Every child needs a role model. Every child should be able to look up to their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and older siblings as such. Unfortunately, in today's world, they often have to look outside of the family to find someone to emulate and, equally as unfortunately, those people are often as bad as the people they can't rely on, only in different ways.
When I was younger, the world was already a corrupt place. Let's face it, the 80's-90's eras were not idealistic, no matter how fondly people remember them. When you compare it to the age my grandparents and parents grew up in, where there were real problems that were faced by people who were barely adults with more grace than any adult now can handle a hang nail, they were the beginning of a downward spiral that continues today. Society has changed a lot in the past 60 years or so and definitely not for the better. These changes have made having a role model to look up to extremely difficult. Instead of it being the grandparent that fought in the war and came back to raise five children with his housewife who only worked when they desperately needed the money, it's now some rapper who can't spell their own name right and has nothing more to talk about than shooting someone for the hell of it or spending money on scantily dressed hoes . . .or the hoes themselves, sadly enough.
Too many parents are on drugs, jobless, and unapologetic for their state of mind for children to want to grow up and be like them. My parents worked hard for many years and if I have a quarter of their work ethic, I'll be just fine, and that used to be the social norm-parents worked hard to provide for their children and taught them the value of a dollar and how to earn it. However, now I look around and see how many sloppily dressed, over stuffed, unappreciative, unemployed parents with multiple children who are either malnourished or obese, obnoxious, rude, loud, uncouth, uneducated, and dirty. My god, bathing your children is like something people expect gold medals for now. Ugh. Seriously, soap and water, people!
If children are actually taught to dislike this kind of existence, they end up turning to the wrong kind of role model in their life-given there hasn't been a suitable presented to them and there aren't enough caring citizens in this world who make themselves available to be a role model to a needy child. They turn to musicians, actors, characters, and people they see with money or fame to be their role models and that is not only unrealistic but also dangerous. They learn that it's all about money and popularity and not how to rightfully earn either as a good person.
If they aren't taught to be disdainful of the life they've been exposed to, it increases the problem exponentially over time. The children who were raised to be horrible kids become horrible adults who don't know any better than to raise their children in the same way . . . .so forth and so on.
The reason why I thought of this is because a man cursed me out in drive through the other day . . .in front of his small grandson . . .because I asked him a perfectly reasonable question. The first thought that popped in my head was that he was being a terrible role model for his grandson, showing him exactly how not to act in public. Yes, I have a temper and I am sure that my future children will experience that for themselves and probably pick up on that behavior in time. It will also be handed down to them genetically from both me and their father, I'm sure. We're hot heads. However, there is a way to act in public and there is a series of reasonable steps to take to make sure that the children in your immediate care don't pick up your horrible habits. Also, you can pretty much take for granted that if I'm thinking you're setting a bad example for the child in your care, so are others. If you're lucky, said child will think you're being an idiot too, and no better than to act that way, but . . .that all depends on how much outside idiocy they're exposed to.
All in all, parents should want their children to be inspired and held up by their actions, not to learn how to be freeloaders the rest of their lives or to have to hold their heads down in shame. Pride, both in self and in the family, should be the most often expressed emotion your children feel when they think of their parents and the way they were raised.
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