
American parenting is killing the American marriage (2014) - kareemm
http://qz.com/273255/how-american-parenting-is-killing-the-american-marriage/
======
Vexs
While I think his insights on how we treat our children is amazingly
insightful, and I love how it's described as a religion (the point that
children are our sacred cows is very good in particular) his attempt to relate
it to marriages seems shoehorned at best. There's a lot of problems with the
way we treat children, but I think it's relation to marriage is the least of
our issues.

But seriously, the whole "children as a religion" point is great. I mean,
think of some of the bills and laws that get passed because "think of the
children". It's not too different from religious laws.

~~~
tinalumfoil
I don't think he's being insightful at all. All his observations seem to be
shallow and his conclusions are weak.

> parenthood became a religion in America...Nothing in life is allowed to be
> more important than our children...a human achieves its peak value at birth
> and declines thereafter

Most Americans tend to believe their children come first. This isn't a
religion, it's an evolutionary instinct. A species can't continue if its
organisms don't put enough effort into their offspring if their offspring are
completely defenseless for the first decade of their life and only 3 are born
to every female. If I kick a 40-year-old out of my house he'll find a hotel to
stay at temporarily and be fine. If I dump a 2-year-old on the street, they'll
be roadkill within the hour. Caring more about children isn't any more unique
to this time period than it is to this species.

> Another sign of the parenthood religion is that it has become totally
> unacceptable in our culture to say anything bad about our children, let
> alone admit that we don’t like them all of the time.

I grew up in a household where my parents weren't afraid to tell the truth to
me and it was pretty brutal. There's enough negativity at school that it feels
like people are surrounding you at all sides with insecurities. Honesty isn't
bad but if your kid goes to public school he already knows where he falls
short. Also, saying things behind your kid's back isn't any better. It'll come
back around to them.

> Mothers are also holy in a way that fathers are not expected to be. Mothers
> live in a clean, cheerful world filled with primary colors and children’s
> songs, and they don’t think about sex.

I don't know where this is coming from. Maybe this was Jesus' ideal for a mom,
but nowadays the ideal mom seems to be one that argues over who's carpooling
next week and buys their 16-year-old birth control just in case. I think
anyone who can could and do laundry probably automatically counts as a good
mother nowadays.

I think the problem is the author treats kids more like a car than a living
being. Your car's muffler isn't going to get fixed until you admit it's
broken. You don't fix your kid by bringing him into the shop one day after
work. Being a parent requires being a teacher, boss and friend at the same
time. In no way is "owner" ever part of that definition.

~~~
discardorama
> I don't think he's being insightful at all. All his observations seem to be
> shallow and his conclusions are weak.

Thank you; you put it better than I could.

A small example that demolishes his crackpot theory: we just had a kid a few
weeks ago. We have a cat, who has never been around children, and who has
never had children. And yet, when the child cries, the cat comes running; and
if the cries do not subside soon enough, she'll start howling. And then
there's this example: [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-30893297](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30893297)

Is the cat following some religion too? Hogwash.

------
rustynails
This is both a great article and a mediocre article. I agree with others that
the marriage aspect is the weakest part.

As a parent, I constantly think back to the 70s as a benchmark for open
mindedness and freedom with my children. In my honest opinion, we've lost a
lot of perspective and become much less tolerant. In Australia, someone called
the police because children walked a short distance to the local park by
themselves. Taking a photo at a swimming carnival is taboo. None of these
attitudes were around in the 70s.

I felt the relationship aspects between adults missed the mark. Not only the
relationship breakdown aspects, but the women and sex. That reminds me of the
woman who runs she++ (a sexist business name that no one calls out) who said
in a Forbes interview that sex was bad and a man thing. There is a social
stigma in admitting that women can like sex. Even Sam Mechkovich from Ars
commented about bond women not falling for bond in his Spectre review, because
that's not a woman thing to like sex. My response to these people is "what's
wrong with it?" Most of the women I know and respect are open about sex. That
doesn't mean free sex, it means being open minded and confident in yourself to
be free to speak your mind. My sort of people...

