
Parents now spend twice as much time with their children as 50 years ago - elsewhen
https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/11/daily-chart-20
======
robertwiblin
"One of Galinsky's more surprising findings centered around a question she
posed to both children and parents: "If you were granted one wish to change
the way your mother's/your father's work affects your life, what would that
wish be?" Some 56 percent of parents anticipated that their children would
want more time with their parents and for their parents to spend less time at
work, yet only 10 percent of the children actually wanted more time with their
mothers and only 16 percent wanted more time with their fathers. A far larger
proportion, 34 percent, wished that their mothers would be less stressed and
less tired, and 28 percent wished this about their fathers."

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/05/listen_to_the_c....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/05/listen_to_the_c.html)

~~~
sbinthree
This makes sense. I would much rather have less and more positive interactions
with my parents than more or more stressful ones. Some people seem to have a
"my parent was never around" complex but that usually seems to involve some
combination of 1. Parent completely absent, not home at night, not reliable or
away for extended periods working or 2. Parent missing key, meaningful events
like the "dance recital" trope or 3. Parent outsources parenting to nanny and
doesn't really monitor outcomes. If you are there for the important things,
when you say you will be, and home for dinner (present, not just emailing on
your phone) as often as you can be, that seems to matter more than working
part time or other modern and progressive interpretations of being an engaged
parent and with your kids.

~~~
jdietrich
I think that dependability is the key point. "My parents were never around"
often translates to "my parents couldn't be relied on when it really matters".
You don't have to spend 24/7 with your kids to establish the secure belief
that you'll drop everything to help them; conversely, you can be present a
great deal without ever giving the sense that you're a reliable resource.

I think this is what underpins the "dance recital" trope, or the similar "not
getting picked up from soccer practice". It's not so much that you weren't
there, but that you chose to prioritise something else or failed to honour a
previous commitment.

Especially as children move into adolescence and start to develop
independence, they want to know that their parents will provide a safe harbour
to return to. I think that children are remarkably perceptive when assessing
who can be trusted to get them out of a bad situation or handle a difficult
conversation. Without necessarily realising it, parents send subtle messages
every day about where their priorities really lie.

~~~
wiz21c
This, 100000 times : "Without necessarily realising it, parents send subtle
messages every day about where their priorities really lie."

------
picodguyo
It's interesting that reactions to stories about parenting are always default-
negative no matter what. People are saying this stat just shows we are
smothering our children. Had it been the opposite (half as much time), people
would be accusing parents of outsourcing childcare.

~~~
azernik
But probably different people. Communities are very capable of holding
conflicting viewpoints.

~~~
watwut
The point is, only angry and negative people voice their opinions and
positively minded people don't. If you look at threads about something else,
(say economy or politics) there are typically both optimostic and pessimistic
people and even some discussions between those groups.

When it comes to parenting and children, positive opinions are rarely heard.

~~~
rjzzleep
Honestly, if you want to make a point, you should work on the way you phrase
it.

> only angry and negative voice their opinions

i.e. bad people

> positively minded

i.e. good people

I know you probably didn't think about it that much. Personally, I could start
a rant about toxic culture now, but I'll leave it at that.

If you don't want to create an aggressive response, maybe refrain from calling
people that disagree with you angry and negative.

EDIT: here's a suggestion for a good way to phrase the actual meaning you
might have been thinking about:

People that are happy about the way something is, are less likely to complain
about it. Yes, true, but that by itself doesn't make the thing either good or
bad.

~~~
frenchy
I hope you can appreciate the irony of ranting about angry people :)

~~~
eropple
The post to which you are replying is not a rant by any reasonable definition
of the term and what 'rjzzleep is saying should (probably won't, but _should_
) be taken to heart.

------
kelukelugames
> _One analysis of 11 rich countries estimates that the average mother spent
> 54 minutes a day caring for children in 1965 but 104 minutes in 2012. Men do
> less than women, but far more than men in the past: their child-caring time
> has jumped from 16 minutes a day to 59._

I spend 100+ minutes every day changing diapers. Actually that's not true,
most of my time is spent trying to put the stupid newborn to go to sleep. I
thought paternity leave was going to be chill and maybe I can learn a new
hobby, master javascript, or travel to Europe. Nope, more stress than day job.

