
The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting - laurex
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/upshot/the-relentlessness-of-modern-parenting.html
======
GreeniFi
I had a so-called free-range childhood. It’s impossible, as only one data
point, for me to extrapolate its impact and given the diversity of “free-
range” I suspect it’s pretty difficult to link to definitive characteristic
traits. That said I do observe certain differences in my character to those of
friends who were factory farmed: greater emotional resilience, (despite)
greater emotional volatility, worse table manners.

I have children of my own now and I struggle with the idea of letting them
roam as I did. Yet I grew up in dangerous times - as an anecdotal aside once
whilst on an adventure, I ran into a group of young and armed militia
soldiers. As protection, my friend and I were carrying a cow femur (not sure
where we acquired it) and a kitchen knife. I guess we were about 10. The
militia, who were by the way a different ethnic group to us, could have caused
us some serious problems. But instead we hung out with them for a few hours
and they let us play with their AK47s. Man, right now I’m even struggling to
believe that happened. I’m still friends with my childhood buddy. I’m going to
check in with him and see what he remembers.

~~~
Diederich
May I ask: where and when did you grow up? Thanks.

I grew up not too far from south-central Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s
and early 1980s, and was shot at on two occasions by gangs.

Raised by my grandparents, I was a full 'free-range' child.

Thanks for your reply.

~~~
GreeniFi
Southern Africa (although not South Africa). Just before the end of apartheid,
everyone was gearing up for a fight and everyone was pretty angry. Two men
talked the region off a precipice, Nelson Mandela, literally a prince of peace
(he was a prince). And secondly Desmond Tutu. And maybe the humanity of young
men like those we encountered, who could just as well shot us. It happened
elsewhere and at other times.

~~~
rconti
It's also possible the impact (however small) of free range children such as
yourself, helped the militia men you encountered find their own humanity.

~~~
GreeniFi
Thank you for pointing that out. It could also have been their free-range
childhoods. These soldiers would not have been press-ganged. I’ve read that
elsewhere in Africa, child soldiers are forced by older soldiers to commit
atrocities together (rape etc) in order to form a sort of perverse bond or
espirit de corps which is otherwise not present when you’re forced to be
there.

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wonderwonder
Relentless really is a good word to describe it. It is just endlessly time
consuming raising kids. I don't even feel like I am doing anything special,
just making sure they do their homework, are entertained and safe. By the time
their bedtime rolls around I am exhausted. Yet the thought of doing less does
not even occur to me as I would see that as short changing my kids whom I care
greatly for. I don't do it as some sort of fear of my kids not succeeding in a
world with limited resources, I just see it as the natural duty of a parent to
do everything I can to ensure my kids get the attention they need.

Just a personal note, I found it irritating that the author felt the need to
write “Intensive parenting is a way for especially affluent white mothers to
make sure their children are maintaining their advantaged position in
society.” I am pretty sure the mothers just want their kids to have the best
lives they can, as do all parents regardless of the color of their skin. I
don't think they approach it from the view that they are participants in some
great racial struggle. Of course they want their kids to do as well or better
than them, all parents do, or should. Seemed like a pointless, finger wagging
thing to say.

~~~
danmaz74
I remember the trope about "tiger moms" which was about Asian mothers. I
wonder if it's still a thing.

~~~
barry-cotter
It’s the children of the winners of the meritocracy being crammed into
enriching activities on the false premise that it will help their children in
the tournament for their generation in both cases.

~~~
danmaz74
Why do you think it's a false promise?

------
gdubs
Ironically we end up creating a ton of anxiety for kids. And unless we’re
giving kids the love and tools needed to process that anxiety, well, then
we’re missing the forest for the trees.

I have three kids under five years old, and man it goes fast. My philosophy
has evolved to this: they’re their own people, not extensions of our own ego,
and in the limited time we have influence over them we can help them develop
core habits that will be useful throughout their lives.

~~~
GreeniFi
How do you do this?

~~~
xamuel
Not the person you replied to, but re: forming good habits: I make a point
that instead of saying e.g. "Wow, you're so good at drawing" to my kids,
instead I say e.g. "Wow, you're getting so good at drawing because you keep
practicing so much! It feels so good to practice and improve!" Works great so
far :)

~~~
GreeniFi
Thanks!

------
kingraoul3
“Intensive parenting is a way for especially affluent white mothers to make
sure their children are maintaining their advantaged position in society,”
said Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at Indiana University and author of
“Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in
School.”

