Lisa Belkin responds with the comforting thought of generational change:
I predict the ascendancy of the Slacker parent over the next few years. Alpha parenting is not only tiring, it is can backfire, raising what some call the T-Ball generation, where everyone swings until they get a hit, everyone gets a trophy, and no one learns what it means to be disappointed. (Gen Y knows the risks well; they are that generation.) The economy will also help to tamp down the Alpha Moms in the near future (a speck of a silver lining).Quick, start teaching your kids to compete and get ahead! Sounds like the new alpha, not a slacking off to beta.
Posts
35 comments:
I, for one, blame the New York Times.
I thought I had bad grammar today. Now I think the NYT's bloggers are worse.
If they, whom are supposed to be smarter than me, cannot write correctly, then I am exonerated of all of my terrible grammatical faults. L'chaim!
It's the new slacker grammar.
I is can haz cupcake.
I was at a harvest festival a few weeks ago. One of the games was a rope ladder strung nearly horizontally over a bed of straw. The goal was to climb 12 feet or so and ring a bell at the end.
The line moved agonizingly slowly as many of the parents held the ropes and balanced their kids to make sure they made it to the bell. The high point of this tedious display was a five-year-old who burst into howls when she made it to the top and her mother wouldn't let her fall into the straw.
My four-year-old made it about half way without help, fell into the straw, and was perfectly happy. The only bummer (for me) was that the line moved too slowly for her to get a second chance at it.
But no matter. The four-year-old and her six-year-old brother (who had managed the rope ladder by himself, upside down) soon found a large pile of straw not being used and commenced a bruising skinned-knee pile-on with a bunch of similarly untethered kids.
Let the little suckers fail now and then. It's good practice.
the ascendancy of the Slacker parent
We already have it.
It's called daycare.
Who parents their own kids anymore anyway?
Except maybe bedtimes and on weekends, they have long been the charges of minimum wagers, transient and disinterested.
American vitality is terrifying.
"Britain is the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child, according to a recent UNICEF report. Ordinarily, I would not set much store by such a report; but in this case, I think it must be right—not because I know so much about childhood in all the other 20 countries examined but because the childhood that many British parents give to their offspring is so awful that it is hard to conceive of worse, at least on a mass scale. The two poles of contemporary British child rearing are neglect and overindulgence."
Theodore Dalrymple, "Childhood’s End"
hmmm...does one need to "teach" competitivness? The ethics of competition, yes; but hasn't natural selection hard wired competition into the human genome to assure survival of the species?
The two poles of contemporary British child rearing are neglect and overindulgence.
The two poles of contemporary Finnish child rearing are neglect and overindulgence.
The two poles of contemporary French child rearing are neglect and overindulgence.
The two poles of contemporary Israeli child rearing are neglect and overindulgence.
The two poles of contemporary Polish child rearing are neglect and overindulgence.
The two poles of contemporary American child rearing are neglect and overindulgence.
Get it or need I go on?
The two poles of contemporary Hottentot child rearing are neglect and overindulgence.
The two poles of contem.......................
"Quick, start teaching your kids to compete and get ahead!"
Excellent advice. One of the thing I ask kids who are brought to me with failing grades is if they want to be poor. They look at me funny, but then I explain to them that school is a contest and the winners get to go to expensive colleges for free. The losers drop and and work cleaning the pools of the kids who won.
The kids by and large get this, but they are almost universally surprised to hear it.
Trey
Ricpic, well and effectively said. Psychologists tart it up with Permissive and Authoritarian parenting styles, but that is because they are trying to justify their salary.
Trey
If Slacker parents are on the ascendancy, it's because people have less money to pay for thousands of lessons.
Most parents today are quietly freaked that their kids won't have the same standard of living, thus wasting their parental investment and dooming them to an old age of poverty.
Where I live, there are no kids around after school. They are all programmed...jump rope class...guitar...piano...dance...harp
...soccer...soccer...soccer. Most insane are the all-consuming weekend soccer trips to distant cities which obliterate family weekends and make church attendance impossible. Then when kids get older, mandatory 'study' trips to foreign lands begin.
Belkin is Princeton '82. She ought to know how to write well.
This just in: Parent is irked by perceived demands made by society.
Pogo said: Who parents their own kids anymore anyway?
Except maybe bedtimes and on weekends, they have long been the charges of minimum wagers, transient and disinterested.
We live in the SF East Bay and have noticed two distinct maternal stereotypes in the streets, trails and parks: the thin woman outfitted in LL Bean pushing a runner's stroller chatting into her Bluetooth and the chubby woman in sweats or jeans pushing a double or triple stroller while talking/singing to the children.
