Hydroponic Children
People are now raising their children like children are little hothouse flowers.
The tragedy for today's parents, it seems, would be a child who's merely average -- grows up, gets a job doing something other than conducting the Boston Philharmonic or running the U.N., and marries some other nice but unremarkable person.
From The New York Times, Claire Cain Miller writes about how parenting has become this intense, energy-eating time suck:
Renée Sentilles enrolled her son Isaac in lessons beginning when he was an infant. Even now that he's 12, she rarely has him out of sight when he is home."I read all the child-care books," said Ms. Sentilles, a professor in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. "I enrolled him in piano at 5. I took him to soccer practices at 4. We tried track; we did all the swimming lessons, martial arts. I did everything. Of course I did."
While this kind of intensive parenting -- constantly teaching and monitoring children -- has been the norm for upper-middle-class parents since the 1990s, new research shows that people across class divides now consider it the best way to raise children, even if they don't have the resources to enact it.
It's motivated by economic anxiety. As someone who's experiencing it and who grew up with an extremely bright mom who read to me, took me to the library weekly, and gave me lessons (as a child and as a high school student at a local college), perhaps I'm an example (n of 1, I know!) that you can't micromanage your kids' way out of fiscal disaster.
What do kids miss out of this? Having a childhood. Not being tiny little responsible professionals as children.
Ms. Sentilles's mother, Claire Tassin, described a very different way of parenting when her two children were young, in the 1970s. "My job was not to entertain them," said Ms. Tassin, who lives in Vacherie, La. "My job was to love them and discipline them."Of her grandchildren, Isaac and his three cousins, she said: "Their life is much more enriched than mine was, but it definitely has been directed. I'm not saying it doesn't work. They're amazing. But I know I felt free, so free as a child. I put on my jeans and my cowboy boots and I played outside all day long."
I can't imagine kids or parents find the current parenting style a happy bargain:
Parents, particularly mothers, feel stress, exhaustion and guilt at the demands of parenting this way, especially while holding a job. American time use diaries show that the time women spend parenting comes at the expense of sleep, time alone with their partners and friends, leisure time and housework. Some pause their careers or choose not to have children. Others, like Ms. Sentilles, live in a state of anxiety. She doesn't want to hover, she said. But trying to oversee homework, limit screen time and attend to Isaac's needs, she feels no choice."At any given moment, everything could just fall apart," she said.
"On the one hand, I love my work," she said. "But the way it's structured in this country, where there's not really child care and there's this sense that something is wrong with you if you aren't with your children every second when you're not at work? It isn't what I think feminists thought they were signing up for."
Yes it's ridiculous. My kids are recently "launched" after college. I wish I had read to them more and limited screen time, but I also didn't have the patience to structure their time that way or to add more than a few enrichments. IMO the real time-suck is homework. It enraged me, honestly, that the kids had so much homework and that a lot of it necessitated parents' involvement. I was working full time in a stressful job as an attorney and my attitude was, I want our family to have unstructured FAMILY time in our few hours together after work and school. Also, I already DID my homework, I did a lot of f'in homework and the school didn't make it necessary for my mom to be a party to that. I think our kids turned out very well; we wanted kind children who are self-supporting and happy, and that's what we got---because or in spite of our parenting.
RigelDog at August 4, 2019 5:42 AM
She obviously didn't read ALL the child-raising books.
She didn't read "Your brain on childhood"
NicoleK at August 4, 2019 6:11 AM
These types of parents have always existed. Unfortunately articles like this are intended more to entertain than to inform.
Take the chart on spending by quintile. Now correlate that with income by quintile. Oh my god! They match! The reality is people enjoy spending money on their kids. If they have more money they spend more money. It comes out to roughly the same percentage of disposable income irrespective of income. I.e. the chart as presented is misinformative.
As for the 'economic anxiety' claim, so what? Like that is anything new. People have suffered from economic anxiety for hundreds of years. There isn't anything new happening there today. Quite frankly for the last 5 years or so it has been dropping for most Americans as the economy has started moving again.
There is also the claim “I think most people have this craving for their children to do better and know more than they do,” said Ms. Jones, who works in university communications. “But a lot of these opportunities were closed off because they do cost money.”
