| The New Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities
New Scientific Findings Shed Light on Why Large Numbers of
American Children Suffer from Emotional and Behavioral Problems The Commission on Children at Risk, a panel of leading children's doctors, research scientists and youth service professionals, has issued a report to the nation about new strategies to reduce the currently high numbers of U.S. children who are suffering from emotional and behavioral problems such as depression, anxiety, attention deficit, conduct disorders, and thoughts of suicide. The Commission is basing its recommendations on recent scientific findings suggesting that children are biologically ``hardwired" for enduring attachments to other people and for moral and spiritual meaning. Meeting children's needs for enduring attachments and for moral and spiritual meaning is the best way to ensure their healthy development, according to the Commission's report. The Commission is calling upon all U.S. citizens to help strengthen what it calls ``authoritative communities" as likely to be the best strategy for improving children's lives, in its report, Hardwired to Connect: The Case for Authoritative Communities.
Authoritative communities can be families with children and all civic, educational, recreational, community service, business, culture, and religious groups that serve or include persons under the age of 18 that exhibit certain characteristics. These characteristics are: 1) it is a social institution that includes children and youth; 2) it treats children as ends in themselves; 3) it is warm and nurturing; 4) it establishes clear boundaries and limits; 5) it is defined and guided at least partly by non-specialists; 6) it is multi-generational; 7) it has a long-term focus; 8) it encourages spiritual and religious development; 9) it reflects and transmits a shared understanding of what it means to be a good person; 10) it is philosophically oriented to the equal dignity of all persons and to the principle of love of neighbor.
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