Ultimately, I lump all these social and parental problems down to Political
Correctness. For the nay sayers, you can treat people with respect and not be
PC. PC is a set of perverted rules that bully people into what to think.

~~~
engi_nerd
>> Ultimately, I lump all these social and parental problems down to Political
Correctness. For the nay sayers, you can treat people with respect and not be
PC. PC is a set of perverted rules that bully people into what to think.

I have been told, "You can't say that, we have to be open minded here" when
expressing the belief that political correctness does more to damage discourse
than almost any other idea in western society. Way to provide a demonstration
of my point!

~~~
disantlor
Isn't the perverse fairness of giving equal time to clearly unequal opinions
(/science/facts/etc) worse discourse than political correctness? Of course PC
can and does wade into over sensitivity but it also includes the idea that you
should err on the side of safety when using words that can be terribly hurtful
to some people. It's not our place to decide that it's not in fact hurtful.

~~~
engi_nerd
Yes, the idea that we must be fair to all opinions, no matter how silly, is
also a bad one.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
But it must be countered by the fact that some valid opinions of today were
the silliest of the past.

Consider how many things we accept as valid today (say opinions related to
equality) were once almost blasphemous to mention. It would be arrogant of us
to assume we are not making similar mistakes.

~~~
engi_nerd
You raise a good point that I hadn't thought about.

I suppose the lesson is to keep an open mind, but not so open that our brains
fall out.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
I'm just worried that among progressives of the past, many open minded
positions of today would have been 'opening your mind til your brain fell
out'. Consider what people would've said a century ago if you brought up
homosexuals marrying or transsexual acceptance. What today seems a strange to
use as those concepts seemed a to progressives a century ago?

~~~
engi_nerd
Any ideas for how we can guard against this?

------
josephjrobison
"Ayelet Waldman, where the author explained that she loved her husband more
than her four children."

Recently did some pre-marital counseling where they recommend that you put
your spouse above your children. Seemed really strange to me and counter-
intuitive. I don't know much about marriage at all, but if you think about it,
the trickle-down effect does seem to make sense as setting an example is a
good lesson for kids.

I think the takeaway is to keep a balance. Also, it's not like Ayelet Waldman
is a revolutionary, as other old-school practitioners seem to have been
recommending that advice for years.

~~~
icanhackit
_counseling where they recommend that you put your spouse above your children_

I believe this is incredibly important for a lasting, loving relationship.
I've observed a few relationships where one partner's priority shifts so much
to the children that the other partner is left with little love or
consideration and their bond quickly degrades.

I could understand this behavior in a place where there's a shortage of food
and resources, but in developed countries with an abundance of food and
relative safety people are sabotaging their happiness and adult bonds by
elevating developing humans above the person they originally committed to.

Additionally, some adults infantilize their household culture to the point
where adult activities become a sort of taboo. I think we short-change
children by not exposing them to regular adult behaviors and conversations.
Certainly there are some things children should not be exposed to but the
household should be as accommodating for old and young as possible. A healthy
balance needs to be struck.

------
ajmurmann
I never understood the sentiment of valuing babies over all else. To me it
always seemed obvious that fresh college graduates are most valuable to
society, since we just finished investing a ton of money into them. Babies on
the other hand are easily replaced.

I get this is mainly an emotional argument, but it's still startling to me how
opposite it is to the purely economic argument I made above. In fact usually
people think I'm just trolling when I'm stating my opinion on the matter but
I'm dead serious.

~~~
nommm-nommm
> fresh college graduates are most valuable to society

This seems to be a popular opinion on here and I really don't understand that.
In fact its kinda fucked up. I can only guess there's a lot of fresh college
grads on HN.

It takes all kinds to make the world go 'round. I certainly don't want a
society made up of fresh college grads who think they know it all.

~~~
ajmurmann
I strongly agree that we need a healthy mix. However, for fresh college
graduates there is more time left to pay off the investment we made in them as
a society. In fact I believe they will be at their most productive a little
later than that. But they get there as they get older.

Edit: Typos

~~~
nommm-nommm
Meh... I don't think there is really much difference from your average fresh
college grad and your average non-college educated 22 year old.

I guess from an economical sense college is expensive but... I don't know...
how many college grads actually use their degree?

~~~
nitrogen
I think the more important question is how many college grads actually
_benefit from_ their _education_ (modified words italicized). A degree in,
say, forestry should still be useful for someone working in sales because of
the experience dealing with diverse opinions, processing new information, and
studying a range of subjects.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
This is anecdotal, and not a very controversial opinion, but many people in my
family and group of friends are sociology majors. After watching them grow and
knowing them pre and post degree, I can without a doubt say that education is
beneficial. What you learn is unimportant. Becoming acquainted with the
process of learning is the true benefit of education.

