Television thus illustrates the mixed blessings of technological change in American society. It is a new medium, promising … - Kenneth Keniston

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I enjoy the old-fashioned idea of, like, His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby, those old movies.

Kenneth Keniston

Television thus illustrates the mixed blessings of technological change in American society. It is a new medium, promising extraordinary benefits: great educational potential, a broadening of experience, enrichment of daily life, entertainment for all. But it teaches children the uses of violence, offers material consumption as the answer to life's problems, sells harmful products, habituates viewers to constant stimulation, and undermines family interaction and other forms of learning such as play and reading.

Broadening, Children, Educational, Problems, Reading, Stimulation

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Poor children live in a particularly dangerous world--an urban world of broken stair railings, of busy streets serving as playgrounds, of lead paint, rats and rat poisons, or a rural world where families do not enjoy the minimal levels of public health accepted as standard for nearly a century. Whether in city or country, this is a world where cavities go unfilled and ear infections threatening permanent deafness go untreated. It is world where even a small child learns to be ashamed of the way he or she lives.

Busy, Children, Cities, Country, Infections, Minimal

Schools, the institutions traditionally called upon to correct social inequality, are unsuited to the task; without economic opportunity to follow educational opportunity, the myth of equality can never become real. Far more than a hollow promise of future opportunity for their children, parents need jobs, income, and services. And children whose backgrounds have stunted their sense of the future need to be taught by example that they are good for more than they dared dream.

Children, Dream, Educational, Jobs, Social

Mothers work outside the home for many reasons; one of them is almost always because their families need their income to live up to their standards for their children.

Children, Family, Home, Income, Mother, Mothers

In the early nineteenth century, the doctrine of self-sufficiency came to apply to families as well as individuals. . . . The familybecame a special protected place, the repository of tender, pure, and generous feelings (embodied by the mother) and a bulwark and bastion against the raw, competitive, aggressive, and selfish world of commerce (embodied by the father). . . . In performing this protective task, the good family was to be as self-sufficient as the good man.

Early, Families, Father, Mother, Pure, Selfish

It is misleading to discuss recent changes in family life without emphasizing the fact that for generations some Americans have had to raise children under particularly appalling pressures. Although much of what is worrying American parents is shared by them all, the most grievous problems are those that especially afflict a large minority--the poor, the nonwhite and, in various ways, the parents of handicapped children.

Afflict, Children, Family, Parent, Problems, Worry