I guess especially affluent mother of color don't do this? NYT conflating race
and class to divide people again.

~~~
darkerside
Yeah, that's upsetting. If I were paranoid, I'd consider whether it were
intentional brainwashing designed to perpetuate the superiority of the white
race. Of course, I'm not paranoid, so I don't think it's intentional at all.

But, I do think it may have that unintended effect.

~~~
barry-cotter
Oh come on. They’re just doing the traditional American thing of dividing
everybody into two groups and acting as if that’s all the important diversity
politically. Before the groups were white and black. Now they’re black and not
black. NYT reporters read Asians as white in every important sense.

[http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/asian.htm](http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/asian.htm)

> Asians are now white.

> Don't believe me? A recent MSNBC news headline announced a "Plunge in
> Minority University Enrollment" at the University of California, with UC
> Berkeley reporting that "minority admissions had declined 61 percent."
> Actually, the total percentage of racial minority students at Berkeley,
> Asians included, fell from 57% to 49%. If you exclude the burgeoning group
> of people who decline to state their race, the minority percentage fell only
> three percentage points, from 61% to 58%.

~~~
turtlecloud
I agree. As a former reader of the NYT, it infuriates me how they are
portraying different groups in America and playing off the identity game. If
the citizens of this country primarily identify as American then the NYT would
have nothing to write about /s

The Asian American point is a very interesting thing I too have been following
the past few years.

------
Animats
Key quote: _" As the gap between rich and poor increases, the cost of screwing
up increases. The fear is they’ll end up on the other side of the divide."_

In 1970, failure was a job on the assembly line at Ford in Detroit. Until
1974, the auto companies didn't require a high school diploma. Union job, good
pay. Now it's homelessness and drug addiction.

~~~
toasterlovin
So there were no homeless or drug addicts before the 90s?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Overdose deaths have quadrupled since the '90s alone, suicide rates have
increased by about 30%, as have alcohol related deaths.

~~~
cybersol
I was interested in this statistic and how it compares to say the 1960's and
70's. If you look without adjusting for population you just get an exponential
increase that overwhelms the signal. But the statistics adjusting for
population still back up your claim here:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/184603/deaths-by-
uninten...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/184603/deaths-by-
unintentional-poisoning-in-the-us-since-1950/)

------
thisisweirdok
Not surprising considering for the past 2-3 generations we've been seeing kids
often worse-off than their parents.

Crippling student debt, insane healthcare costs, soaring housing prices in
major cities. People are anxious and things are more competitive. All while
worker productivity continues to increase with stagnant wages.

If you look at adjusted median household income over the past 20 years its
either stayed roughly the same or declined. Median home prices dipped during
the recession, but have already outpaced median wage growth again.

We don't want our kids to be subject to this, so we push them to be better
than their competition. Being the top 50% isn't often a comfortable life
anymore so we're pushing them to squeeze into the top 10-20%.

The wealth gap in this country is squeezing all the joy out of life for every
penny its worth.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Look at the graph of spending on children, look at how the lines for the
bottom 3 quintiles have gone down since the '80s and '90s. That's very
disheartening to see, parents are going to try their hardest to give their
kids the best chances, and yet 60% of families have been squeezed by the
economy into providing less for their children than previous generations. This
despite inflation adjusted per capita GDP nearly doubling since the early
'80s. The economy is growing, wealth is being created, but it's being funneled
into a tiny portion of the population. For so long "the rich get richer while
the poor get poorer" has been a common refrain without being strictly true,
but now it's become true.

~~~
souprock
I don't know that the graph tells this story.

It could be that the very slight decline in spending for the lower quintiles
is from getting help that isn't counted (free preschool for example) or from
products being more affordable (measuring money is not equivalent to measuring
the value gotten) or from more people being able to avoid childcare expenses
by being home.

It could be that the major increase in spending for the top quintile is
wasted. Maybe the kid wants to own a horse. All sorts electronic things eat up
money while delivering little value.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Yeah, you're probably right, I'm sure it's just horse ownership and free
preschool rather than income stagnation, exploding debt in the under 35 age
bracket (much of it due to student loan burden), and massively increasing
housing costs.

------
Reedx
It seems the pendulum is starting to swing back as we see the unintended
consequences of over parenting. Especially bulldozer parenting. Check out the
book, "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas
Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure" for a deep dive into this.

I think it's helpful to look at it this way: The job of a parent is to put
themselves out of a job.

~~~
markbnj
Are you a parent? You're never out of a job :). I'm 58, my parents are in
their 80's, and my daughters are in their 20's, so my opinion in this matter
is somewhat informed.