I think fatherhood is evolving too. My father's generation almost did nothing
and that was acceptable. That is changing. One of the women in a dual income
family says "Mom handles input, Dad handles output."

~~~
ordu
I learnt from psychologist that there are ways to help newborn to get asleep.

Newborn is in a very uncomfortable conditions for him. He used to be in a
liquid environment. It was very noisy environment: there was a lot of sounds
made by mothers body, digesting and more importantly heartbeat. It was dark
there. But now he is on the air, he need to breathe, he hears silence with
interruptions by some sharp sounds (in the belly sounds are different, I think
there are no high frequences), and there are lights. Moreover first year baby
experiences difficultes with thermoregulation of his body. Probably there are
more things that trouble him, I'm not pretending to give you a full list.

Give him "heartbeat", give him a smell of his mother, ensure he is
experiencing comfortable temperature, and he, probably, would get quiet. Try
it with real mother first, let her take him, lay his head near her heart. If
it works, get mother's dirty T-shirt and place it near nose of a baby. You can
also try find some audio track, which makes your baby happy by sounding
similarly enough to a heartbeat. The psychologist told a story of mother, who
liked to walk near railways: her crying baby stopped cry every passed train,
because he experienced noise level he used to. Moreover that was rythmic
noise, like heartbeat. I don't think it is good idea to reach such levels of
noise indoors at night, but you got an idea: do not make silence in his room,
let it be some constant rythmic noise.

Though it does not work every time. Sometimes baby just don't want to sleep
and get bored. But not in first few weeks: the first few weeks for him is a
constant suffering of adaptation to a completely alien environment.

~~~
chrisseaton
Why do people write ‘baby’ or ‘newborn’ with no article like that? Surely it’s
‘a baby’ or ‘the baby’ or ‘your baby’ or maybe ‘babies’ if you mean in
general. Just ‘baby’ sounds like broken English. You wouldn’t write ‘manager
sent me an email’, you’d write ‘my manager’ or something like that with an
article.

~~~
tome
> sounds like broken English

There are many languages (notably Slavic ones) that don't have articles. My
guess is that the comment author is a native speaker of one of those languages
and not English.

~~~
chrisseaton
Lots of native English speakers write ‘baby’ without an article.

------
ashark
1) What's the age range for children, here? All, 0-18? Something else?

2) Is this per kid or per parent? That is, do you get more "points" if you
have three kids and spend an hour with all three than if you spend an hour
with just one of them, or does it count the same? Per kid the latter'd be
lower averaged over the three, per parent it's the same. Looks like it's per-
parent but I'm not entirely sure.

[EDIT] notably, if it's per-parent, this _doesn 't necessarily_ mean kids are
getting as much more total time with their parents as it might seem. Mom
spending an hour, then dad spending an hour separately, is 2 hours of kid-
with-at-least-one-parent time, but _both_ parents at the same time for one
hour is two parent-hours of time but only one hour of time-with-at-least-one-
parent for the kid.

[EDIT EDIT] of course the other metric would be vulnerable to that too, I was
sloppy. Point is I'd be curious how much time-with-any-parent for each kid
went up over the same period.

~~~
pchristensen
Per #2, families are much smaller on average now so even if they count that
way, I don't think that would contribute much.

~~~
bertil
Related to families changing structure: what about step-parents?

~~~
ashark
Oh, relatedly, I wonder whether time in the care of non-parent adult relatives
or friends-of-parents (i.e. _not_ paid childcare or teachers) dropped
substantially over the same time period.

------
linkregister
This article is half-baked. How were parents spending less time with their
children? Day-care facilities have greater attendance than ever.

Were relatives watching the children?

What age ranges were covered?

Without more information, the graphs are meaningless.

Maybe it's due to children having more unsupervised, outdoor play. Maybe it's
due to relatives watching children more. If the age range is 0-5 years, the
results are astonishing. If the age range is 0-18 years, then perhaps it's
just a remnant of the shift from rural to urban populations, and the decrease
of outside-the-home time by teenagers.

~~~
astura
This is not surprising. When I was growing up kids mainly entertained
themselves or each other the vast majority of the time. When I was a kid 99.9%
of the time I did my own thing and didn't interact very much with adults.

Now people want to entertain their kids all the time.

------
baldfat
The problem is that 90% of the time the parents are now on their phones.

Seriously I find myself on my phone and not interacting with my kids at times
and I am super sensitive about phones.

