Youth Violence What We Need To Know Summary

In the article “Youth Violence: What We Know and What We Need to Know”, The American Psychologist; we are shown the truth and severity of the society crippling issue of violence amongst youth. Sandra Calvert’s take on violence in adolescences illustrates for us how family can affect our violent tendencies, for better and worse. Aggressive raising, violence in the home, rejection or disapproval, neglect, and chaotic family life are all gateways to growing up hostile or violent. While on the other hand youths who come from nurturing, supportive, and affectionate families are less likely to act out and have such high levels of built up aggression. Exposure to media violence such as video games and the news is at fault in the eyes of Geraldine
I agree with both of these claims, the evidence is there to support it; if you are surrounded by violence you will become violent. Family life has an enormous impact on our young lives, older lives, and how we will raise our families. How our parents behave with each other or talk in the presence of us become our normal, we do not know anything else. If our parents curse a lot, odds are at young ages we too will have a foul mouth; we were always shown that to be a basis for how to speak and act. The same is applied for violence, for instance, young males who are beaten, or witness their father beating their mother or siblings are likely to become abusive to their families as well. The article "The Curse of Domestic Violence: The Cycle of Abuse From Father to Son” Huffpost Healthy Living 11/16/2009,
It is time that we see the truth, our society today is being affected by this continues chain. We need to break it. We need to stop looking souly at the person responsible for these actions, but why they did it. What, who, where, and why things took a sharp turn. As a parent there is a duty to give your child the best life they can have, to protect them ,and to have them grow up successful; this duty is not being met. Parents are allowing their children to sit in dark rooms for hours at a time playing graphic video games, exposing them to harmful situations at a young age, and not showing them the path to brightness. This is not something that will be simply abolished by arrests; it will not be fixed overnight. Together as a nation, society, and world we must aid the successful development of children at its roots. We cannot tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law—no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society. But that cannot be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town . . . then surely we have an obligation to try.—President Barack