Parents Need to Do Their Jobs but Society Has to Allow Them to Do It

* Your article “Officials Exhort O.C. Parents to Do Their Duty” (Oct. 15) struck me as rather ironic. You quoted some social workers, probation officers and health officials calling for a return to family values. Amen to that! But before parents can adequately parent their children, the state has to get out of the way!

Students can receive confidential sex and drug counseling at public schools. They can even be assisted in confidentially obtaining a state-funded abortion during school hours without the parent ever knowing. The saying “parents are the last to know” can be so true. How can we adequately do our jobs as parents if vital information like drug or sexual activity involving our children is withheld from us?

Peer pressure becomes the most powerful force in teen-agers’ lives. Positive peer pressure is wonderful and schools, churches and parents must work together to provide activities and environments where positive peer pressure can flourish.

It is the job of the parent to instill a sense of positive self-worth in a child so they can have the strength to stand up to negative peer pressure.

In spite of the parents’ best efforts, negative peer pressure can get a foothold so easily. Then the state steps in with confidential counseling and the child is out of control before the parents have had a chance to take adequate preventive measures. The state has imposed itself as a surrogate parent and that takes the authority of the real parents away.

I am abhorred by physical abuse against children. But think about it; when the vice principal used to hand out swats in school, there were very few discipline problems. Now if parents spank their children, they can be accused of child abuse.

Parents need to get back to the job of parenting, but society has to let them do their job by supporting their authority instead of usurping it.

DEBBY RETTINO

Coto de Caza

* It is amusing and somehow pathetic that local government officials are calling to the parents of Orange County to “do their duty” in keeping their kids on the straight and narrow path.

Ozzie Nelson would be hard pressed to turn out a couple of nice boys like Dave and Ricky today (TV version). The most caring and alert parents are fighting a losing battle against a society that has been polluted and perverted by a media that glorifies fornication, violence, greed and general lack of respect for authority.

God has been banned from the school. Safe sex, instead of the moral position of sex in marriage only, is promoted as society’s answer to the teen pregnancy and venereal disease problem.

Added to the whole stew is the idea that killing unborn babies is somehow an issue of a “woman’s choice,” and practicing homosexuality is OK because that’s just the way they are.

Yes, parents need to be involved in their kids’ lives, but families live in society and they cannot remain untouched or unscathed by the world around them. When you destroy or replace traditional values with the new tolerance of the past few decades, you get what you see today. You can’t have the Nelson family in a Bundy world.

DUSTIN FUNDERBURK

Costa Mesa