I don't allow phones during meals, during family time and not when someone is
talking with you. I break my own rules a ton :(

~~~
roflchoppa
Two of my buddies had kids when they were 19-20, when I see one of them his
daughter is basically watching youtube videos all the time sitting on the
couch.

The other guy does not really let his kids around phones or tablets, they can
watch TV, but thats also heavily regulated. But usually when we are around,
they hang out with us and work on cars. Its really fun to teach them stuff
about cars even if they are only 5 and 6. When we sit and have meals, I try to
engage them as much as possible, talk about music, and math.

But yes I agree with you, phones are really killing it. Have you tried
deleting apps you like to use? Switch to web apps with difficult logins?

on a side note does anyone else find those youtube videos for kids hella
creepy?

~~~
SamBam
Not sure which ones, but my friend's five-year-old girl spends her time
watching videos of and older girl showing off her Brand-Name Doll, and all the
accessories you can buy for it, and how _isn 't it just so cute when I put her
in THIS accessory_, and tune in tomorrow for more accessories you can buy...

That definitely makes me sick.

~~~
jhbadger
True, but in the 1970s when I was a kid, I watched a lot of Saturday Morning
cartoons which had a lot of toy ads, and my father's comic books had toy ads
too. Selling crap to children too young to understand advertising has a long
history.

~~~
roflchoppa
yeah I remember seeing those ads when I was a child as well, however I think
that the invasiveness has increased. the children have this "relationship"
with people on youtube, where the youtuber addresses the whole audience, but
in a way that children might perceive as friendliness, while the intentions
may not be so genuine.

------
cmrdporcupine
In my experience kids are spending less time with friends, and more time at
home. So more time with parents. But is that a good thing? Is it quality time?

------
pwinnski
> One analysis of 11 rich countries estimates that the average mother spent 54
> minutes a day caring for children in 1965 but 104 minutes in 2012. Men do
> less than women, but far more than men in the past: their child-caring time
> has jumped from 16 minutes a day to 59.

So that's 70 minutes combined up to 163 combined, or a 133% increase, more
than double.

The ratio used to be 77/23, and is now 64/36, mothers/fathers.

~~~
IncRnd
> _So that 's 70 minutes combined up to 163 combined, or a 133% increase, more
> than double._

That's only true if parents are never together when they spend time with their
children.

------
riazrizvi
> [for men] child-caring time has jumped from 16 minutes a day to 59.

I always wanted to spend more time with my own children than my father did
with me. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who managed to pull it off.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Perhaps ... I've spent 12 hours today with my kids, all but the first hour-90
minutes of their day (excepting school time for the schoolies; about 5 hours
in the same space as them).

I didn't read the article but is this effect coming from father's doing more
time as stay-at-home parents?

[FWIW we're dead poor financially at least in part through choice to have lots
of contact with our kids.]

~~~
balabaster
After spending 12 hours with my kids, they would spend about 6 of those
fighting with each other and me pulling my hair out and wanting to bash their
heads together because they can't see their way past their rage for the
other's existence.

No matter what I try, they just cannot accept that each other have free will
to do as they please and that isn't always going to coincide with what they
want and they need to learn to be okay with that. 12 hours straight with them
is like putting all of us in a torture chamber. They're angels when they're
apart, but put them in the same room together for more than 20 minutes and
it's like the Blair Witch Project.

By the end of the weekend, I find myself longing for Monday for them to go
back to school and be separated from one another :D

~~~
riazrizvi
I grew up with a lot of teasing and fighting. I used that experience to train
my own kids to get along. My approach boils down to a zero tolerance policy
prohibiting early abusive interactions. The type of ‘joking and playing’ that
is really abuse-with-a-smile that inevitably ends in tears. I’m simplifying
though.

Over the years family friends have repeatedly commented on how well they get
along (they are 11 & 13 now) but I just see the byproduct of strict training.
And it hasn’t stopped, because as they age and make new friends, they develop
new mean spirited habits.

------
tempestn
I found it very interesting how the change in time spent is so inversely
proportional to the starting time spent in all cases. Every country that
started low overshot every one that started high, and the lowest ended up
highest, while the highest was the only one to decline. Some of that is
explained by the bounds on time in the day, but certainly not all. Perhaps
some societal backlash (or 'pendulum effect') to the extreme.

Also interesting is that those trend lines appear to strongly suggest it will
go considerably farther still.

------
verifex
I was going to initially say something about child-care, but then I read the
article and saw that men child-care time was previously 16 minutes a day in
1965, and now is up to around 59 minutes. That actually seems like a positive
trend; at least from a holistic and common-sense point of view. It seems
pretty strange that the men would spend such little time with their offspring.
Now, we need a study to see what affect men spending more time with their
offspring is having on them and society in general.

