True confession - a little over a year ago, I caved and bought a TV for the kitchen.

It's a small TV - not the sort of thing on which you'd watch an important football game or a movie - but big enough so I can see what Rachael Ray is doing across the room while I'm making my own yum-o version of mac 'n' cheese (from a box).

I didn't get the TV only because I'm a Food Network junkie. The real reason I got it was to try to keep people from taking food to various parts of the house so they could watch television while they ate. Our family room was starting to look like the dirty-dish belt at the local all-you-can-eat buffet.

So I capitulated on my longtime rule that there would be no TV while my family ate because clearly I was suffering under the delusion that anyone was obeying this rule in the first place - my husband and myself included.

Fair warning - this column is going to be a rant. But bear with me because it's possible you also saw Sunday's USA Weekend featuring tween icon Miley Cyrus on the cover with the headline, "Why You Can't Ignore This Face."

The story wasn't about Miley, per se.

No, the article inside was titled, "The Secret Power of Tweens." It was a culture piece about the influence of today's 8- to 13-year-olds.

According to the article by Michele Meyer, "Kids who aren't old enough to be in middle school, let alone high school or college, are determining what cars, clothes, computers and music we buy, what movies and TV shows we watch, even how we talk and write."

She connects the dots between the power of today's youth and the marketing machine that feeds their appetite for consumption, quoting one Robert Thompson, founding director of the Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University: "It has nothing to do with development, other than of early and loyal lifetime shoppers ... If you can make an 8-year-old into a consumer, you potentially have her for 70 years."

The bottom line in this cultural trend is simply follow the money. The article cites children's marketing expert (yes, there is such a thing) James U. McNeal in estimating that tweens spend or influence their parents to spend $500 billion a year. That, says the story, is enough to buy both Microsoft and Google.

OK, stand back. Here I go.

Let me start by saying I am not a prude. I've seen my share of racy movies and TV shows with suggestive scripts. I've read a few novels by Sandra Brown.

I have four children, for heaven's sake. I know what's what.

Nonetheless, yesterday I felt my face blush as I read a report sent to me by the Parents Television Council called "Happily Never After: How Hollywood Favors Adultery and Promiscuity over Marital Intimacy on Prime Time Television."

Never mind the statistics - such as, for example, that across the broadcast networks, references to adultery outnumbered references to marital sex 2 to 1.

The really shocking part of the report - the part that caused me to minimize my computer screen when one of my children came into the room - were the pages of script samples provided as documentation.

There's something about reading the words, rather than hearing them delivered as punch lines followed by canned laughter, that can cause even the savviest suburban mom to cringe with discomfort.

I have to give my daughter credit. She's persistent. Despite my repeated denials, emphatically delivered in my most characteristic "mom" voice, she pleads for a cell phone as if there is any chance on God's green earth we will relent.

She's tried every conceivable argument. "I'll be safer," she says. "Think of the convenience when you want to call me home from Nicole's house." (Nicole lives next door.)

And my favorite - because it's so unconvincing - "I'm the only one of all my friends without a cell phone."

Amy is going into the sixth grade. She's not getting a cell phone for another three years, when, anticipating the start of high school, we will arm her with our own version of an electronic tether - a bargain phone with basic features, not to include a portable typewriter.

The conversation on my neighbor's front porch is so animated the mosquitoes have trouble lighting on us.

My daughter Katie and I have stopped while walking the dog to say hello to a friend, which seemed like a good idea before the possibility of malaria evinced itself.

Bug spray, anyone?

No matter. My neighbor, Lisa, has questions about the current state of social life for high school girls. Her only daughter will be a freshman in the fall, while my eldest daughter graduated a year ago. This makes Katie an expert on the subject.

Lisa is worried. Already she sees her daughter's friends changing - acting more worldly and sophisticated than she thinks is appropriate for 14-year-olds. She's concerned about protecting her daughter's innocence against the peer pressure to grow up too fast.

Based on our experience, her concerns are not unfounded.

"Oh, good heavens," my husband gasped as we drove past a scenic overlook. "Did you see that?"