------
such_a_casual
For anyone who's interested in the rise in divorce rates, I highly recommend
the book "The Two Income Trap". It basically tries to prove that the
transition to dual income households damaged the financial security of many
families. Pair this with the fact that the number one cause of fighting and
divorce is money, and you have a better explanation than what this article
provides.

~~~
jseliger
_I highly recommend the book "The Two Income Trap". It basically tries to
prove that the transition to dual income households damaged the financial
security of many families_

A great book. It can also be read profitably in conjunction with Matt
Yglesias's _The Rent is Too Damn High_. School districts are weirdly tied to
real estate in the U.S.; many places with good districts also have severe
land-use control laws that prevent the creation of new housing units on a
given parcel land; and, consequently, people will pay a lot of money for
scarce housing that comes bundled with good school districts. Two-earner
households make paying for the housing easier, but two-earner households are
often also more economically fragile (especially considering the prevalence of
divorce).

~~~
cesarbs
> but two-earner households are often also more economically fragile

Can you elaborate on that? It doesn't make sense to me. When we were on a
single income in my family, it felt _a lot_ more fragile than now that we have
two incomes.

~~~
such_a_casual
It's explained in the book I mentioned. You would also need to educate
yourself on personal finance by reading some other books to get a more
holistic picture (The Millionaire Next Door is a good place to start).

There's three things you need to understand about personal finance:

1\. The first is that shit happens and most people don't plan for it (because
they haven't been educated on personal finance). Most resources suggest that
you keep an emergency fund of 6-12 months of living expenses saved up for when
shit happens. We know that most people do not have this. I'm not even going to
bother providing a source because there are so many sources on how Americans
don't save.

2\. The number one expense for any given household is going to be housing
(whether owned or rented).

3\. While you can cutback on many things, you cannot cutback on a mortgage. So
if there are permanent setbacks to your finances: someone loses their job and
gets another one that pays less, someone gets hurt and can't work for a while
or ends up on disability, someone has to stay home to take care of an
unhealthy relative, etc, then you can be pretty much shit out of luck unless
you're house has equity on it and you can sell and downsize (although most
people will just take a loan out against their equity lol).

So these are the characters of our stage. If you get a mortgage based on 1
person's income and something happens, there is another person there to step
up. This provides a powerful safety net for the family. If you get a mortgage
based on both people's incomes, you are putting yourself at greater risk
because if something were to happen to either person you would not be able to
afford to keep your 15-30 year agreement. And the cost of getting out of that
agreement is enormous (as we saw with the recent housing crash).

I encourage you to read more on personal finance. It's incredibly fascinating.

~~~
serge2k
You realize the reason people move to 2 incomes is because they can't afford
to live off one?

You realize that a lot of people don't have savings because they live paycheck
to paycheck trying to survive?

~~~
such_a_casual
Both of your questions would be answered by reading the aforementioned books
and by learning more about personal finance.

Also:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance](https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance)

~~~
serge2k
So no, and you will just continue with the condescending assumption that
anyone questioning you doesn't know anything?

~~~
such_a_casual
I'm not sure how you would like me to answer false assertions? Especially
since my post is clearly about people with a mortgage (as is the book I
recommended). The best I can do is point you in the right direction to
properly educate yourself.

~~~
nommm-nommm
Personal finance books are often a lot of garbage with a little bit of wisdom
thrown in that requires effort to extract.

[http://badmoneyadvice.com/2009/03/whats-wrong-with-the-
milli...](http://badmoneyadvice.com/2009/03/whats-wrong-with-the-millionaire-
next-door.html)

------
nommm-nommm
Call me callous but I always thought one of the most important lessons a child
should learn is "its not all about you."