How like a university official to say if you want to know things you need to spend a lot of money. I expect she hopes you will spend it on her. Look up how effective educational spending is. You will find that the vast majority of it is worthless.
Take public schools. There is zero positive correlation between teacher qualifications or school spending and education outcomes. You can spend as much as you want and you get nothing for it. The data is very damning and it clearly shows teachers in public schools don't have an impact. What does matter? The other student's parents.
How about various educational programs? Baby Einstein and such. They don't have a statistically significant effect either. Spend all you want, it doesn't matter.
What does have an impact on education outcomes? Home stability. Keeping the same parents matters. Having clear rules that everyone follows matters. Another one, having books that are actually read in the house. Being not only literate but also able to read quickly offers a lot of opportunities. Having a lot of books on a shelf because they look nice or that is expected of you does nothing. Another one, good nutrition.
None of the things I've listed are expensive. But they are cultural choices that have an impact and move people up or down economically later in life.
Ben at August 4, 2019 6:42 AM
"Hydroponic" is top-tier sarcasm; Props.
Crid at August 4, 2019 8:04 AM
IMO, the best thing any parent can do is to read to and with their very young children. Once they've learned to read on their own, they can learn anything they want because so much of human knowledge is written down.
I R A Darth Aggie at August 4, 2019 9:17 AM
If your idea of a healthy child is one that is pink, scrubbed, unscratched and who has been shielded from every unpleasantness...
...you're raising a shooter, because when trouble comes to call, it will expose the infant you have allowed to age without learning how to be an adult.
Like these.
Radwaste at August 4, 2019 11:54 AM
> pink, scrubbed, unscratched and
> who has been shielded from
> every unpleasantness...
In the increasingly popular formation elucidated by Lukianoff & Haidt (after Nassim Taleb), you are approaching the notion of anti-fragility.
Crid at August 4, 2019 12:46 PM
"where there's not really child care"
Yeah, right. If there is one thing I'm sick of, it's helicopter parents complaining that "the U.S. doesn't have child care". Of course it does. It's all over. There's one less than a mile from my office. Of course, what those people actually mean is "the U.S. doesn't have free child care". Well, that's different, isn't it?
And besides, if you are so proud of your helicopter parenting, are you really going to leave your child in a day-care center all day? Out of your supervision? Of course you aren't. What you are going to do is take 45 minutes away from work, several times a day, to go pick up your child from one activity and drive him to another. And your childless co-workers will be happy to pick up the slack, won't they? After all, it takes a village, right? A village of which you happen to be king/queen.
Give me a freakin' break.
Cousin Dave at August 5, 2019 7:48 AM
> "the U.S. doesn't have
> free child care"
The thoughtlessly cheery mania for distant storage of personal data was handsomely staunched a few years ago when a wag put it into a tight sentence:
After that we could imagine challenging any glib enthusiast to name the precise Ethernet channel and specific server blade upon which he imagined his financial truths, pictures of Aunt Bessie in front of the Packard at the '47 picnic, and bootlegged pornography were being held in redundant, impenetrable encryption.Because: Yeah, right.
That's how I feel about the promiscuous use of the word "free" for government-mandated services. Where exactly do they imagine the wealth for these quotidian blessings is created, and from whom do they think it's being taken?
…And I want more than just 'Everyone will pay for it!,' because we know that's not true.
NAME NAMES.
And see how far you get.
cars at August 5, 2019 8:59 AM
We shouldn't let this thread expire without once again saluting Amy for "Hydroponic."
Crid at August 5, 2019 9:01 AM
Salute
Conan the Grammarian at August 5, 2019 9:31 AM
"We shouldn't let this thread expire without once again saluting Amy for 'Hydroponic.'"
Now that you mention it, the mom in the article did mention swim lessons...
Cousin Dave at August 5, 2019 12:12 PM
But trying to oversee homework, limit screen time and attend to Isaac's needs, she feels no choice.
____________________________________
I agree she shouldn't have to help with the kid's homework. As you-know-who said: "One does not become a great pitcher if Mom is standing on the mound with you, and one does not become a great student if Mom helps with the homework."
