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The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

nytimes.com

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Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#121

Post by anyfoo »

elipsey wrote: post #99
ideonexus wrote: post #5

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…

I have a great deal of sympathy for that “damned if do, damned if you don’t” problem that really engaged parents describe, and I feel like I have observed this issue with an outsider perspective. My spouse and I live in SF now (I’m a programmer, she’s an engineer) but we’re not exactly from here in either the geographic or social-economic sense. She grew up in northern Idaho and Montana, I grew up in Alaska. Her pare…

I'm not sure you would have been better off being raised how your parent (hah!) poster described, as you kind of allude to in your last paragraph yourself. Maybe your parents were too laissez-faire and too lenient in how they treated your missteps, but I don't think that means that parents should take control over their children's free time and force activities upon them. You say that you would have preferred your current life over "street smarts", but I'm not sure how the parent poster's style would actually provide that, instead of just depraving children of organic, free-willed social interaction.

Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#123

Post by sjg007 »

ideonexus wrote: post #5

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…

Under-parenting is definitely a thing.

Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#124

Post by skookumchuck »

gnarbarian wrote: post #19
ideonexus wrote: post #5

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…

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…

> They simply can't handle the vacuum that opens up in their lives without the micromanagement.

Maybe that has something to do with the drift of young adults to the left. They need some other authority to manage their lives.

Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#126

Post by barry-cotter »

danmaz74 wrote: post #116
wonderwonder wrote: post #113

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 som…

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

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.

Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#127

Post by barry-cotter »

darkerside wrote: post #81
kingraoul3 wrote: post #54

“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.

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.

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

> 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%.

Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#128

Post by geebee »

wonderwonder wrote: post #113

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 som…

Interesting observation. There is a personal angle, and a group identity one. Some people tend to view personal decisions through the lense of group identity, especially as it pertains to power struggles between groups.

Class struggle was a common point of analysis, and still is, though intersectionality tends to emphasize racial and gender struggles.

For a mainstream news source, The nytimes leans heavily left and often will analyze social phenomena through the framework of group identity and power structures.

Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#129

Post by barry-cotter »

ideonexus wrote: post #5

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…

Martial arts is not as good as unstructured play for executive function/focus.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-love-wisdom/2015...

> Our findings offer support for a relationship between the time children spend in less-structured and structured activities and the development of self-directed executive function. When considering our entire participant sample, children who spent more time in less-structured activities displayed better self-directed control, even after controlling for age, verbal ability, and household income. By contrast, children who spent more time in structured activities exhibited poorer self-directed EF, controlling for the same factors.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200301/the-overb...

> "Middle-class children in America are so overscheduled that they have almost no 'nothing time.' They have no time to call on their own resources and be creative. Creativity is making something out of nothing, and it takes time for that to happen," says Diane Ehrensaft, Ph.D., a developmental and clinical psychologist and professor at The Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. "In our efforts to produce Renaissance children who are competitive in all areas, we squelch creativity."

> Early-childhood-education specialist Peggy Patten, M.A., agrees and notes that children today have many wonderful opportunities, but they need time to explore things in depth. When they are involved in too many different things, they sacrifice breadth for depth.

Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#130

Post by Pulcinella »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #57
kingraoul3 wrote: post #54

“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.

Agreed. Affluent mothers feed their kids well too. And give them proper medical care. And live in places safer for kids to grow up. It's actually the reason we try to make more money. Its not a game; we earn so we can live better. That's how its supposed to work.

Perhaps all children should receive good medical care, good food, and safe places to live.
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