Serves to neutralize widespread harmful trends

This prayer also serves to neutralize the most varied and disorienting messages and unpredictable experiences that are rapidly making their way into childrens' lives. These experiences are a source of anxiety to parents because young people are exposed to dangers while they are growing up.

Praying the Rosary is certainly a spiritual aid in finding the solution to many problems, and is a protection against many temptations and difficulties. As this Pontifical Council for the Family said in the Final Statement of the 15th Plenary Assembly, today we are living in a situation marked by "the fear of commitment, the practice of cohabitation, the triviliazation of sex", as John Paul II has described it. "Life styles, women's fashions, films, TV sitcoms make people question the value of marriage and go so far as to spread the idea that the reciprocal gift of spouses until death would be unrealistic. They weaken the family institution and even manage to discredit it, to the advantage of other pseudo-family "models'" (ORE, 20 November 2002, p. 9, II). Indeed, the same document deplores the "invasion of many areas of human activity by a radical individualism:  economic life, excessive competition, competition in all fields of human activity, disregard of the marginalized, etc." (ibid.). In the face of these problems, prayer is a fundamental, indispensable response, the living witness of parents. As the Holy Father says in Familiaris consortio: "only by praying together with their children can a father and mother - exercising their royal priesthood - penetrate the innermost depths of their children's hearts and leave an impression that the future events in their lives will not be able to efface" (n. 60).