Chap Clark & Dee Clark (2007) Disconnected: Parenting Teens in a MySpace World, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 199pp.

OVERVIEW

This husband and wife team, as parents, are writing to busy parents of teens—a book from which youth ministers, who ought to be in collaboration with parents, can benefit. Issues of digitally-connected youth, often disconnected from parents and adults, are of concern to us all. (Dee Clark is a licensed marriage and family therapist and author; Chap Clark a well-recognized professor of youth, family and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary.)

First of all, the authors want us to get real, about our inner life and struggles, those matters we often keep hidden. It is “in our friendships, our marriages, our families” that “we are at our most vulnerable.” (p.10) Then, its main purpose:

This book is an invitation to enter into your child’s developmental journey with a goal of handing them off to the Father who loves them and to the community they are called to embrace. Our desire is to provide a perspective on and an awareness of what you child does and will face as he or she grows up in today’s wild, disjoined world. (p.10)

Ch. 1 opens with Bob Dylan’s “… For the times, they are a-changin.’” The cultural distance between parents and today’s children/youth is emphasized. A poem read by a 13-year-old Asian-American girl in a large worship service cried that adults just “don’t get it.”

Simply put, the first step in being a parent in today’s upside-down world is to make sure your kid knows that you care enough about them to work hard to “get it…. Your goal is to care enough to actively pursue them with mercy and affection and to demonstrate that you really want to get to know them in ways they can receive and trust. (p.25)

This first chapter concludes with encouragement to love a child, not to “be like you or some other ideal,” but to love them into being “the unique person he or she was created to be.” (p.25). That theme is continued in the second chapter (this time by Dee) who expounds on love in childbirth and tough times. The goal in this is not love for love’s sake, or for self-esteem, but to find those gifts through a relationships with the One to whom they ultimately belong. (p.31) The writer deals with the world of youth left apart from adult nurture—with reference to Patricia Hersch’s A Tribe Apart.

She then takes issue with a common myth in parenting books: that teenagers long to separate from their parents for a family of friends. Without denying anytruth in this, Clark establishes its counter-truth: “Your child wants and needs you to be involved in their lives and to love them.” The research of Christian Smith (2005) backs her up.

Chap Clark writes about “Systemic Abandonment: Or, How Did We Get Here?” in Ch. 6. Quoting David Elkind (1984, 1998) “There is little or no place for adolescents in American society today—not in our homes, not in our schools, and not in society at large,” and from his own research, Clark proposes, in practical terms, that systemic abandonment is our main social flaw.

We are convinced that the ‘problem’ of extended adolescence and the creation of the world beneath is due to the insidiousness of the universal yet subconscious conspiracy of the systemic abandonment of our young…. Our children have been wounded as a result of our neglect and what is even more frightening is that by the time they hit high school, they all know it.

We believe what has separated us from our kids and caused adolescence to lengthen is not a reaction to any one influence but rather these and many other factors all combining together as visible symptoms of a deeper, even more insidious and destructive conspiracy of neglect by default. (pp. 72-73)

Part Two of the book is meant to instruct parents of children and youth in a changing and neglectful culture. Ch. 7 lays out “The Five Tasks of Parenting.”

• Understanding

• Showing compassion

• Boundarying

• Charting/guiding

• Launching into adulthood

Sound and helpful advice is given on each of these suggested five tasks. Following chapters help parents through the various stages of child and youthful development. “Six longings of today’s adolescents” may be an especially helpful chapter. For each of the statements below: “What They Say,” there are parallel interpretations of “What We Hear” and “What They (Really) Mean”:

“You don’t know me.”

“You never listen to me.”

“I can do it.”

“I’m fine, okay?”

“It’s my life!”

“Nobody cares about me.”

Each of these statements are not only translated into what parents may hear and what they are really trying to say, but the rest of the chapter discussions the statements in greater depth.

The final chapter on this book lets parents know they can’t do it alone, that parenting is built on relationships: first of all with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit; then, taking relationship with God into the marriage relationship; and thirdly, partnering as parents with a few soul mates or small supportive group—which is particularly helpful for single parents (glad such heroes were finally mentioned). I was a bit disappointed in this fine chapter that Chap Clark, who comes from the discipline of youth ministry, doesn’t mention here the important partnership parents can have with their children’s Sunday School teachers and youth leaders. Youth leaders sometimes try, but can’t do holistic youth ministry without collaboration with parents. And many of us thank God for youth leaders who came along when we had reached our limits with teen sons and daughters.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Do you agree that youth ministry and parenting need to be a collaborative effort? As parent or youth leader, what from this short article, seems might be the primary benefit of this book for you?

2. Do you agree with this book’s diagnosis of social abandonment? What more would you like to know about this idea, or how, in your opinion, might this idea need to be nuanced?

3. Is there anything here with which you took issue? What question, suggestion, or criticism do you have?

4. What particular idea above would you like to explore further?

IMPLICATIONS

1. David Elkind, Particia Hersch, Chap Clark and others have picked up on the idea of social abandonment and isolation of adolescents in our society. They all agree that adult nurturing and mentoring within the family and without are needed. It is important to examine more closely both the causes and results of such isolation.

2. This book comes to us when there is a great discussion about digital natives. We must consider how youth’s involvement in (and in some cases obsession with) digital communication and entertainment is both connecting and disconnecting them. Then, it is important to consider media- and digital-literacy among parents, children and youth leaders.

3. Most agree that families need to be strengthened, and that busy parents need encouragement and help in spending more quality time with their children. This book is a practical help in that direction.

Dean Borgman cCYS