One Parent Stay Home

 This drug crisis in which so many of our finest youth die far too soon, might be helped if there were at least one parent staying home and keeping an eye on what junior is up to. I don't mean spying on them but being fully and completely involved in making their lives meaningful. I know many parents who wish to be at home rather than having to work to pay the mortgage or rent but cannot afford to. It is time we spent good money for one parent to be at home with the kids. A parent who doesn't take them to day care as infants or pick them up at night when they are exhausted from work. Everyone says it works when both parents work and can pay for the house, the cars and Disneyland annually.  I don't believe it. And to me, there is evidence. Listen to the media.  Also the madness of book up every minute of a kid's life with organised sport, arts or studies is not giving them a sense of freedom without regulation. The regulation should come from the family mandate designed by the family and the family means someone at home. If there is no one at home and some gorgeous ones are empty all day until the "family" arrives home to scramble through a quick meal before the schedules demand they go off in the cars again. It is not old fashioned to want to be a family with someone around be it the father or mother when the child leaves for school and comes home from it. But who can afford that luxury and still provide the child what it needs socially, mentally, physically and economically? We need to fund stay-at-home parents below a certain income so that our society gets back to a normal playing field again. Does any child these days come home to a house with the parent around to ask how the day went, prepare a sit down meal uninterrupted by scheduled events or cell phones or parental must-do calls from work? Sure, you love your work parents but what is happening at home? Parents on the poverty line could well use a steady, reliable income to provide the necessary parental presence in developing a child who has a close person, one of his and her blood, to listen and comfort and love on a constant reliable basis. Argue if you will, but a paid parental presence needs testing even if you argue against it. You are responsible for that child and children, their lives, their futures and ours. All of us.