I trust that we have settled your problem about how many people are allowed to occupy your 1-bedroom. Don't forget to actually check both state and local law. General advice isn't always good enough.
With regard to the American Dream, I am glad to hear of your intentions to provide a good influence on your children, as a new parent.
But you evidently don't have any experience with third world countries to understand the problems. Even they live by a chosen way of societal life, which is not as we traditionaly have been, and not just for survival, but as a result of tradition. Look at the decimation of Southern Africa by AIDS. You are not experienced if you don't understand how the societal preoccupation with and casualness of sex is a factor. Look at the Dyacks in Indonesia and how they are not only killing their traditional rivals, but beheading them and eating their hearts. Thats not survival, its their traditions. Look at how the "good guys" in Israel are starving their neighbors and shooting their teen-aged kids. Thats not survival either, its following their own traditions by trying to drive people of a different culture out of the area so they can have what they want.
Then look at America. Sure, we are squandering our wonderful heritage by all the evil things that you mention, but there is plenty left for us good people. My kids were exposed to all of these problems, too. Now that they think that they are grown up, I look at them and feel pride in what they have become, and I even think to myself to claim some of the credit.
Is it impossible for one person to change that? Here's what you can do.
Control what your kids listen to, and give them a good perspective about what is really right. That includes music, peers, boyfriends/girlfriends, doing drugs, drinking, shooting other kids (or adults), stealing, cheating. Other good wholesome activities help. My son age 18, is familiar with guns, but as an Eagle Scout and a beginning Scout leader, he teaches riflemanship and gun safety, and is in no danger of shooting anyone. My daughter, with a husband and a baby of her own, faces the same challenges as you do.
Teach your kids yourself what is right and wrong. Churches can help. So can wholesome activities like the Scouts, 4-H, Church youth groups.
Teach your kids about responsibility, both chores and their responsibilities about society.
Teach them about their responsibility to be clean. Aside from my interests as a landlord, what do you think that I think about tenants, even university graduates, who think that cleaning up their apartment means separating the pile on the floor into one pile for dirty underwear and socks, and another pile for tennis raquets and ski boots, one pile to the laundry, the other to the closet. What did their mothers teach them?
Teach them about keeping their word, their contracts, thinking by themselves about what their responsibilities are, and following through on that, not to lie, not to give ridiculous excuses hoping to save a little money, or a little embarrassment. Teach them to admit when they're wrong and face their problems squarely and honestly, even if they suffer some consequence.
America's problems are not music and peer attitudes. It is parents, weak ones who are too lazy to carry through and take the responsibility to provide for their kids what they are unquestionable able to provide in America of 2001: good food, good housing, good education, good attitudes from the home, and a good subsection of society to grow up with. Choose the subsection that you will have them grow up with.
You have indicated that you want to do these things, as a new parent. I wish you good success. If you do your part, your kids will grow up to be strong (not muscles) and good, and decent, and all of America will benefit.
