Good, old-fashioned time

I've been reading editorials from Books & Culture this week and I can't resist quoting from Jean Bethke Elshtain's "With or Against Culture":

... we should be alarmed by a social milieu where children are treated instrumentally, where pacification of children rather than care and attention to each child in his and her particularity becomes a social norm. We are against this. What are we for? Minimally, we are for taking a hard look at how children are faring in our society. That, in turn, can spur transformation, especially in what I have called "the politics of time." Good, old-fashioned time is what so many children need. How can a society that pretends to be child-centered justify culturally approved neglect? It goes without saying that neglect comes in many forms: tens of thousands of privileged children are neglected in the way I am noting here.

I love that sentence "Good, old-fashioned time is what so many children need." How often I've thought that same thought!