You're right Webgogs! We've brought this rotten society down upon ourselves and those of us who knew what was happening let it happen. I thought I could go back 45 years to when our problems regarding the societal education of children began but I have to go much further back to World War 2. That's when the breakdown of society really began. It began when men went to war and women were taken out of the household role and put into factories to make armaments. Up until that time women were content to be mothers, wives, and housewives, playing a supporting role to the husband and raising their own children. In that day and age there were very few children who did not know right from wrong, and the phrase, "it takes a village to raise a child' was very true. Step out of line and you were immediately chastized and reported to your family by anyone who knew you.

Most of the men who were lucky enough to return from the war, and who had traditionally been the breadwinners of the family, had to fight to get their jobs back because the women who had taken over those jobs and enjoyed earning their own money, did not want to go back to the 'mundane' and so the rot set in. They didn't want to be just 'housewives' any more, they wanted a career. Raising children became secondary to their wants and needs. Parents thought they could have it all, but all it did was make them greedy, both parents became greedy for the bigger house, bigger car, the golf membership, more furnishings which took two wages to pay for - and in reality paid for at the expense of their children.

The children born after WW2 were raised by child-minders, day care centres, anybody but the working mother and then the parents wonder who these kids are when they reach teenage years coping with different values and morales taught them by other people, but the lacksadaisical attitude towards raising children continued. The children who had been raised by other people saw nothing wrong in having their children raised by other people and so the bonds of family were greatly stretched and weakened.

Before long, women financially didn't need men, and the laws of the land changed to make divorce much easier -- enter the one-parent family. The men, usually the ones who had been thrown out or had thrown the towel in, and now resolved of their physical and mental responsibilities towards the children, left the women to be Mom & Dad to the child -- an impossible task.

It should come as no surprise to society that a child being paid to be raised by numerous day care people over his/her most impressionable years, are growing up to be self-centered, miserable, angry, unhappy with who they are, fighting for an identity, and no wonder mental illness is starting to rear it's ugly head. It's a sad statement of affairs of the lack of family today. And we're all to blame! We've let it happen. We've accepted irreconcilable differences as the 'divorce' norm, without any consideration of the children. The children carry a heavy burden of divorce and it is no wonder that some of them lash out in the only way possible of communicating their heartache - guns! Parents need to think a lot more of the child and a lot less of themselves.