how you may send this cancer into remission.

5. The battle lines have been drawn: it’s contemporary popular culture versus traditional American values—and popular culture is winning. Dr. Jim Taylor leads the fight to restore traditional values and rescue the American family.

6. Hard work, honesty, respect, communication—these are the ‘values’ that Dr. Jim Taylor sees being eroded by our glitzy and superficial popular culture. Read this book and join the battle to win back our children’s hearts and minds.” Dan Fuller, English Dept., Kent State University; Chair, Television Committee, Popular Culture Association

“I have read countless books on parenting and family life. No parenting author has touched me as deeply as Dr. Jim Taylor. Your Children Are Under Attack is masterful. In a culture that breeds selfishness and materialism, Taylor’s refreshing approach breathes life into developing essential character qualities that will allow for healthy, confident and happy children. The six values will revolutionize the family as we know it. It teaches us how to grow and go against, with dignity, cultural boundaries that ensnare our families and trap our kids. His work is a lifeboat to us, offering not just a way to survive, but thrive and reach higher levels of parenting success by being the catalyst for family value-based living.” Christy Battiato,
Mother of 3, Medford, Oregon

“A valuable resource for parents concerned about the effects of the pop culture upon the values of their children. The saying ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’ still has merit. Parents are reminded to look in the mirror and walk the talk! Thanks, Jim, for providing a refreshing approach to develop a family-value culture that fosters self-esteem, responsibility and decision-making capabilities.” Marsha Stencel, Head of School, Princeton Montessori School; Director, Princeton Center for Teacher Education

“A timely and well- thought out solution to the crisis of morality our kids face everyday. Dr. Taylor provides practical insight and real strategies to protecting our kids and giving them a solid chance at success in a challenging world. Every parent and teacher will find answers and hope in his original and inspirational words.” Anne Leedom, Founder and Editor, parentingbookmark.com

“In Your Children Are Under Attack, Dr. Taylor provides his readers with three primary gifts:

First, he clearly defines ‘popular culture’ so we know exactly what it is and what weapons it is attacking our children with.

Second, he provides us with the specific weapons we need to fight back. For parents and other responsible adults, this is a huge gift; and it is a gift that no other writer has offered with such clarity and vision.

Third, Dr. Taylor talks about values on almost every page of the book. One of the most corrupting influences of popular culture has long been the idea that ‘all values are equal.’ In our politically correct environment, too few people have had the courage to say loudly that all values are not equal; and that there are key values which are critically important for healthy societies. Dr. Taylor has the courage to name the productive values and the unproductive ones.” Warren Witherell, Head of School, Crested Butte (CO) Academy