What more and more Americans are recognizing is that the Too Busy Parent is a cultural phenomenon with vast consequences for children. One researcher estimates that 50 percent of parents do not know who their adolescent children's friends are. Another has found that the average teen-ager spends only six minutes a day talking to his mother, and even less conversing with his father. Usually they are assumed to be going in different directions. Still, it is a telling snapshot of the way we live now.
Families pack briefcases, backpacks and cell phones before heading out the door.
When they reunite in the evening, they pop dinner in the microwave or order takeout and then veg out in front of their multiple television sets. Each and every time a kid shoots up the schoolyard, the parents are said to be shocked. Frequently, they will have had no idea that their children were going so catastrophically off track. More evidence of parental disengagement was recently reported in The Washington Post. Children as young as 11 are asking questions about it, talking about it and engaging in it.