Today is a much-anticipated day. Not just for every American taxpayer, including me, for whom the annual bill is due. April 15 has long been on my calendar for an entirely different reason: it marks the date of publication of my newest book, A Nation of Wimps, The High Cost of Invasive Parenting
, which was stimulated by an article I wrote for Psychology Today. The book examines the culture of overparenting that now prevails among the middle class and above, and it looks deeply at its causes. But I wrote the book because I'm especially concerned about the consequences, which have major implications for all of us.
Way out of balance
Parents, like lovers, must always negotiate a fine line between nurturing and controlling. But in the past decade, they've stepped way over the line into controlling. They find a million ways to justify it: They're worried about their kids' success, or their safety. We love our kids. We want them to succeed in life. We know that the world has changed on our watch. None of us knows what the world is going to look like in 10 years. We're worried that our kids somehow will be left behind, that they won't achieve our standard of living.
Tots as trophies
So we push them to achieve. In school. On the soccer field. We schedule their days. We try to cram everything in that might give them a shot at a brand-name education, because we think that's the best guarantee of success. We take away free play and recess. We create a hothouse and we hover over them. We clear the path for them and clean up in their wake. If they leave a book or a paper at home, we run it over to school for them. If a kid gets a grade that disappoints, we don't ask, what do you think you need to do as well as you want? We call the school to get the grade changed. We write their essays. And from their achievements we take our meaning and our status, subverting their developmental needs to our own psychological needs. Sometimes it's because our own adult relationships are less than satisfying.
Crisis on the campus
But once they leave the protective cocoon of home for college, kids are breaking down psychologically in record numbers. Depression, anxiety disorders, panic attacks. Eating disorders, which are really disorders of perfectionism. Self-mutilation. This isn't hypothetical. Six years ago I broke the story of the "crisis on the campus." How colleges were reeling from the number of kids who were developing serious psychological problems. In 2004 I found that things had only gotten worse. More kids suffering, more severe problems. And it's worse now. I began asking why. The answer was an article in Psychology Today called A Nation of Wimps. It hit a nerve. The article wound up being the starting point of the book.
Anxiety unleashed
The question we need to ponder is, why is it that those who mean only the best for their kids wind up bringing out the worst in them? I think anxiety has accompanied parenting from the very beginning. The difference is, now parents feel free to transmit their anxieties to their kids. Of course, parents are not exclusively to blame for overinvolvement in children's lives. Schools have ushered them right through the front door, asking them to oversee basic activities like homework that kids should be managing on their own.
An absence of coping skills
But parental scrutiny combined with parental anxiety only creates fragility in the kids. Hyperinvolvement is always counterproductive. To double the whammy, the kids have never been allowed to develop coping skills, because all the lumps and bumps are being taken out of life for them. They never have had to figure their own way through any little challenges of life. They hit a minor impediment and they feel overwhelmed. They have never had to learn to solve problems. And because their parents hover and clear the path and take over tasks, they figure "there must really be something wrong with me."
Kids too compliant
Our kids have been on this track from infancy with no known way to get off, and so not only are they psychologically fragile, they grow up overly compliant. Debate and dissent are not even part of their classrooms. They can't tolerate uncertainty, despite the uncertain world that we live in. They don't want to take risks and they don't know how to problem-solve. How do you sustain an economy without risk-taking innovators? How do you have a democracy without a tolerance for lively debate?
So it's time to back off and give kids a chance to develop their own passions and display their own competencies. We need to let them play and to mess up. And we have to stop acting like everything will matter on their permanent life resume. I could have filled the book with eyeball-rolling anecdotes of the ways parents are keeping their kids from learning how to function-like the couple who bought a roll of bubble wrap and lined their hotel room with it to protect their toddler daughter. But instead, I decided to devote a chapter to all the things that parents can do to help their kids without sacrificing anyone's sanity. I'm hoping the book starts a national conversation about how we're raising our kids. We're overdue.
If you wish to buy the book, you can click right here on the title A Nation of Wimps, The High Cost of Invasive Parenting.
