Nature Is One Of The Best Antidotes

We Do Not Raise Our Children Alone.... Our Children Are Also Raised By Every Peer, Institution, And Family With Which They Come In Contact. Yet Parents Today Expect To Be Blamed For Whatever Results Occur With Their Children, And They Expect To Do Their Parenting Alone.

I Do Not Mean To Imply That The Good Old Days Were Perfect. But The Institutions And Structure--the Web--of Society Needed Reform,not Demolition. To Have Cut The Institutional And Community Strands Without Replacing Them With New Ones Proved To Be A Form Of Abuse To One Generation And To The Next. For So Many Americans, The Tragedy Was Not In Dreaming That Life Could Be Better; The Tragedy Was That The Dreaming Ended.

It's Easy To Blame The Nature-deficit Disorder On The Kids' Or The Parents' Back, But They Also Need The Help Of Urban Planners, Schools, Libraries And Other Community Agents To Find Nature That's Accessible.

American Family Life Has Never Been Particularly Idyllic. In The Nineteenth Century, Nearly A Quarter Of All Children Experienced The Death Of One Of Their Parents.... Not Until The Sixties Did The Chief Cause Of Separation Of Parents Shift From Death To Divorce.

In A Famous Middletown Study Of Muncie, Indiana, In 1924, Mothers Were Asked To Rank The Qualities They Most Desire In Their Children. At The Top Of The List Were Conformity And Strict Obedience. More Than Fifty Years Later, When The Middletown Survey Was Replicated, Mothers Placed Autonomy And Independence First. The Healthiest Parenting Probably Promotes A Balance Of These Qualities In Children.