But, re the limiting of screen time, how many kids will happily run around outdoors with no friends, since the other kids are stubbornly staying indoors - or hiding somewhere and sitting down with their games? Tricky, that. No wonder parents force their kids to join sports teams - and have to keep chauffeuring them to activities.
Not to mention that, as I once said, keeping kids supervised in organized activities means they're less likely to get caught in cases of mistaken identity when their UNsupervised friends engage in acts of vandalism, theft or worse. Providing one's kids with good alibis can be crucial in making sure they get into good colleges, after all.
lenona at August 5, 2019 1:11 PM
I realize few will see this, but...
https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/opinion/2378231-john-rosemond-parenting
(From 2008.)
Q: "Ever since I had children, now 7 and 5, I have resented sacrificing my executive position in the work force for staying home and giving 150 percent to my children to make sure they succeed in life. I was recently offered my former position back. I am torn between going back to work and my responsibility as a parent. My husband, who is an uninvolved father, says he wants me to be happy and thinks that going back to work is what I should do. What advice can you give me?"
A: "Take it from someone whose mom worked and went to college nearly all of my formative years, one can succeed in life without his or her mom sacrificing everything she wants for herself to ensure that. In fact, I don't think the self-sacrificing mom ensures anything except perhaps a child who is excessively dependent upon his mother.
"Why did women liberate themselves, anyway? Surely not to enslave themselves to the task of making sure their kids succeed, which no amount of maternal effort can guarantee. My mom, and mothers of her ilk through time, thought it was their kids' responsibility to figure out how to succeed in life, not theirs. They believed it was simply their job to raise children of character, not children who had high IQs or sat at the heads of their classes or went on to become doctors, lawyers, or CEOs of major corporations.
"As for your husband, the 'uninvolved father' who wants what is best for his wife, perhaps you are so involved with your children that he has difficulty feeling like he can get involved without incurring your micromanagement. Any woman who says she is giving more than 33 percent of herself to her kids is, by definition, what I call a 3M mom: a magnificent maternal micromanager. Obviously, you more than qualify.
"Besides, as I've said in recent columns, I don't think parents should be involved with their children. They should be interested and ready to get involved, but involvement should be the exception, not the rule. A HUSBAND AND WIFE SHOULD BE INVOLVED WITH ONE ANOTHER. And yes, I'm yelling, because all-too-many of today's parents need to be strapped to chairs and made to listen to a tape loop of the previous sentence blaring over a loudspeaker until they get it.
"There is nothing that secures a child's sense of well-being and releases his capacity for self-sufficiency more reliably than knowing his parents are in relationship with one another. Perhaps, and I say this gently, you have so immersed yourself in the role of mother that you have neglected your marriage.
"Perhaps it is past time for you to rediscover the joy and liberation of being a wife first, a mother second."
lenona at August 7, 2019 11:02 AM
Ben, what costs money is not the 3Rs, but the enrichment stuff. The extra classes in math, the science camps, the instrument lessons, etc., all hallmarks of a well-educated person.
Of course, a lot can be done at home, you can buy a toy microscope and look at your cheek cells and leaves from the garden, and go scoop up wanter and test it with a test kit you buy, and that'll set you back less than a camp.
But sometimes it's harder to teach your own kids something and the professionals have tricks. Like skiing, they were super resistant when I taught them, and I got frustrated, but the instructor was great.
So that costs money.
NicoleK at August 8, 2019 4:59 AM
Nicole, home-schooled kids from families of modest means regularly embarrass the USA's institutional education system. All you really need to educate a kid is to know more than the kid.
Also, schools love to threaten cancelling things like advanced placement classes when a levy is in play, but doing so won't save so much as a dime. The kids who take enrichment and AP classes are not going to go to a study hall if you cancel them - they will sign up for some other elective class. They're still going to be in a classroom, using a teacher, that period - the only difference will be which textbook they're using, and the AP books are the best cared for, longest lasting books in the school. The threats are based not on actual cost saving potential, but what will scare parents the most.
bw1 at August 13, 2019 6:02 PM
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