WASHINGTON, DC, December 30, 2012 ― The year 2012 was eventful with regard to stories that centered on or involved children. Politics of Raising Children centers on the intersection of politics and child rearing, with a particular focus on raising children in a political town and a political era.

Sadly, many of the most high-impactf events that made headlines were not happy. Each represented an opportunity for us parents to hug our children tighter and be grateful that they are relatively safe from harm. But they also encouraged us to take a thoughtful look at how we are raising our children, and prompted us to ask whether we are arming them with the right amount of information to remain safe and grow in a conscientious way.

Here are the top five stories from Politics of Raising Children that received the most media attention in 2012.

5. Make Kony Famous – In March,  a nonprofit organization called Invisible Children released a video, Kony 2012, that quickly went viral with the purpose to entice world leaders to take steps to bring a heinous Ugandan warloard, Joseph Kony, to justice.  According to the video, Kony had recruited, drugged and forced tens of thousands of pre-teens and children to fight in his Lord’s Resistance Army. The movement fizzled after some questioned the finances of the group, and images surfaced with group leaders posing with weapons and rebel leaders .

 

4. Tyler Clementi’s tormenter is convicted – CyberBully Laws-get real. There have been several cases in recent years of teens who were subjected to cyber bullying taking their own lives to end the misery of being bullied. In March 2012, a jury convicted Dharun Ravi for videotaping his roommate, 18-year old Tyler Clementi, kissing a man and then circulating it in social media and among friends. Clementi killed himself by jumping off the George Washington Bridge in 2010. The incident brought to light the real effects of cyberbullying and the internal turmoil that gay youth deal with daily.

3. Dream Act Light gets green lit – Immigration Reform. In the heat of the US Presidential election season in June, President Barack Obama signed a directive instructing the Department of Homeland Security to abstain from deporting 1.7 million young people, the children of illegal immigrants to this country. The kids were granted temporary renewable work permits and allowed to stay and possibly attend school. On the day the agency started accepting applications for deferred action, 180,000 applied for deferred action and the Obama Administration had granted 4,600 of those applications. It was a bandaid  of a solution and not precisely the comprehensive immigration reform that many have been calling for, but it was a start. Opponents continue to say it rewards lawbreakers, given that the young people were brought into the country illegally, or were kept here after valid permission had expired.

 

2. Trayvon Martin- Stand Your Ground/Racial Profiling. No other event inflamed tempers and created national debate about racial profiling more than the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin. A neighborhood watchman approached Martin as he traveled back from a convenience store to his dad’s home in the community, suspecting him of engaging in criminal activity. A scuffle broke out and ended with Zimmerman shooting and killing Martin. President Obama remarked that Martin “could have been his son.” Those comments and the national discussions and and investigations of that shooting had more people questioning the validity and efficacy of “stand your ground” laws. The case divided people along racial lines, as many of Zimmerman’s supporters and contributors to his legal defense fund were primarily white, while the bulk of Martin’s supporters were not. It quickly became a situation of which side could you most empathize with, and that determination was, sadly, drawn along some racial lines.

 

 

1. Newton Killings – Gun Control/ Mental Health. On the morning of Friday, December 14, a 20 year old man opened fire in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and killed 20 children, ages six and seven, and six adult educators and school administrators before taking his own life. He had also killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, before setting out to begin his carnage. The tragic incident sparked renewed calls for gun control and reignited discussions about mental health services and care in the United States. A week after the killings, the National Rifle Administration convened a press conference, proposing to start a program to defend all 120,000 schools in the US with armed officers. The debate continues. 

The year 2012 was eventful for the way politics intersected with child rearing, and it became more apparent for parents that raising children has gotten even more challenging than in years past.

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