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Where Have All Parents Gone?

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Where Have All Parents Gone?
Ellisha Sharma
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Critical Response Where Have All The Parents Gone? Barbara Dafoe Whitehead In her essay, “Where Have All The Parents Gone?” Barbara Dafoe Whitehead addresses that investing in kids is the bumper sticker for an important new cause, aptly tagged the kids as capital argument. Children make much of the stockpile of America’s potential human capital. But, American children aren’t prepared to run the race. It also responds to broad set of national concerns. The argument reaches beyond the community of traditional children’s advocates and draws business into the child-saving fold. It imagines that we can improve the standing of children without improving the standing of the parents. Her logic is that there is no point in helping the parents, when you can rescue their children. By leaving parents out of the picture, kids as capital conjures up the image of our little workers struggling against he little workers of Germany and Japan. To begin with, she writes about a social issue that people ignore or decide that they don’t care about. Her argument “kids as capital” suppresses the connection between parents and children. But this world would be a better society, if parents would focus more time on their children. Our common sense seems to dictate that children should be with their parents. Till parents are not adults, they don’t know the harm they are causing their children. After some time they realise that there is more into parenting. Celina Garcia in “Parents and Children” expresses her experience with her parents. Her parents have admitted that they desire that things would have been different. Parents can no longer show us the correct paths. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead observes that parent’s authority is declining because children refuse to follow. Although she doesn’t state so directly, most



Cited: Garcia, Celina. "Parents & Children." 16 Mar. 2009. Web. 31 Oct. 2010. . "Ways Children May Benefit In Divorce." total divorce. Web. 31 Oct. 2010. .

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