~~~
cobbzilla
Sure there are aspects of parenting that continue forever, but I’m sure glad
my wife and I are both out of the “diaper changing” job. There are hundreds of
other parenting “jobs” to work oneself out of, by teaching your kids to manage
the world, confidently, by themselves.

I think the larger point may be that some so-called “helicopter parents” might
never work towards this, to the detriment of their children’s mental health -
and their long-term family relationships.

~~~
Diederich
Well said, thank you.

------
throwaway713
I think over-parenting can be disastrous, particularly emotionally. I had what
you might call a "strict" father (mother passed away when I was young), but he
was never a helicopter parent. My sister and I were always expected to do
things well, but we were never handheld along the way. I finished second in my
high school class, and everyone always seemed so surprised when I told them
that I never had any help with homework or school projects. I was just told to
do my best (whatever grade that might result in). And while my dad was
probably a little on the overprotective side when it came to safety, the
ability to "figure things out" myself helped drastically when I finally went
out on my own.

My wife on the other hand... I hate to use the word "coddled", but I am
absolutely astounded at how many basic tasks and life skills were never taught
to her. She never learned that you can't dump all of your clothes in the
washing machine and set it on hot. She never learned that not watering the
yard will quickly kill all of the grass. When I was talking about scheduling a
prostate exam, she asked if I could schedule hers too, and I had to explain
that women don't have prostates (when she was a kid, she was horrified the
first time she had her period because no one explained what that was either).

She doesn't want to get a job because she says she won't have enough vacation
time for visiting family, so she's currently living off my income (we don't
have children). Her brother finished his PhD over a year ago but has not
applied to any jobs and lives in the basement playing video games. I love my
wife a lot, but it somehow slipped my attention before we got married that her
parents failed her in a big way by doing absolutely everything for her and her
siblings. It's translated into a lack of basic adult skills, and I often feel
like I'm not a husband in the relationship, but a parent. When I eventually
have kids of my own, "figure it out yourself" is going to be a common refrain,
because "I'll take care of it" apparently results in a disaster.

~~~
telchar
There's a significant gulf between "I'll take care of it" and "figure it out
yourself". I'm not really disagreeing with anything here, to be clear. But I
think there's a place for useful instruction too.

------
ideonexus
I didn't realize it until I read this article, but this is what keeps me up at
night and motivates me to spend so much time and effort on my children. Making
sure my kids are successful adults and maintain the economic lifestyle my
programming career currently affords them is why I send them to camps all
summer long and martial arts classes in the afternoons to improve their focus.
It's why my wife and I spent hours working on our son's application to the
gifted program recently and stress them out over getting their homework done
each night. The future feels uncertain and unstable. My kids need to be
prepared for anything.

Are we over-parenting? Absolutely. But if I let my kids go free-range and they
have a hard time as adults, the same exact people who accuse us of over-
parenting will be right there accusing us of under-parenting. The same
childless people who sneer at us for keeping our kids challenged and engaged
are the ones who sneer at us when we give the kids an hour of screen time at
the end of the day or when one of our children has an age-appropriate temper-
tantrum. We parents are damned if we do and damned if we don't.

~~~
gnarbarian
Counterpoint: There's definitely an argument for letting kids figure some
things out on their own. Giving them autonomy helps them mature faster in a
number of ways.

If your life is micro managed down to the minute you won't learn the self
discipline to do things without an authority figure looming over you.

Learning to solve disputes amicably between each other without requiring an
authority figure is very important and helps kids make friends.

Learning to test your own limits and push your own abilities in unsupervised
activities will improve their confidence more than in a structured sanitized
program where everyone gets participation trophies.

Helicopter parents won't be around forever. I've seen many young adults
completely melt down and go off the rails when they leave their home and go to
college because they never learned real self discipline. They simply can't
handle the vacuum that opens up in their lives without the micromanagement.

Every kid is different though, some need more structure and some need more
autonomy to mature into responsible adults.

~~~
Domenic_S
> _Learning to solve disputes amicably between each other without requiring an
> authority figure is very important and helps kids make friends._

Yes yes yes. When you fix everything for them, all they learn is "go talk to
whoever is in power when I have a problem." They don't learn proper
boundaries, how to negotiate, etc.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
On the other side of it, the 3 years older, 50 lbs heavier bully is just
teaching them how to be afraid.

------
orangeeater
> Intensive parenting is a way for especially affluent white mothers to make
> sure their children are maintaining their advantaged position in society

Urgh. Really?

I think intensive parenting is an arms race, more or less. I don't know if it
"works" but I think it's increasingly common mainly due to a feedback loop of
parental anxiety.