Spot the nanny.
From anything I've ever heard, Chinese parents are way worse than American ones.
So, I blame the alpha-parenting on small family size.
Grandma had nine.
When her oldest were small, she had a teenaged niece to help watch them, when the youngest were born they had older siblings. And yes... they got watched about like you'd expect. No one died, despite farm equipment, large animals, and .22 rifles.
My other Grandma had three... and lived in a small city. Three wasn't much but the culture was still such that my mother had a "Mary Poppins" childhood... before Mary got there. The police were frequently bringing three grubby girls home again when they strayed too far. (Grandpa insisted that the fact children survived, proved God.)
People claim that the world is changed and you can't *do* that anymore... but bad things happened then, too. Children disappeared or were abused or killed... they got in fights and wandered home with black-eyes and bloody noses. What has changed isn't the world, but the risk we view as normal and acceptable.
And I think that is largely due to having fewer children. When I was a kid there was still the concept of the "single child" who's mother was always too hovering, too permissive, and the child too spoiled. We don't think that way anymore, but isn't it still the same? The only difference is that now ever other family is a "single child" or at least "two child" family. And it's become normal to be the too hovering, too permissive, parent of spoiled children.
And there's a whole lot of pressure (and CPS) to make sure we conform to that new standard.
Henry said:
But no matter. The four-year-old and her six-year-old brother (who had managed the rope ladder by himself, upside down) soon found a large pile of straw not being used and commenced a bruising skinned-knee pile-on with a bunch of similarly untethered kids.
I was raised in a small CA town where massive Sycamore trees lined the streets. In the autumn leaves were raked into huge piles to be burned weekly. We spent many hours thrashing, tunneling and diving into crispy golden hued mountains, it was magical.
The deciduous trees, including Sycamores, in our neighborhood are turning color and the leaves will soon drop. Children will be driven to sterile pumpkin lots replete with faux autumn icons and programmed "fun".
The leaves will be scooped into huge green recycling bins by blow & go gardeners and trucked away.
One of my weekly childhood chores was raking leaves or grass clippings, a sublime seasonal ritual I still enjoy and the quest for the perfectly balanced lawn/leaf rake is eternal.
Sigh.
ricpic - .... The two poles of contemporary American child rearing are neglect and overindulgence. Get it or need I go on?
All possibilities fall along a continuum running from neglect to overindulgence? Where on that line would you plot a harsh disciplinarian?
Dalrymple's point is that the British tend to evaluate the quality of parenting according to the degree to which children are given what they want. That range of possibilities is bounded by neglect and overindulgence. Dalrymple believes this leaves out an important question: what should parents impose on children whether or not they like it?
Instead of trying and failing to be clever, read his City Journal piece.
Synova has it exactly right. My sister recently mentioned that she thought the world (or at least our part of it) was currently suffering from a dearth of middle children. One- and two-child families have no middle children. Ironically, my sister herself is likely not to have more than two children. I have four, and I find that I parent much differently now than I would if I only had one or two.
I also homeschool, and the common anti-homeschooling argument that school is needed for socialization always makes me laugh. If you have three or four or more kids, they learn lots of social skills at home. At school, no one is really trying to teach them social skills; everyone in charge just wants to make it through the day with no incidents.
There are, of course, some parents who hover too much. But I think they make up a very small minority, and I've seen too many writers pretending that the proper alternative to this is total slackerdom. Great parenting doesn't consist of minimal interaction and an endless persual of self-interests while the kids "learn to entertain themselves." If you do much reading of parenting articles lately, you'll see plenty of people arguing for that. Convenience is an easy sell.
Freeman's quite right: Lasseiz-faire parenting is an easy sell. And just because a lot of us grew up with that, it's that much easier to justify.
But really, there's a balance to be struck. If you don't do a little active parenting, at least, your child is likely to never be aware of what he can achieve--at least until he's much older to find out on his own.
The dance is knowing when to lead, when to push, when to follow and when to get out of the way, and being able to turn on a dime. (You know, start by leading, then get out of the way, then follow, then push, then...)
At school, no one is really trying to teach them social skills; everyone in charge just wants to make it through the day with no incidents.
That's a kind of socialization, though, isn't it? "Keep your head down and don't bother your superiors."
Sounds like the new alpha, not a slacking off to beta.
How do you know everything that happens in my family?? Just last Friday, when progress reports came out, Mom and Dad got really mad at my brother Alpha because his grades sucked. They told him he had better stop slacking off and start studying more and to stop playing with Mom's computer.