I am so amazed when I see parents nowadays devoting their entire life to
making sure their children are spared of any tiny little inconvenience. These
children will be very poorly adjusted and these parents are rarely happy.

~~~
javajosh
What if you were to engineer a situation with your kids where you a) teach
them how to do something useful, and then b) put them in a situation where
that useful thing needs to be done. If they don't take the cue, no problem. If
they miss it, maybe have a 3rd party (like an aunt or an uncle) pitch in. Then
maybe have that 3rd party ask the child if they know how to do that thing -
and get the kid to get in the habit of volunteering their effort if it's
helpful to those around them. (It's important that the prompts not come from
the parent since the action becomes "acquiescing to authority" instead of
"pitching in for the common good".)

Of course, there's an unfortunate prisoner's dilemma in that if two kids are
involved, and one is volunteering all the time, the lazy one thinks, "Ha,
sweet, I'm so clever I never do any work and things still get done!" Not
really sure how to get around this - perhaps develop a turn-based cooperation
game where two siblings take turns helping, effectively coopting the
helpfulness of one to blunt the selfishness of the other. If they both defect,
then I suppose you have to create an "existential baseline" that they don't
want to endure, involving a) no toys, b) no freedom, c) bland food. But that's
problematic because it turns you into a jailor, and it turns cooperation into
"that thing you do to satisfy authority" again.

~~~
prawn
Always going to great lengths to teach your children important lessons like
this is another form of putting them first (or at least up there).

I don't put loads of time into my kids to save them every inconvenience, but
to give them a thirst for knowledge, etc.

------
yason
Being a foreigner I do recognize the dynamic described in the article on some
level, merely by observing the American culture from the outside, but I hadn't
realized it's such a serious and pervasive sentiment——or is it?

Maybe there's a bias such as the overmothering behaviour being overpresented
in the media yet most families and mothers are absolutely regular people as
parents, and possibly feeling bad themselves about never reaching the
impossible expectations set in the media?

I'd happily read personal experiences here to figure out how much truth there
is in it.

~~~
mikeash
Most of this article reads to me like a description of a foreign country, or
an alternate universe. Maybe it is my own experience which is not
representative, rather than the article, but I don't see parents having
trouble criticizing their children when there's cause for it or admitting that
they sometimes want to do things without their children.

Most of the article is handwaving. The one part of it that's actually based on
a specific event is the writer who got persecuted after saying she loved her
husband more than her children. But this is the standard sort of nonsense that
happens any time anything catches the attention of fringe crazies. Do
something with national reach, and if 0.01% of your audience thinks you're a
scumbag for it, you will suffer even if their opinion is not representative.
You could write an essay about how chocolate is delicious and you'd still end
up getting hated on, no doubt with lots of references to Indonesian fires and
such. But there is no American chocolate crisis.

------
unabst
1) This comparison to me says more about religion than it does about
parenting. Unconditional love and devotion to your baby? The feeling is
physical, and the baby is real. To be able to invoke the same feelings for a
deity appears more magical to me than parenting, especially for those who have
never experienced having a child.

2) American parenting isn't killing marriage. Marriages are killed one at a
time by the unique parents that choose to do so. And that's the problem with
statistical conceptualizations. It rarely applies to you for those dealing
with it at the present. Only in hindsight do the numbers compile anyway, so it
really isn't all that helpful.

Anyone in a marriage knows that the will to be together is sacrosanct. Once
two capable independent adults decide to part ways, nothing could be easier.
The past could have been wonderful, and it's easy to feel good about what was
good. But for many couples, divorce is the choice, and often a good choice for
them. In other cultures, there are more bonds holding couples together. In the
US, it's far easier to be independent or marry again. It's easier to live your
life on your terms than on that of social perception or social dogma. Is this
a good thing? Who are we to judge? If you feel the stats are tilted in the
wrong direction, then we can try and tip it the other way with our own
marriages. But "for the stats" is not usually what crosses our minds when
we're not getting along.

This is a classic case of "is as does". Nothing is killing anything. This is
the shape of the new American marriage.

~~~
douche
I'm not so sure that "Once two capable independent adults decide to part ways,
nothing could be easier." Particularly when children are involved, it can be
very messy, very ugly, and ruinous for one or both parties, mentally and
financially. Even in an ideal DINK relationship, depending on the state you
live in, it can be difficult to come to a clean, amicable break, without
ongoing obligations.

