Strategies for Increasing Adult Engagement with Other People’s Kids

Abstract

Our study suggests that there is indeed a core group of at least two social norms (encouraging kids to take school seriously and expecting them to respect adults as authority figures) and seven social values that represent a beginning basis for clarifying adults’ reasonable responsibility to nurture and guide young people. Doubtless there are other values we did not measure (such as the value of hard work) to which the majority of Americans also would ascribe high importance. But these nine actions represent the beginnings of a definitional foundation for how we would like all adults, not just parents, to relate to children and adolescents.