We live in a new age, but the interaction of home, school and church that gave parents great strength in the past is still a winner. All that is needed is to find ways to assure that their interaction is up to the challenges of the new millennium.

I am awestruck at the enormous strength this takes to be a good parent today. It is a wonder that parents don't have more heart attacks! They're chauffeuring their children here and there, working, making a home and always trying to find the time they want and need to guide and love their children.

No doubt families that work, play and pray together receive a good deal of strength through this unity. If relatives live nearby and can help out, this can add immeasurably to the equation. The old proverb still holds true, "In unity there is strength." But is this enough?

Some years ago a child psychologist was asked what parents ought to do to be even better parents. He replied that focusing on the responsibilities of parents in an isolated way is not enough. What he meant is that raising a child, as has been said many times, requires a community. And the scope of what is involved with children means that this is a responsibility to be shared by parents, the church and civil institutions. All must be involved together.

It is true, he said, that when a school alerts parents to the difficulties a child is having, parents are expected to show up and be concerned. But isn't it equally true that schools need to be much more alert today to the problems of children? This is no easy task because the world of children has become much more complex.

The task of monitoring children grows even more difficult for parents and schools when you think how the minds of the young are affected by what they view on television, in the movies and on the Internet.

And how can parishes aid and support parents? The values children receive in religious education classes are very helpful, but they can also fall short of what is needed if those who do the teaching need to be better schooled in these values themselves.

Parents, schools and churches, each acting separately, on their own, are inadequate when it comes to guiding and influencing children. New influences that our grandparents never foresaw have created complex needs. So where does this leave us?

It sends us back to the psychologist's advice. Parents, schools and the church need to think of themselves as linked in an integral way. Our notion of family ought to be enlarged so that each of these three views itself as a support --- not a substitute -- for the other in raising up a new generation. They need to work together.

Father Eugene Hemrick is a syndicated columnist with Catholic News Service.