It certainly is easier to live one's life on one's own terms. Indeed, that
might be the _only_ way to live one's life, in the long term. Therefore, it is
of the utmost importance when choosing a partner to make sure that both
parties have compatible terms.

~~~
unabst
It's true that having kids does make everything more complicated, and they
provide a reason to stick together. But it isn't stopping parents from
divorcing completely, just less than if they didn't have children. And seeing
all of those divorced with children, it makes it more difficult, but not
difficult enough. For better or for worse, we do it anyway.

Of course, the opposite is also true. When two capable independent adults
decide to stick together, there really isn't anything that could keep them
apart. Isn't that the beauty of it? This has been at the heart of the western
philosophy of marriage.

------
brazzledazzle
I love my kids and I think they each have unique things about them that make
them great. I also think they can be amazingly compassionate and caring little
people. But let's be real: By and large kids are at least a little bit
sociopathic assholes. It's that behavior that you spend the better part of
their early lives trying to excise from them.

Does anyone remember being a kid? Regardless of whether you were the victim,
perpetrator, instigator or bystander just think back on how cruel bullies
could be both verbally and physically.

------
martin1975
We've spared the rod for too long, IMHO. Not saying we should abuse our kids
or even reprimand them physically necessarily, however seeing a two year old
as anything more than a terrorist whom cannot be negotiated with, can have
detrimental consequences in their adulthood. Boundaries must be drawn early on
or else....

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Your statement is a performative contradiction. Your proposition is that a
two-year old is akin to a terrorist who cannot be negotiated with, but your
suggesting boundaries be drawn as a resolution presupposes that in fact they
_can_ be negotiated with (negotiation necessarily implying the setting of
boundaries), hence negating your point.

~~~
cwbrandsma
Wait, are you saying you can negotiate with terrorist or with 2 year olds? I
have no experience with terrorists, but I have five kids. There are absolutely
times when a two year cannot be negotiated with. And there are times children
have to be taught that under no uncertain times their current behavior is
acceptable. And that time is a temper tantrum.

~~~
martin1975
I've 2 kids... and you catch my drift - they act (sometimes) like terrorists,
and that is when you cannot negotiate, meaning, your word is absolute.
Otherwise, any negotiation when they are acting like terrorists usually would
end at their peril (yours too, probably), for they not know what they do. This
is what I mean, "don't negotiate with terrorists".

Of course, at other times you can negotiate, and they get the tradeoffs rather
than being absolute in their attitude, sticking to their guns, without
thinking.

It is an ongoing commitment, a 'battle' of staying present, guiding them,
drawing a line when necessary, and letting them win too... It is absolutely
through contradictinction they will learn the most - what worked once, may or
may not work again, behavior wise.... of course, there are absolutes - don't
kill or hurt others, don't lie, cheat or steal...those are usually easier to
teach. And then there's wisdom...that's lifetime learning.

------
__david__
It's just anecdotal, I've found that my siblings and friends with kids are
pretty up front about the negative attributes of their kids. So the
"parenthood religion" isn't necessarily universal.

I think it's still a good article. It comes down to balance in the end, I
think. Kids are just another thing in your life that you have to balance—more
plates to spin. If you're only spinning your children's plates, it seems
obvious that your job and relationship plates are going to eventually fall...

------
sakopov
Marriage first, children second. If you and your wife/husband make a happy
couple, you will likely raise a happy offspring by creating warm, healthy and
balanced environment.

------
codinghorror
This does seem a little extreme. I don't know many parents that are so child
centric that they "have nothing left to say to each other".

On the other hand if you compare parenting in th 1970s there does seem to be
something to the argument that parenting went from an occupation to a
professional sport, where people compete at it. I object more to the tiger
parenting where kids have to be at the top of their class, get in to MIT or
Stanford, all that pressure. It's not healthy.

------
gonyea
I don't understand this at all. Blame divorce on kids? What?

If anything, the American spending habits are killing the American marriage.
Financial issues are the source of countless divorces.

------
HillaryBriss
I always thought "Baby On Board" caution signs were placed on cars and
minivans as a courtesy to other drivers.

These signs let other motorists know that the sign-toting car will swerve
wildly, stop unexpectedly and misbehave drastically because a self-centered,
totally implacable baby is present inside, jealously and continuously
demanding the driver's attention by screaming, vomiting and pretending to
fatally gag on nothing in particular.

Now I know I was wrong.

Thanks HN!

------
ausjke
read history boys at 18 or even younger can be generals and nowadays they're
still treated like toddlers, our parenting method is wrong in my opinion, the
key is that we babysit them too much for too long.

------
leroy_masochist
I agreed with pretty much everything until the following:

"Mothers are also holy in a way that fathers are not expected to be. Mothers
live in a clean, cheerful world filled with primary colors and children’s
songs, and they don’t think about sex. A father could admit to desiring his
wife without seeming like a distracted parent, but society is not as willing
to cut Ms. Waldman that same slack. It is unseemly for a mother to enjoy
pleasures that don’t involve her children."

Uh, are we living in the same society? Moms are more sexualized today than
they ever have been. Have you ever been to a daytime CrossFit class? Lisa Ann
has been the most popular adult film actress for years, for God's sake.

I agree there is much progress yet to be made in resolving a variety of
gender-equality issues....but the argument that society's increasing valuation
of children is driving a newfound societal demand for Victorian prudishness in
mothers seems to fly in the face of all available evidence.

