American parenting is killing the American marriage (2014)
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Re: American parenting is killing the American marriage (2014)
#2Being 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.
Re: American parenting is killing the American marriage (2014)
#3While 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.
Re: American parenting is killing the American marriage (2014)
#4It'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...
Re: American parenting is killing the American marriage (2014)
#5He'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.
Re: American parenting is killing the American marriage (2014)
#6A. 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...
Re: American parenting is killing the American marriage (2014)
#7While 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…
Yes. I instinctively expect the worst when I see the words 'concerned parents' in the news.
Re: American parenting is killing the American marriage (2014)
#8I 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.
Re: American parenting is killing the American marriage (2014)
#9Being 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 a…
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.
Re: American parenting is killing the American marriage (2014)
#10This 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.