~~~
jaclaz
I guess it depends greatly from the "business or trade" of the parents, beyond
the periods.

Personally (and in the '60's) I had the great fortune of having both mom and
pop working "on their own", (and not in a factory, in a public office or
similar) so basically after school I went to either my father's studio or to
my mother's laboratory, until I was 12 or so I made there my homeworks, or
played there.

Even if it wasn't time "dedicated" to me, as they were anyway at work doing
their jobs, one or the other parent was always present, at the most in the
next room.

I could see the difference when compared to my friends/classmates (of course
not their or their parents' fault) which had parents that went out in the
morning and came back home only in the evening, due to their job.

A lot less communication between them and parents, and a lot less "experience"
on what happens everyday in "adult's" life.

------
callmeed
Here's a few random guesses at causation:

1\. Kindergarten redshirting

2\. Most Kindergartens in the US now are half-day (EDIT: this is false)

3\. Helicopter parenting

4\. Family & Medical Leave Act ('93) + Longer maternity/paternity leave
allowances by employees

5\. An increase in single-parent households on some sort of welfare/assistance
program (i.e. the single parent is at home and cannot work)

6\. Increase in the number of parents allowed to work remotely from home

Really wish they'd give more details on how these statistics were gathered,
what age range we're talking about, etc.

~~~
jaymzcampbell
Bit OT, but I was unfamiliar with the term "redshirting" (apart from Star Trek
connotations, which I assumed isn't what was meant :) For the non-US people:

 _the practice of postponing entrance into kindergarten of age-eligible
children in order to allow extra time for socioemotional, intellectual, or
physical growth_ [1]

I remember hearing something about this sort of thing over here in the UK. I
was surprised to see this wasn't accepted policy [2] until as late as 2015.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirting_(academic)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirting_\(academic\))

[2] [https://www.gov.uk/government/news/summer-born-children-
to-g...](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/summer-born-children-to-get-the-
right-to-start-school-later)

~~~
callmeed
Yeah, I should have clarified. The terms actually originates from college
sports in the US. Its a way for academic freshman to practice with a team but
maintain 4 years of athletic eligibility.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirt_(college_sports)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirt_\(college_sports\))

------
teilo
The amount of time parents spend with their children is certainly a factor in
the well-rounded upbringing of a child, but it is a poor metric by itself.
Children need parental involvement, parental accountability and discipline,
and good parental examples to follow. If the latter two are lacking, the first
is largely irrelevant.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Agreed with the proviso that it's not just "with" but "caring for". You can be
with them and not engaging in any way. You can be caring for them without
being directly engaged with them (eg supervising a playpark visit).

------
alkonaut
"With" as in "nearby" or "with" as in "interacting with"?

------
chrisbrandow
As a parent of three kids 10-16, I can absolutely testify to the shift in the
way my cohort parents compared to our parents. All the parents I talk to are
keenly aware of the “over-parenting” dynamic, but it is very tough to break
out of for “reasons”. There are a ton of subtle forces and dynamics that
funnel everyone into these patterns. I still find it confounding however.

I bet an enormous part of it is how unusual it is for kids <13 years old to
walk places on their own. It really would stand out if your 11 year old kid
walked a mile to school/store. Even though that was entirely common when I was
a kid.

------
megaman22
I spent a lot of time with my parents. Lots and lots of time splitting wood,
tinkering on equipment, toiling in the garden, working in the yard. At the
time, I would have loved to spend less time with them.

~~~
metaobject
Looking back, what about now? Overall, are you happy with the amount of time
you did spend with your parents?

------
nhumrich
If this article is accurate (data source looks shady and lacking statistical
significance) I believe it. I think for me, the main thing that would explain
the increase is that you now _have_ to watch your kid. What I mean is, when my
parents were growing up, they would just wander the streets, hang out with
other kids, and generally raise themselves. But now in days (at least in US)
parent supervision is required for just about everything, and parents are
afraid to let kids just go and wander (for good reasons).