~~~
deciplex
I'm not sure your observation is at odds with the assertion made here. We
could sexualize mothers while keeping the taboo on mothers themselves being
sexual i.e. desiring sex. In fact, the sexualization could even feed off that
very taboo.

~~~
leroy_masochist
I see what you're saying in theory, but by my reading of the article it's
clear that the authors are saying that societal expectations around mothering
are effectively inhibiting women from existing both as mothers and as sexual
beings -- and this assertion does not square with what I observe in the real
world.

------
munin
> child-centric lives can lose touch with one another to the point where they
> have nothing left to say to one another when the kids leave home.

there are couples like this because the way they made kids + 2 careers work on
middle class salaries is by dividing the day in half and each parent spends
one half the day with the children and the other works. after ten years of
this, you don't actually know your spouse any more - they've been living some
life, but not one that you've had time to be a part of between your own career
and your children.

this seems like an equally plausible explanation for this phenomenon, because
when you sacrifice that much it must be for _something_ and when someone else
insinuates that maybe the sacrifice wasn't worth it, well, that would really
piss you off...

~~~
Jtsummers
> the way they made kids + 2 careers work on middle class salaries is by
> dividing the day in half and each parent spends one half the day with the
> children and the other works.

Who sets up their schedules like that in the middle class? Middle class jobs
don't (typically) allow that one parent could work from 7-4 and another from
4-1am.

~~~
munin
one parent does shift work and the other doesn't, i.e. medical residency / EMT
or something in network operations that does a swing shift.

~~~
sokoloff
That situation exists, but it seems far from the majority situation for
2-income middle-class households.

------
chefkoch
An article about american parenting and a picture of new born babies in
munich, germany?

------
ryanmarsh
I would like to understand the relevance of this article to Hacker News.
Perhaps it would be helpful if I could see a demographic breakdown of
visitors: marital status, age, and number of offspring.

"Once our gods have left us, we try to pick up the pieces of our long
neglected marriages and find new purpose. Is it surprising that divorce rates
are rising fastest for new empty nesters? Perhaps it is time that we gave the
parenthood religion a second thought."

So divorce rates for empty nesters are the kids fault or kids are holding
together marriages that were doomed before they left the nest? This article is
garbage.

~~~
serge2k
Anything is relevant to Hacker News. It's in the rules.

------
sdegutis
He's generalizing way too much. There are so many different subcultures, which
each have their own style of parenting, and even within them parenting varies
person to person too much to generalize like this.

------
vlehto
>The origins of the parenthood religion are obscure

"The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits any
United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex.
It was ratified on 1920."

Womens suffrage has to reverb through political sphere. As a whole it's not
good or bad, just different. Another thing coming from there: time passed
since women gained vote seems to correlate with welfare spending.

I don't think religious fervor can be avoided in a society. It's just a matter
of where it is directed.

------
pravka
This _is_ extreme. I read this article when it made the rounds last year, and
I hated it just as much this time around. Disclaimer: I'm a parent, and I love
it. I also love being in a relationship with someone I trust and with whom I
can talk about 'grown-up' shit.

Granted, there are definitely parents who hover, worry, or interfere with
their kids', but, at least in the circles I run in, these are the exception
more than the rule and most certainly don't represent parents (or marriages)
at large.

------
curuinor
A. Teller is probably more interesting to HN folks because he's head of Google
X. This seems incongruous a little bit and then you see how people in Palo
Alto parent...

