A negative culture takes toll

The Boston Herald

What makes a child kill?

We look for the big reasons: divorce, drugs, a history of being abused, a loaded gun, revenge, despair. But what if there is no big reason? What if it's a thousand little ones?

Look at the sunrise. Today is new, full of possibilities, a gift. Cherish it. Who says these things? Who puts into young minds the idea that an ordinary day is extraordinary, that life is sacred and that all life is a reflection of God?

No one.

Every day in America children from toddlers to teens wake up to a steady recitation of crime. A 20-year-old man is being held in the beating death of his infant son; a respected banker duped his clients and ran off with millions; a drug counselor was arrested on possession of drugs; some athlete drove drunk; some one else killed his wife.

The news is the background music of our lives. Only the names change. This is what children are exposed to. And it doesn't stop when the radio shuts off. There's home and the kitchen table and what kids learn there.

A mother belittles a teacher. A father denigrates a coach. This one's a jerk. That one's an ass. Mothers betray fathers. Fathers betray mothers. People are betraying people everywhere. And that's what children see.

Every time a baby is born the world gets another chance to get it right. A baby is pure soul. So what happens? How do children go bad?

My 24-year-old daughter wonders if children who are wheeled in carriages where they face their mothers and children who are wheeled looking out at the world grow up to be any different. Could something as innocuous as this influence who we become? she asks.

Everything influences who we become. That's what we don't want to admit - that parents arguing; the radio reporting; TV indulging; all the non-stop real violence followed by simulated violence; movies; sports; "You can't trust anyone, not your teacher, not your Cub Scout leader, not your priest;" legions of adults walking out the door to work every day as if to war, joyless; things that are supposed to make people happy not making anyone happy, do have an effect.

"It's a cruel world. Keep your guard up," parents tell their children today. It used to be that it was enough to say "Don't ride with strangers and be careful when you cross the street." Not anymore.

Trees forced to grow in the shade are stunted. How can children who grow up in moral darkness be any different?

"The Sopranos" is one of the most popular shows on television these days. It is also one of the most violent. How can watching this, and children do watch it, not affect the way they and their parents think and talk and behave?

I never heard a parent swear when I was a child. Mrs. Butler would say, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, get in the house right now," but that was as close as it came and that was a prayer, she insisted, like "Jesus, Mary and Joseph protect us." Now? Now what sometimes comes out of my mouth stuns me. It happens. You hear a thing over and over and you say it. You see a thing over and over and you do it. Our moral compass isn't just broken. We don't have one anymore.

What do you want to do when you're an adult? I ask a bright 14-year-old and she tells me what she doesn't want to do. She doesn't want to get married and then get divorced. She doesn't want to mess up her kids' lives. She doesn't want to work at a job she hates. She doesn't want to live in the city because it's dangerous but she doesn't want to live in the country either, because there's nothing to do. Actually, she says, I really don't want to grow up.

But she will grow up.

I’m hoping she’ll remember what she didn't want to be, right the wrongs that she can and be a force to change the world.