~~~
balabaster
No more good reasons than historically. The media is to blame for much of the
hysteria around what we should be doing as parents. I would've gone out of my
mind as a kid if I was raised the way parents are expected to inject
themselves into every facet of their kids lives. I need my space, even when
I'm in a relationship I don't want _anyone_ injecting themselves in my space.
Not my parents, not my partner, not my kids, _nobody._ If you never make your
kids deal with being unsupervised and alone for periods, they will never be
able to be alone, which will make them dependent on spouses and partners
constantly for their emotional well-being. _That is unhealthy for themselves
and their partners._

Obviously we can't know the consequences of society's overbearing and
overzealous parenting "rules" until our kids become adults, but mark my words,
they will come back to bite our kids in the asses if we don't give our kids
room to breathe.

------
nicholasjarnold
I don't have any peer reviewed studies to point to here, but I do remember
reading about both the stagnation of middle-class incomes and the rising cost
of childcare in recent years.

If you take those ideas as fact and couple them with the people commenting on
the 'parenting police state' it makes sense that we're seeing an increase in
time spent with children.

Will this increased parenting time lead to humans that are better or worse
prepared to cope with and thrive in the world after leaving the nest?

~~~
bunderbunder
I'm not prepared to dig up any articles right now, but a lot of child
psychologists seem to be worried that it will make children worse off in the
long run. All that constant parental contact inhibits their learning how to be
independent.

~~~
IncRnd
Out of all the people I know, those who seem to worry about everything they
encounter were all trained in psychology or sociology.

------
k__
I know many parents were at least the father started working more and often
far away from their family.

Sure they need more money with children, but how good is the money if you only
see them on the weekend?

Sometimes it sounds like an excuse so they don't have to hang around with
them, but maybe I'm just bitter, because my father left me when I was 6 and
even the years before I barely saw him :/

~~~
balabaster
It's so weird how different our perspectives are given that my father too left
when I was 6. Despite feeling some... I dunno, I guess _a wish_ that I'd had a
relationship with him. But I don't feel any bitterness or anger towards him.
He did what was right for him and I can't fault him for that. Sure, it meant I
didn't have a Dad and we now don't have a relationship because there was never
time for that to grow, so that's a little sad, but I don't harbor any
resentment for that. I'll have a pint with him if I see him, he's a nice guy,
I like what I know of him, I see a lot of myself in him, but he may as well
just be some other guy. We've probably not spent more than 6 months of time
together in total since I was 6. I'll be 42 this year. It would be easy to
harbour resentment for that, but what's the point? It doesn't serve any
purpose, it won't change anything. It won't bring us closer together. It'll
just make two people feel bad without any positive value.

~~~
k__
Oh I don't resent him, he's just not a person I would like to spend time with.
I just often think I'm generally bitter about parenting because of this.

------
peeters
OK I'll ask: what's the deal with Denmark?

~~~
ovulator
The study only had two data points for Denmark, and extrapolated the rest from
that.

~~~
nkurz
I'm not sure if you are being serious or joking, but yes, this does turn out
to be exactly the problem. The study only has data points for Denmark in 1987
and 2001, and the whole rest of the curve is extrapolated from the data from
these two years.

France, the other extreme outlier and the focus of the Economist article, is
extrapolated from 3 years. The original graph at least tries to show error
bars, but the Economist's "cartoon" helpfully omitted them. Theoretically,
there might be something useful hidden somewhere else in the paper, but the
graph that the Economist focuses on is rubbish.

------
gautamdivgi
I’m definitely not an expert here but isn’t less time with parents a
characteristic of the Industrial Age? Before that when movement across jobs
was fairly static I believe the family craft would be passed down with the
parents as teachers. I could be totally off the mark here but would definitely
like to know more

------
jknz
iOS 13 and Android 11 future killer feature: When the user leaves work, turn
off all email notifications as well as any notification from a non-family
contact (including the addictive red "1" in the corner of app icons on the
home screen).

Turn it back on whenever the user is back at work or at 9 on the next weekday.

------
j_s
Is there any evaluation of quality vs quantity?

Technology adds more and more distractions, reducing effects of physical
presence.

------
SubiculumCode
I don't have a subscription. Does the author consider the broader historical
context? For example, on near subsistence agricultural societies, I imagine
that families spend a lot of time working together, for example. Same with
hunter-gathering, or even son-as apprentice trade crafts.

~~~
roel_v
Somehow I don't think that tilling land with a baby strapped to your back
would be counted as 'spending time with'...

