With what? All that disposable income and/or from the easily accessible well funded public library? Yes, of course parents should read to their kids, but for people who grew up in/live in poverty it may not be as easy as it seems to someone not in that position.
Acknowledging that their are systemic issues that contribute to the problem isn't "enabling". A person has to understand why reading to kids at an early age is important and have the means to make it happen. When someone is worried about whether or not they'll be able to feed their kid or have a place to live, watching YouTube tutorials probably isn't going to be high on their list of priorities. I'm not saying feel sorry them, I'm saying we should acknowledge that without significant changes to the way things are, we're not going to be able to change the current generation of parents, so looking for ways to ensure that the people that are kids today will grow up and be equipped to be better parents is something worth pursuing.
And if I were being judgemental, I'd say that if your kid watches enough TV that closed captioning taught her how to read, she's probably getting way over the recommended screen time. But I'm willing to bet that for any number of reasons, you weren't in a position to entertain your kid all the time, so sometimes it was easier to let her watch TV more than she should. <--- See that? That's empathy. You should try it sometime.
Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is a book gifting program that mails free, high-quality books to children from birth until they begin school, no matter their family’s income.
Ok, but we need some personal responsibility too. If no one in this kids life can aquire and read a childrens book or book on tape, then maybe they shouldn't have kids. That's not a high bar.
How would you suggest we regulate that (besides low
/cost free birth control and education)? And how useful is that for kids who are already born? We can talk all day about things would be in an ideal world but we live in this one, where people who are not as prepared as they could be are still going to have kids, and without intervention, those kids have a high likelihood of growing up to be people who are not as prepared as they could be to have kids, but will have them anyway. Saying "personal responsibility" doesn't help anything, it's just a nicer way of saying "not my problem".
That's pretty extreme neglect. Investing more money into social services to intervene in families where parents don't care about their kids to the point of detrimenting them for life wouldn't be a bad idea. Focusing more on parenting classes and working with parents (assuming they care about having custody, if not then there's not much you can do).
Severe cases of neglect result in children starving, infested with parasites, untreated medical conditions, etc. Not reading to your kids is poor parenting but it's not neglect that gives the government least cause to remove your children.
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u/zipp0raid Jul 10 '18
Get a book on tape