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In Their Footsteps
"Adults make all the difference in our lives. Kids don’t become violent teens without bad role models."
By Courtney Henderson
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In recent years, media has definitely hyped up the idea of the teenage "super predator," the stereotypical image of the young people responsible for rising crime rates. Youth Radio's Courtney Henderson offers a rebuttal to this stereotype - and says that parents, not children, are responsible for today's social problems in the home. (September 23 on Atlanta's WABE)
It’s a shame how the generations before us look at our generation as if we’re just horrible. We think and act the same as kids in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s did. Just as my mom would sneak phone calls with boys when she was a teen, I grew to do the same.
What I think has changed is the parents.
I believe that kids back in the day like my mom, resisted many temptations because of fear... fear of displeasing their parents. But for many teens today, that fear is gone because their parents aren’t present in the same way.
My father left when I was two. Back then, I didn’t know the impact it had on my mother, who had to raise me and my sister.
She kept us in order, but raising two girls alone isn’t an easy job. But once my mom got re-married, the situation was different. Yep, after so many years of growing up in a single parent home, along came “step-daddy”.
Adults make all the difference in our lives. Kids don’t become violent teens without bad role models. We aren’t the ones on television advertising sex on every channel. There are so many dead-beat and absent fathers and mothers; children are deprived of the family morals that were once valued.
- Youth Radio Atlanta is produced in cooperation with WABE and funded in part by The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.
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