Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie

I’ve been reading more of Madeline Levine’s insightful book The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids. It is, as I said earlier this month, essential reading for anyone concerned about how we raise our children. I’ll be posting more about the specifics of Levine’s book later, but for this brief post-Xmas post, I’d like lift up one her main points—children, all children, need to know that they are loved…unconditionally. And perhaps more importantly for us, children of affluent parents are especially in need of this.

I bring this up because I’ve realized that many of my posts here on Phil’s Little Blog on the Prairie have been about the importance of reclaiming our trust in the transforming power of love, especially when it comes to raising our children and youth. The word “love” does not appear at all in our Seven Principles and it’s hardly mentioned in any of the UU curricula that was developed in the 1980s and 90s. It has been my experience as a religious educator, minister, and UUA staff person that we do not, collectively, err on the side of overemphasizing love.

Indeed, when I wrote a post about the Family Chalice program at the First Universalist Church in Minneapolis and their belief that our children need to be taught that they are loved in this world (the simple message of Universalism), another UU blogger said that “watering [our message] down to ‘you are loved…’ is thin soup” for young UU souls. But the more I read about parenting, I find that “you are loved” is the message every child needs to hear, over and over again. Rather that thin soup, I believe that love and goodness are the meat and potatoes (or the rice and beans) of our theological message. And until we make it absolutely clear to our children (which means making this absolutely clear to their parents), we are failing as a religious movement.

It’s not something that is taught via academic discourse, however, which may be one of the reasons why we—the religious group in the United States with the highest overall level of education—find it so difficult.
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The current issue of Sojourners magazine has a terrific article on family ministry by Julie Polter entitled, "Family Matters: How to Defend the Family More." (You can read the article for free, but you'll need to register.) She brings up a couple of things that apply directly to Unitarian Universalist congregations.

One is the tendency for progressive congregations to ignore the need for family ministry. As Polter puts it, "many liberal churches have tended to opt out of specific conversation about and programs for strengthening families." It's getting easier and easier to talk about families and the kind of support they need in our congregations, but the level of commitment is still not where it needs to be if we're going to offer an alternative to the kind of family programming found in conservative and evangelical congregations.

The second point Polter makes that I think applies as much to UUs as it does to any other group is this, "All churches...should be doing what they can to build up families which, whatever their make-up, are a primary context for caring for the least of these and expressing...faith, hope, and love...." Polter goes on to give some examples of what she means by doing what we can to build up families:

Counseling and in some cases classes before marriage and other commitment ceremonies are common in many churches. These can be expanded and supplemented with enrichment courses on building healthy partnerships. Small groups for single parents (with outside childcare provided, of course) might be a ministry. Parenting classes, coaching, and mentoring are other possibilities. Smaller churches might pool resources to provide marriage preparation courses for their communities or neighborhoods, or trained baby-sitter pools to give parents of young children a break. All churches can promote awareness of domestic violence and child abuse and prominently display information on hotlines and other resources for those in trouble.

I believe that this kind of outreach-oriented family ministry helps us get past the idea that family ministry is solely for those families who are already part of our congregations. In fact, I've offered several possibilities for conngregational support of families in the larger community elsewhere in this blog. Here are a couple of specific examples:

Check out Partners for Sacred Places, especially their publication Open the Doors, See All the People: A Guide to Serving Families in Sacred Places, which is now available as a PDF. The guide advises and encourages "congregations to develop their own facilities into vital, active centers that serve children and families with passion and purpose."

Also take a look at potential for Congregationally-Based Community Organizing in our congregations. This movement focuses on the real-life issue that affect all families, like living wage, affordable housing, accessible health care, and quality education. For a wonderful UU spin on this, read Congregation-Based Community Organizing: A Social Justice Approach to Revitalizing Congregational Life, which also available as a PDF.

I believe the best way for us to "sell" family ministry to our congregations is to incorporate into a larger strategy of helping all families. Sharing our facilities and becoming involved in community organizing are two great ways to make this happen.
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For the past few months I've been preaching a sermon that's somewhat of a response to President Bill Sinkford's report [pdf] to last June's General Assembly, where Rev. Sinkford suggests that we ask ourselves "How are the children?" when we consider what we are called to do in the world. When it comes to UU children, "the lucky ones who mostly live in comfort," Rev. Sinkford suggests that their inheritance of "a crippling national debt and a planet ravaged by pollution and global warming" should be our primary concern for them. In my sermon I recommend that there are much more pressing issues we need to concern ourselves with when we think of our children.

Madeline Levine agrees. She's just published a book called The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids. "Numerous studies," says Levine, "show that privileged adolescents are experiencing epidemic rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse--rates that are higher than those of any other socioeconomic group of young people in this country." These are, of course, the very concerns the Hardwired to Connect report addresses, but according to Levine, privileged children ("the lucky ones who mostly live in comfort") are extremely susceptible to these problems. So while national debt and global warming are, indeed, issues our children will need to face, unless we start taking seriously the psychological burdens our toxic culture is saddling them with, I'm afraid they won't have the emotional wherewithal to address them.

Which is why I think every minister, religious educator, youth advisor, parent, and concerned layperson should read both the Hardwired to Connect report and Dr. Levine’s book. Unless we reconnect our disconnected children and youth, anything we do to grow our religious movement will be doomed to fail.
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