The New York Post e-Edition

How Americans Lost Their Parents’ Values

KAROL MARKOWICZ Karol Markowicz is co-author of the new book “Stolen Youth.”

WHAT are our children learning outside the home? A Wall Street Journal poll this week showed a collapse of traditional American values, with plummeting percentages of people saying the values of patriotism, religion, having children and community involvement are very important to them. The one value that’s become more important to Americans is “money.” There’s no other way to read this than as a spotlight on a country in decline.

What happened to us? How did the idea of loving your country, placing importance in worship, growing a family and helping your community become things we feel meh about?

When I write about the indoctrination of children, I inevitably hear from parents sharing horror stories of how their kids fell under someone else’s influence and the damage that has caused them.

My heart breaks for them. But the hardest part is hearing so many of them say, “We didn’t tell our kids what we believed and what mattered to us because we expected their schools and community to reflect our values.”

If you don’t fill in what matters, and teach your children what your family’s priorities are, don’t be surprised to discover that someone else has. Stop expecting someone else to teach your children values.

We’ve surrendered the teaching of values to schools and organizations we’ve trusted.

Huge mistake, since we’ve also let our institutions be captured by a far left seeking to reorganize our society according to their backward ideas.

Loving your country is bad, they tell us; patriotism is dangerous:

This is a standard opinion now among our country elites, who enjoy spending Thanksgiving and Independence Day reminding of us of our great country’s flaws.

Mara Gay of The New York Times editorial board once traveled to the exotic land of Long Island where she saw “dozens of American flags” and found them “disturbing.”

Laughing at Gay is one way to handle her outbursts. But another would be describing to your children what makes America great, and always has, and why the flag represents that.

Explain to them why so many people want to come to this country, why there is an American dream but not a Swedish dream or a French dream — and why Gay isn’t packing her bags for some less scary, less patriotic land with fewer flags.

Religion isn’t important, we’re often told. We are modern, cool people with no space for God. Who needs religion!

Well, we do. Poll after poll has shown that people who take part in religious activity are happier and have better mental health.

A 2019 worldwide Pew poll found: “People who are active in religious congregations tend to be happier and more civically engaged than either religiously unaffiliated adults or inactive members of religious groups.”

Community involvement is often tied to religion, too: More religious people are also civically minded. This is particularly important as more of us die deaths of despair and loneliness.

And yet a Pew poll from two months ago found that only about a third of parents consider it important to pass their religious values on to their children.

There’s a disconnect here: Parents are afraid to tell their kids that their religion is important and they should follow their lead in practicing it.

The Journal poll asked American

‘ Parents are afraid to tell their kids that their religion is important.’

parents about their “confidence that life for their children’s generation will be better than it has been for them”; 78% didn’t feel confident.

You can’t raise a generation of children in a brand new way, without the values that have grounded so many people who came before them, and feel optimistic about the future.

It’s OK to say, “We want you to love your country, practice our religion, help your community and yes, give us grandchildren.”

These are normal things that parents have said to their children for generations, yet somehow we’ve been convinced to keep these opinions to ourselves or we’ll somehow cause our kids to be troubled adults.

Yet it’s exactly the lack of that guidance causing problems.

These polls shows social ruin on the horizon. To save American society, parents have to be braver in telling their kids what they believe.

Don’t wait for someone else to do it for you.

POST OPINION

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2023-04-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-04-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://nypost.pressreader.com/article/282089166035833

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