~~~
SubiculumCode
I imagine herding the sheep or hunting deer with my son would qualify, or any
of the other common tasks of agrarian and hunter gather societies.

------
kevmo
How much time compared to 300 years ago?

------
juanmirocks
Does this study also consider that children remain living at their parents'
for longer and longer? For example, it is not bizarrely uncommon in Spain to
find people in their late twenties or thirties still living with their
parents.

------
tzakrajs
They don't specify the age of the children, but one reason might be that more
young adults are finding it difficult to be employed thus spending more time
with their family.

------
creo
Quantity over quality? There is "don't reinvent the wheel" stereotype in
software industry, but it does not apply to other areas by the looks of it.

------
LeicaLatte
Even if true, it was probably unintentional.

------
balabaster
I think back to when I was a kid...

My parents divorced when I was 6. Didn't really have a Dad to speak of until
my Mum remarried when I was 14. That's a huge span of time for a kid to go
through with one parent struggling to make ends meet. She worked hard and I'm
sure she was stressed struggling to support 2 boys of 6 and 3.

Work for her finished 3 hours after we finished school and there often wasn't
an after school program to cover us so we would go to her office and help with
photocopying and filing. I never recall feeling like she wasn't there. Even
when she didn't have time to pay us attention, she was _there._ It never
occurred to me as a kid that she didn't pay me attention. I was too busy
paying attention to my own interests. She was home for dinner every night. She
was the worst cook in the world back then, I laugh about it now, but you know
what? She tried, _fuck she tried_. We turned out okay. She didn't poison us
and now she's an amazing cook. I'd eat her home cooked meals over a restaurant
meal any day of the week. She introduced me to reading at a young age. I'd
read for hours, days and weeks with our only interaction being to call out
spellings of words from my bedroom to the living room to ask what the word
was, I have no idea what she was doing, only that she responded to my query.

I'm thankful we had a small school and aside from a few troubled kids, most of
us could say we were at least friendly if not friends. I could name every kid
in that school and I knew all of their parents. We all knew at least half a
dozen other parents we could go to if we needed something and long before
school was out, most of us had adopted some other kids parents as our own and
we floated between each others houses as if they were our own too.

Did I spend a lot of my childhood longing for what I didn't have? A
relationship with my father like "normal" kids. Sure I did. I still do as an
adult. But it is what it is. I make damn sure that my kids never have to
wonder if I care, or wonder where my priority is. I frequently work 12-15
hours a day, including weekends. But be sure, if my kids tell me they need me
somewhere for something, I drop everything and I'm there. School events,
plays, recitals, karate presentations, dinner and reading to them for half an
hour at bedtime.

It's important that kids have space to grow on their own. They need that. They
may think they want you in their space all the time, but that breeds
dependence on your approval and input into their thought processes. If you
want to raise independent adults that have confidence in their own decision
making skills, you need to get out of the way and give them room to make shit
decisions and pick up the pieces while it's not going to kill them. Wisdom
comes from experience, experience comes from making bad decisions and picking
yourself up and trying again. If you bubble wrap them and protect them from
every trauma you're scared of, they will never learn for themselves.

I think if I analyze my childhood, my Mum probably spent only a fraction with
us boys that would be seen as acceptable today, certainly much less than I
give my kids, but in my eyes she did it right. She gave us the room to become
strong independent men, able to stand alone and take on the world. She gave us
just enough pride to make us feel like we'd earned it, but not enough to let
it go to our heads. Able to make decisions for ourselves and deal with the
consequences of those decisions and clean up our own messes. If I could rewind
to my childhood and ask her to do anything differently, I wouldn't ask her to
change a thing. She did good.

The greatest thing I learned from her was that you don't need to panic about
raising your kids. All you need to do is observe and listen. Your kids will
tell you what they need. Give just enough, just enough to make them earn it.
This way when they become adults, they will know how to make it on their own.

------
dailyvijeos
It’s no surprise because helicopter parents also don’t have their priorities
or common-sense in order.

------
cylinder
Less household chores to do these days, more time sitting next to kid
refreshing Twitter

------
Romanulus
Quantity != Quality.

------
agumonkey
I read patents

------
justinzollars
Wow! That's an amazing stat!