I thought he was doing what he is supposed to do, but I just checked and that slacker brother of mine is starting to post again.
He's going to get clobbered because I'm telling Dad.
"That's a kind of socialization, though, isn't it? "Keep your head down and don't bother your superiors.""
That it is, but here in Los Angeles the question is who are the superiors. The educators are often ruled by the students. At best, the students consider themselves equal to their teachers, and respect them accordingly.
That it is, but here in Los Angeles the question is who are the superiors. The educators are often ruled by the students. At best, the students consider themselves equal to their teachers, and respect them accordingly.
I suspect the animals don't respect the zookeepers, either.
"I suspect the animals don't respect the zookeepers, either."
'The monkeys stand for honesty
Giraffes are insincere
And the elephants are kindly but they're dumb
Orangutans are skeptical
Of changes in their cages
And the zookeeper is very fond of rum'
The problem in an Acorn shell is competitiveness vs nannystatism. The Gen Y kids have never had to compete. They have never known disappointment in giving it your best shot and still coming up short. All of their "competitive" environments have always been outcome based with the outcome being predetermined. Everyone gets a trophy. Yeah!!!
Now they can't come to grips with the setbacks that are a part of life. They want to live their whole lives protected from failure. Hell, they don't believe they have ever failed. Not personally. It's some other reason - the teacher, the bigger kid, the unfair rules. That is why so many are so unfazed by the concept of socialism.
In its most basic concept, socialism is equality of outcomes. This is something of which they are already familiar.
Ha ha ha ha ha. These women obviously haven't met my mum.
"Go outside and play!" and "Stop running in and out!" added together can only mean one thing, "I don't like you around me."
I swear to God, British have bugs up their bums about Americans. I read it all the time. Every day. On b3ta, in response to a question of the week, you'd be amazed how many times hatred toward Americans arises incongruently. It's dismaying. Then, in the very next statement, they'll enthuse about visiting the U.S. as if they're going to Oz, the Frank Baum Oz, not the Australia Oz. Or remark about a recent trip lasting an entire week which automatically makes them expert on all things US.
If these women think American parents are over doing it, they haven't seen Japanese super moms preparing their kids for collegiate excellence at preschool ages.
Grammar.
... and sit beside a children while they do their homework. Wut?
Yeah, the Japanese have it down.
But it's not bad when they do it. They focus on actual achievement and meeting social expectations versus--well, whatever it is Americans do.
Pogo-- love that S&G song.
My dad was always at work. My mom was to run home to when I was hungry. I did my growing up on the street in front of our apartment house and then the side streets and then the further reaches of the neighborhood and the nearby park. Miles and Joel, "The Twins," were my best buddies and mentors and competition and sometimes my mortal enemies. It was the greatest. I don't feel deprived.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
It's the new slacker grammar.
I is can haz cupcake.
Don't you dare defend them! Daddy spank.
Back to the subject...Maybe the Brits would have more energy if they weren't such lushes. I am a really occasional drinker but they make the guys on Mad Men look abstemious.
How's this for timely - I'm English and my wife is American and we have a 14 month old. We moved back to the UK 2 years ago after living in Buffalo NY for 4 years. One of my primary reasons for moving back to the US was my daughter - I was and am honestly chilled by the thought of her growing up in Britain.
Childhood there is frightening - there are no extra curricular activities, no social clubs. There are just street corners filled with unruly teens drinking alcohol openly and loudly, abusing anyone who looks their way, sure in their own minds that they are indestructible. That first day I was back in Britain was a revelation - stood in a post office queue watching terrified pensioners hoping that the group of loud obnoxious kids would just leave them alone, and the kids very aware of the power they had.
What makes the news every night? The rampaging angry youth of Britain. Yes American kids may be mollycoddled and protected from failure, but the European youth are seemingly groomed into what you see in social protest videos - angry, thrilled with power, never doubting they will their own way as long as their tantrum goes far enough.
Maybe the Brits would have more energy if they weren't such lushes.
I don't know if they're lushes or not, but your comment did make me take more notice of "hung-over" in the description of British moms at the park. Hung-over on a weekday morning? We go to the park or some kind of kid activity pretty much every morning, and I don't think I've ever encountered any seemingly hung-over parents.
Maybe this writer is the only hung-over one and assumes that everyone else is too.
Ann Althouse said...
It's the new slacker grammar.
I is can haz cupcake.
No. It's I is can haz cuppycake.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12Z6pWhM6TA
Post a Comment