CHILDREN'S MINISTRY
Who Are These Kids?
by Max Price
Today’s children live in a world of change—the changing family, social and economic change, technological change, and changing environments due to relocation. American children live in varied and complex arrangements. The family has become a more varied institution than it once was. More children are living with only one parent. Even children living with two parents are more likely than before to have stepparents and half brothers/sisters. More children are being raised by their grandparents. Only 59 percent of today’s children live in the “traditional family” of twenty-five years ago: two biological parents and only full biological siblings.
Between the 1960s and 1980 the divorce rate doubled, reaching a level where at least one out of two marriages was likely to end in divorce. The divorce rate remained relatively unchanged in the 1980s with a small drop in the 1990s. In addition, an estimated two-thirds of divorcees will remarry. As a result, it has been estimated that 33 percent of all U.S. children will likely live in a stepfamily before age eighteen. It has also been estimated that almost half of children today will spend time in a one-parent family.
In 2000, the percentage of all children living in a single-parent family was 27.8.
If you were to teach a Sunday school class of twenty children who were representative of the American family, this is likely what you would find:
• Twelve children would be living with their biological mothers and fathers.
• Five children would be living with a single parent.
• At least two children would be living in a stepfamily.
• At least one child would be living with grandparents.
• Some years you would have adoptive children and foster children in your class.
Are you prepared to teach all of today’s children, regardless of their family situations?
Today’s Children and Stress
Many children in today’s society are overstressed. At any given time, approximately 15 percent of American children need professional counseling for serious behavioral or emotional problems and/or family stress. The causes are multiple:
• Physical and sexual abuse, along with child neglect, traumatize many children. In my home state of Oklahoma, approximately every thirty-four minutes a child becomes a victim of confirmed abuse or neglect. This child abuse rate is close to double what it was in the mid-1980s.
• One in six of America’s children live in poverty, according to the 2001 Annie E. Casey Foundation report.
• With the increase in global terrorism and violence in our society, there is a significant increase in children’s fears and insecurity.
Are you ready and willing to teach these overstressed and overburdened children?
From Help! I Teach Children's Sunday School.
To order Help! I Teach Children’s Sunday School from Smyth & Helwys Publishing at 1-800-747-3016 or online at www.helwys.com.
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