------
otakucode
This is a bad thing. Children are being straight up stifled and their ability
to develop independence being actively and aggressively destroyed. We will pay
a very steep price for this.

~~~
komali2
I've been tossing this idea around actually. Gotta find some way to put my
anthropology minor to use :P

All unsourced speculative thoughts:

So, traditionally, across _all_ early human civilizations (including pre-ag
revolution), my understanding is that kids weren't "raised" by their parents -
everyone just kind of hung out in their villages, doing misc tasks/work, while
the children ran free. The "raising" was done by the village as a whole, with
the village elders taking an authoritative stance.

Unlike in today's society, there isn't this massive, silo'd burden of ensuring
a kid grows up sane / well adjusted / useful to society lumped onto two people
who have _literally never done it before_ and have to juggle the
responsibility with as much as 8 hours a day or more of work to provide
food/shelter for the kids. On average, these couples get about 1.5 "kids"
worth of "raising kids" experience, and then that knowledge just dies off
because they don't raise any more kids and don't really participate in the
raising of their grandchildren.

Compare that to a village where everybody is involved in raising kids, in
particular the elders who might have seen tens of children growing and
developing, from birth right up to adulthood.

I guess my point is I'm not sure we're really doing "raising kids" in the best
way anymore - I don't understand how it's acceptable that

1\. Parents need to spend the majority of time away from children to provide
food and shelter for the children

2\. Two people with minimal "parenting" skills are entrusted with the raising
of children from birth to adulthood

EDIT: These thoughts apply to American white culture. Asian cultures still
involve grandparents heavily in raising the child (grandparents raising the
kids while parents are at work - I got my own issues with that as well but
this isn't the place for it) and pockets of Black American neighborhoods where
kids are raised by the community / large family units. (There's actually
really great books written on how Black American kids grow up _super_ socially
adjusted, verbose, and confident because of how much time they spend hanging
out with various adults)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
You appear to be describing the difference between a communist society and a
capitalist one.

The elders, and everyone, helps to raise the child in the "agrarian" because
they realise the benefit acrues to all of society, and they have humanity; the
modern way is to not do it because you can do other stuff that makes you more
profit and puts you ahead of the others.

People in "The West" are much more involved in competing against other people
rather than cooperating with them.

~~~
barry-cotter
You appear to be confusing communist with agricultural and capitalist with
industrial.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I don't think so, just trying to use the context of "agrarian village life"
that the parent used. The point is that Capitalism provides a framework in
which time, and particularly action, is linked directly to financial
recompense and in which profit motive - rather than other firms of value - is
lauded most highly. That moves away from community spirit, cooperation,
fostering others, and towards greater emphasis on individual monetary wealth
(and consumption that indicates such wealth).

------
Troyboy
How is this even possible when nearly all households requiring dual incomes?

~~~
nasalgoat
Weekends.

Dad used to fiddle in the basement or go golfing, now he goes to soccer
practice or the park.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Did dad used to fix stuff in the basement, rather than "fiddle", everything
now is made to break and be harder to repair than to replace ...

------
tomc1985
Probably because helicopter parenting is in vogue (at least in the US). It is
seriously messed up that you can have CPS called on you for letting your kid
wander freely in the neighborhood

~~~
junkscience2017
I can't get my kids out of the house. I try. All of their friends are on
SnapChat and/or Steam games. No one leaves their rooms. It is really
depressing. Kids are not getting fresh air anymore.

~~~
DoubleCribble
Mystery power outages that seem to hit only our house have been known to occur
in my neighborhood on fine weather days. It's like a ghost in the breaker box
or something...

~~~
conanbatt
Kids today learn faster than we did also. One they he will fix the breaker box
for you and its GG dad.

I truly consider that my kid will be able to use the internet against me in
ways inimaginable. Its exciting!

~~~
tomc1985
My parents used to swipe critical computer parts from my machine as
punishment, to take it away. Things like power cords, keyboards -- little
stuff that cripples the computer. But I had spares for days, stuffed in a
little box in the back of my closet :)

~~~
stickfigure
Growing up, I didn't need my parents to do that. Getting an IBM PC clone to
play the latest games in the 80s required a constant effort of flipping dip
switches, pulling jumpers, and reseating chips. Not to mention the whole
EMM/EMS thing.

I'm still figuring out what I'm going to do for my son to give him the same...
incentives.

------
bkovacev
I wish I had more solid evidence to call bs on this, but from my real world
experience this is far from the truth.

