A Mother's Hope for a Better World

For all the autonomy and civil liberties allowed us in the West, few places seem as powerless and irrelevant as a quaint suburban home during times of global civil unrest. The events of July 17, 2014—the day MH-17 was shot out of the sky with 298 souls on board, the day Israel launched its ground offensive into Gaza—drove this point home for me.

Like many others, world events already had me troubled. I'd been dreaming of the Central American mothers sending their children, their babies, on an unaccompanied journey of 1,000 miles through dangerous territory. The macabre massacre of Christians in Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Kenya left me guilt-ridden over my own relative safety and questioning how efficacious I'd been in stewarding my liberties.

I've long been frustrated by my own impotence to enact meaningful change. What could I do about the desecration of the bodies in the eastern Ukrainian sunflower fields? What were my prayers against the towering history of civil unrest in Israel? I am just a poet, a work-at-home mom in Middle America. My children are young, and the bulk of my energy and life are hidden inside theirs. And though sometimes I worry that it is all for naught and I struggle with guilt over not being able to do more, I know the aim of these years of deep investment in the character of my children is a better, kinder world.

In The New York Times, Wharton professor Adam Grant discussed the research on what it takes to raise a moral child. For all the emphasis we put on wanting our children to be successful, it seems that what parents the world over want most all is to raise thoughtful, caring individuals. One study found that in more than 50 countries, what matters most of all to parents is that our children be benevolent, good, and kind. The trouble is that we're not always able to do that. In an Israeli study of 600 families, researchers found parents who strongly desire to instill moral values frequently aren't able to do so.

Though parents report a desire to raise moral, caring individuals, children aren't getting that message. In a another study of 10,000 middle and high school students in 33 schools across the country, researchers at the Harvard School of Education found that when it comes to what children value, caring ranks a distant third behind both achievement and personal happiness.

Children neither prioritize caring for others nor see key people in their lives, including parents and teachers, as prioritizing it. Only 19 percent of students said that caring was their parents' top priority, while 54 percent reported achievement and 27 percent happiness as their parents' top priority.

In their report titled, "The Children We Mean to Raise: The Real Messages Adults are Sending About Values," Harvard researchers Rick Weissbourd and Stephanie Jones state, "Our conversations and observations [with parents and teachers] … reveal that despite what they say, in their daily interactions with children, many parents and other adults are prioritizing happiness and achievement over children's attention to others." According to their findings, "The power and frequency of parents' messages about achievement and happiness often drown out their messages about concern for others."

Weissbourd suggests five strategies to raise kind kids:

1. Make caring for others a priority. When you tell your children they're beautiful, handsome, or smart, couple these compliments with the admonition that appearance and intelligence aren't as important as the kind of people they are.
2. Provide opportunities for children to practice caring and gratitude. Provide opportunities for your children to serve others in your home, neighborhood, or church. Since gratitude tends to result in more generous, caring behavior, keep a gratitude journal with your children.
3. Expand your child's circle of concern. Open their eyes to the needs around them beyond their small circle of family and friends.
4. Be a strong role model and mentor. Be the kind of person you want your children to become. If you're taking part in a ministry, bring them along if possible.
5. 5. Guide children in managing destructive feelings. Negative feelings such as anger, shame, and envy are often hindrances to kindness. Though all feelings are acceptable, there are ways to deal with them that are better than others.

Sociologist Neil Postman wrote, "Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see." Motherhood tethered me to the world in ways I had not anticipated. My daughter Ellie was born in the middle of a societal hurricane. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had toppled 700 points in a single day—the greatest single-day loss in history. Corporations and families alike—ours included—hemorrhaged under the fiscal blow. The two wars that raged in Afghanistan and Iraq didn't seem like minor skirmishes on a distant stage.

I anguished over the world I was bringing this tiny, innocent infant into, and it wasn't until many months later that I finally understood the kind of world she grows up in matters far less than the kind of person I help her become.

My children are my living messages to the world and to the future I will not see, and my hope against hope is that this message is that regardless of whatever global civil unrest may come, that evil will not, in the end, prevail and that there are people in the world who are good, strong, kind, and brave.