~~~
jessaustin
This is related to the "obnoxious Little League Dad" phenomenon. Most of us
have some disappointments about our lives. The way that some parents deal with
those is to imagine that their children will succeed where they have failed.
Once parents pay more attention to the image of a child than to the actual
child, craziness ensues.

------
eximius
Interestingly, I've asked many of my female friends, including my last few
girlfriends, given the hypothetical choice of saving their husband or their
child, who would they save? Almost all of them said their children.

Ask the men, however, and it is almost always the wife.

And none of these folks were married or had kids yet. It is something
ingrained from before that occurs.

~~~
jpfed
Dad here. I would save the kids, for several reasons:

1\. They have more life-years ahead of them. 2\. If I saved my wife, she would
hate the choice I made and be plagued by survivor guilt or resentment. It's
not clear that my marriage would survive this. But the kids are young enough
that they would probably accept the choice, to the extent that they could
comprehend it.

------
vezzy-fnord
Not every day you see a major publication questioning natalism.

See also Judith Rich Harris' _The Nurture Assumption_ :
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Nurture-Assumption-Children-
Revise...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Nurture-Assumption-Children-
Revised/dp/1439101655)

------
draw_down
Being a parent today seems so awful, especially if you are expected to make
the household income on top of doing 50% of the parenting.

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doctorstupid
I have a suspicion that these parents are using children as mirrors for their
self-obsessions. The self is the true religion here.

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bsder
Hmm, wouldn't have expected "But think of the chiiiiildren" to be a shitty
argument even when applied to marriage.

------
dba7dba
If this article were true, how can you explain lower divorce rate in Asian
countries?

China? S Korea? Japan?

~~~
ryuker16
Divorce rates skyrocketed when they started having dual incomes like ours.

The reason for less is cultural....plus, it's a bit easier to cheat and still
stay married....most places aren't so hung up on "he cheated, let's divorce!"
thing like the USA.

~~~
dba7dba
So it wasn't because of over parenting in Asia?

------
programminggeek
Perhaps replacing real religion with a false one is unwise.

------
hosh
This isn't a bad train of thought, though I wonder if this says more about
Millennial narcissism than it does about the "religion of parenting".

I think this has more to do with a kind of ethical posturing ("I am holier
than thou") than it is about a sacred cow. There are parents who will give up
their own interests for the sake of their children's interest, and not because
there is peer-pressure to do so, or as a way to gain status within the
community, or to be tyrannized by a cultural myth.

So thinking about it more, I think this article is BS -- not because the
issues it raises are not true, but because it focused on the wrong thing.

There is also a spiritual and psychological transformation that takes place
with becoming a parent.

Philosopher Ken Wilber had written extensively about modernity, and the way it
throws pre-modern ideas such as the Great Chain of Being out the window,
leaving members of modernity disconnected with their place in the universe.
That's not to say that pre-modern ideas where they just told you where your
place is a good idea. On the other hand, existential angst and a constant
wondering of your place in society, in the world, in the universe as a whole
is a constant them in the cultures of modernity.

What does this have to do with parenting? The idea of the Great Chain of Being
is a kind of stand-in, or abstractions, that Ken Wilber claims ties the pre-
modern religion together. They disagree on a lot of things, but one thing that
is present in the religious teachings is putting the human experience in
context of the cosmos as a whole. The search for the meaning of life was a
search for your origins, of where you came from -- a search for who you were
"born" from. It might seem obvious that your body was born from the DNA of
both of your parents; however, where did they come from? If you trace things
up your lineage, you still come to the question, "Where did life originate
from?"

To use the mythic language in the context of the Great Chain of Being, you
were "born" from the universe.

To become a parent is to experience -- just a little bit -- of what it is like
for the universe to give life and creation. It might be accidental or
intentional. Someone might enter this stage with naivete or with great wisdom.
There are a lot of things you might have railed against growing up, but now as
a parent, it makes you think and wonder.

My point is that, if you were to strip away the ethical posturing and
political correctness, what you are left with is not a re-examination of
parenting, that there is a sacred cow to be slaughtered. Parenting is an re-
examination of your self and your place and purpose within the universe. Your
growth does not stop there. You might gain a better appreciation of how things
come together.

------
swagv
"Think of the children" is a cliché