I assumed the majesty of the view of the Grand Canyon had caught his breath, but it turned out he was startled by something even more profound: the stupidity of the parents who had allowed their young children on top of the retaining wall.

"What can they be thinking?" he asked.

The point is, they're not thinking. Their priority isn't safety, it's a photo opportunity. Either that or these particular parents didn't believe there was anything wrong when Michael Jackson held his infant son over a hotel balcony.

Our summer odyssey took us from the Grand Canyon to Yellowstone National Park, where apparently there aren't enough signs to warn parents about the dangers of wild bears. Otherwise a bear sighting would not have prompted several families to allow their offspring to run within 20 yards of a black bear for the chance to take a picture.

Even a lecture from a park ranger didn't deter people from encouraging their children to get dangerously close to an unpredictable wild animal.

That people risk life and limb for the sake of a quick thrill, a good story or a great photo is not new. That they'll teach their children to take such risks confounds me.

"So, how's your girlfriend?" I ask my son out of the blue. "Which one?" he says with a devious smile.

"The new one," I say.

"Oh, her." He shrugs. We both smile.

And that's the end of our update on Jimmy's dating life.

It's all a joke, of course. Jimmy doesn't have a dating life. The "girlfriend thing" remains awkward (his word) and unnecessary (my word).

Instead, we encourage our 14-year-old son to have a host of friends - girls as well as guys - and to forget about dating until the time is right. (That would be a time when he has his own money and a driver's license.)

The fact that we discourage exclusive, romantic relationships for our tween and young teenage children - and that we monitor their behavior to assure they aren't dating behind our backs - puts my husband and me outside the parenting norm. (What else is new?)

We believe in the concept of "late blooming" as far as dating goes, based on the theory that childhood is too short to spend your time worrying, for example, about whether your 13-year-old girlfriend has seen you talking at your locker to another person who just happens to be - gasp! - a female.

So while some 14-year-old boys must attend to the emotional whims of their romantic partners, my son must concern himself only with important things, such as how the Yankees are doing and how long he must wait until I feed him again.

Pink now is the wardrobe essential for an entire generation of tween and teen girls, so it didn't surprise me when a mom I know mentioned taking her daughters to the new Pink retail store at the mall.

What took me aback was when she said: "I absolutely hate the Pink store and I can't stand shopping there. Yet my two girls are always walking around with the word 'pink' across their rear ends. What can you do?"

What can you do?

Hmm. ... What can you do? What, oh what, can you do?

This is the pivotal parenting question for 21st-century moms and dads.

What do America's shopkeepers, schoolteachers, summer lifeguards, pediatricians and class moms know that politicians don't? Better parenting is the answer to America's problems.

Ultimately, it's the way to reduced crime, improved school performance, lower rates of accidental injuries and deaths, a more educated and dedicated work force, increased health and fitness (ergo, lower health care costs) - not to mention better dental hygiene and the return of table manners.

Better parenting would alleviate road rage, eradicate the always inappropriate "belly shirt," squash the influence of MTV and maybe even reduce wildfires in California and soap scum in America's showers.

Better parenting would produce more responsible citizens - the kind who vote, and not just for the people they think will put money in their pockets. It would reduce pollution, increase private investment and probably even stop global warming.

Let's face it, where Mom and Dad are getting the job done, things look pretty good. And where they're not - well, there is mayhem.

Just look around you at the community pool this week to see if I'm right about that.

Right away when I answer my cell phone, the sound of Amy's teacher's voice tells me this is going to be bad.

"Mrs. Hicks," she said gravely, "we have a problem."

"I have given your daughter several chances to complete her missing work and also to have you sign a slip saying she has told you that she has fallen behind in social studies," the teacher said. "She continues to lie to me about having done the work, and I suspect she is also lying about having told you about the missing assignments."

This is a veteran teacher: Her suspicions are money in the bank.

According to Amy, she somehow "forgot" to tell me she owes her teacher enough workbook pages to wallpaper an airplane hanger. Go figure.

We'll leave the issue of integrity for another day. The other more immediate problem is, fifth grade is about to come to a close. The teacher would like to be sure Amy knows enough social studies to matriculate to the sixth grade. Quite honestly, I'd kind of like to know this, too.