Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Matter

Tackles an emerging trend - peers replacing parents in the lives of our children. The authors have dubbed this phenomenon peer orientation, which refers to the tendency of children and youth to look to their peers for direction: for a sense of right and wrong, for values, identity and codes of behaviour. Peer orientation undermines family cohesion, sabotages healthy development and fosters an aggressive and prematurely sexualized youth culture. It provides a powerful explanation for schoolyard bullying and youth violence. The authors seek to restore parenting to its natural intuitive basis and the parent-child relationship to its rightful preeminence.