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The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

nytimes.com

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Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#21

Post by 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.

Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#24

Post by skh »

choombak wrote: post #9

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

Given that there are 300+ million people in the U.S. and it isn’t feasible for all of them to live off the land it’s good that we organize ourselves into a society. The structure for this organizing is government and society’s wishes are in principle reflected by the laws enacted by government. We all live in communities and it’s in everyone’s interests that certain standards are upheld. Society is right to enforce standards of care.

Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#25

Post by newshorts »

markbnj wrote: post #6
Reedx wrote: post #3

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.

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.

Then by all means, please share your opinions

Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#26

Post by 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.

Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#28

Post by neogodless »

Reedx wrote: post #3

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.

I imagine there's a better way to phrase that - i.e. "You're trying to raise an adult, someone with full capacity to make educated decisions, problem solve, improve their skill set, etc. In other words, be fully autonomous and capable." That's much wordier, but I think there's a lot of ambiguity in "putting yourself out of a job." It's a cliche, so it has some meaning to it, but I don't like how it leaves room for interpretation of how you put yourself out of that job. There's a million ways to reach that objective without actually doing a good job as a parent or ending up with a responsible grown up offspring. Least of all, you probably don't want the relationship to end, nor do you want to stop being available if they want emotional support or a little wisdom.

Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#29

Post by gumby »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #16
rimliu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced that with this attitude your kids won’t have a harder time as adults.

Why? I wish my parents would have been a little more hands on with a lot of this type of stuff.

My kid used to say that until he got to college and realised that his classmates were comparatively less able to figure things out.

Re: The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

#30

Post by sigfubar »

Klathmon wrote: post #22
gf263 wrote: post #20

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

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!

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.

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