I don't think it has a thing to do with race, though.

------
perfmode
If only we’d fix structural and societal problems so that parents don’t feel
as though they need to undertake a Herculean task to help their child navigate
a world with few opportunities and many roadblocks.

------
pnathan
The policy we are taking is to have specific expectations, but vast freedom
outside of those expectations. We specifically are interested in allowing our
child (~2) to have highly unstructured play, within specific limits.

\- Child _does_ go to specific play groups, 1-2x/wk. \- Child _does_ have to
sit still and have a book read to them, several times per day. \- Child _does_
have to treat the cat right. \- Child does go out to eat with us- and _has_ to
behave correctly in the restaurant.

On the other hand, child is supplied with several kinds of blocks, toy buses &
trains, dolls, stuffed animals, and other bits for an imaginative play; maybe
70% of child's waking life is undirected play; 10-20% of that is parent by the
side.

Child is naturally athletic & enjoys music and we plan to take them to games &
orchestra - probably enroll in kid gym?.

The notion we're aiming towards is autonomy & judgement, with adequate
exposure to make good decisions. Child will be administratively exposed to
many things; but this mass scheduling of life and running hither and yon
constantly is for the _birds_. Child needs to be able to put their feet up and
dream languorously, thinking thoughts that aren't poured into them.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Kinder gym followed up by a couple years of artistic gymnastics is a great
base for any active kid. They will quickly age out of it (unless they want to
seriously compete) but the base skills will help them in their other
athletic/active pursuits.

Also, in our experience, individual sports/activities, such as, dance, figure
skating, gymnastics seemed to teach [our kids] a lot about personal
responsibility. In the individual sports/activities, it seemed their
coaches/instructors really made it a point to enforce/promote individual
personal responsibility more than team based sports/activities. In hindsight,
this is unsurprising, I guess. I say in hindsight, because at the time I was
mildly concerned they were missing out on not being interested team sports.

Don't forget clubs too. FIRST Robotics was a big win for my girls.

And most importantly, good modeling by parents and other family.

------
InclinedPlane
It's easy to forget that the purpose of parenting and _raising_ children isn't
to baby sit them for 18 years, cram them full of "information" and then turn
them loose on the world. The purpose is to incrementally transform them from
children into adults-in-training into full adults. That necessitates allowing
minors responsibility, agency, and autonomy prior to becoming adults,
otherwise they will have no experience (and no mastery) of those things when
they become adults. And that necessitates risk, because without risk there is
no true responsibility, agency, or autonomy. Kids are going to make mistakes,
but it's important that they be their mistakes, otherwise they can't learn,
they can't have ownership of their lives, they can't grow in their sense of
self and in their emotional maturity, they can't acquire resiliency, etc.

------
pnw_hazor
"The new trappings of intensive parenting are largely fixtures of white,
upper-middle-class American culture, but researchers say the expectations have
permeated all corners of society, whether or not parents can achieve them."

We raised two girls in the Pacific Northwest of USA. Many of the families
participating in same extra activities as us (e.g, gymnastics, figure skating,
dance, ballet, gifted programs, swimming, SAT training) were immigrant
families.

We spent a lot of money but the result was worth it and the ride was fun as
hell. However, I was raised free-range in a poor single-parent household and
that worked out too.

------
lewis500
Looking back on my own childhood, I'm skeptical how much anything alleged to
"enrich" the children actually made a difference. I recall most of all piano
lessons. When I was a kid, every kid had to learn piano. Today, no adult I
know ever plays piano; they forgot how because they don't like it and no one
wants to hear it because it's boring. I know one serious professional
musician. He taught himself guitar for our high school punk band and got super
interested in guitar technique.

Now, you could say they learned "discipline" from the piano lessons. But how
do we know? I don't see any relationship between who took the most piano and
who became a doctor, etc. My view of piano lessons, and other enrichement, is
that they are sort of homeopathy for parents' anxiety about their kids'
future. Even when there is nothing to do for someone's medical condition, lots
of people will turn to quack treatments out of anxiety, and these quack
treatments involve a host of immeasurable concepts like "toxins" proposed to
imitate the kind of causation we know of for better-known treatments. Same
with piano lessons: your parents are too anxious about you to sit on their
hands, so they make you practice piano and tell themselves, and each other,
that you're learning "focus," some magic property that will stay in your brain
one day even when they're not around. I don't buy it. Nobody made their kids
take piano because they read a bunch of studies proving it makes your kid
choose to go to med school or whatever; they clung to it automatically because
they wanted to believe in it.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I didn't start piano until I was about 13, which I gather is relatively late
(my parents thought I wouldn't want to go, I was a naughty child; mainly
because I was bullied, but that's a different story). The piano was an
absolute lifeline for me as a teenager, for catharsis primarily.

~~~
lewis500
Don’t get me wrong. I think the actual activities parents get their kids to do
can be wonderful experiences, especially if you undertake them on your own.
What I’m skeptical of is that these experiences hydraulically translate into
success as adults, which is what the parents are often trying to accomplish.

------
gf263
As a 20 something without kids, my parenting idea would be to just not give
them any trauma and let them be their own people

~~~
Klathmon
That's like saying that all programmers have to do is make the program and not
make any bugs ;)

The _how_ is the important part!

~~~
sigfubar
How to draw an owl: a step-by-step buide.

Step 1: Draw two overlapping circles. Step 2: Draw the rest of the fucking
owl.

------
arikr
The book "Selfish reasons to have more kids" by Bryan Caplan is a good
antidote to this attitude

------
kazinator
If the motivation is economic anxiety, then forget piano and soccer practice;
enroll the five-year-old in something directly related to making and managing
money. I'm only half kidding.

~~~
strikelaserclaw
The soccer and piano practice is to get into Harvard.

------
strikelaserclaw
Its like we are engineering super workers for modern society. At some point,
human happiness really needs to come up over trying to maximize production.

------
em-bee
responding to a few points raised in the article:

children sleeping with parents is not monitoring them, but it is related to
attachment theory (i think that is the term) where children who are very close
to the parents in the beginning are actually more independent when they are
older.

in other words parents and children sleeping together is enabling free range
parenting.

babies sleeping alone in a room instead are more likely to develop anxieties
that later make them much more dependent on parental support.

watching TV together with the children is not needed to enhance the learning,
but to protect the children from violence and many other things that passes as
childrens TV nowadays. (tom and jerry is almost harmless in that regard. i am
looking at power rangers and many others that i consider just unacceptable for
kids to watch. heck even lion king shocked me when i saw it the first time.
the cruelty displayed in that story is not something i want to subject my kids
to. i'd rather let them run unsupervised into the forest, where they may
stumble and get hurt, but won't be traumatized by an unrealistic and cruel
story)

------
killjoywashere
I used to take the city bus for a quarter to the public library in the fourth
grade, 2 miles away. My mom's the one who taught me to use the bus. I know it
was fourth grade because we moved to another city when I was in the fifth
grade. That was in 1988.

My wife would barely let the kids play in the front yard despite us living in
signficantly wealthier, lower-crime neighborhoods.

~~~
pnw_hazor
My oldest daughter still claims PTSD from my wife's reaction one time as a
~10yo she was caught playing outside in the cul-de-sac w/o permission while we
were not home -- with boys no less. The horror.

I wasn't home, and my wife swears she doesn't remember the incident, though
younger sibling has offered corroborating evidence.

------
skookumchuck
I've often wondered if a contributing factor to teen suicides is the parents'
effort to remove all hint of failure from their kids' lives. This is possible
when they're young, you can do the "everyone's a winner!" thing and it works.

But the kids fail to learn to cope with failure in the small things, and by
the time they're a teen the parents can no longer protect them from the
consequences of failing. They have learned no coping skills, and cannot handle
it.

------
uwbassist
I'm surprised to not see any reference to "Kids These Days: Human Capital and
the Making of Millennials," a well-supported account of the interactions
between parenting norms and the economy. In a sentence: there is more and more
pressure on parents to train their kids, so they enter the workforce more
valuable to employers.

------
greenail
I wonder how this relates to the rate of divorce and general healthiness of
today's relationships.

------
lotsofpulp
That graph with quintiles is a nice illustration of the 80-20 rule.

~~~
aczerepinski
As someone in a high cost of living area, I looked jealously at that top
quintile on the chart.

~~~
lotsofpulp
It basically validates all those parents’ efforts to get their kids into the
top 20%, because otherwise you’re treading water or sinking.

------
eigenschwarz
It seems more and more that having kids perpetuates the original Ponzi scheme
of life between the young and the old. One that exists via billions of years
of evolution producing powerful psychological selective pressures to
reproduce.

------
choombak
I believe it is no business of the Government to dictate how we bring up
children. Period.

~~~
jefurii
I believe it is no business of corporations to dictate how we bring up
children. Period.

~~~
51lver
Parents should smoke, kids need sugar, toys bring kids happiness and parents
peace.... Lies by thieves.

