The disintegration of the parent-child bond
theglobeandmail.com
theglobeandmail.com
I don't buy that the relationship between parents and children has changed all that much in the last 25 years. I certainly don't believe parents love their children less, as the author is implying ("they cannot get unconditional love and acceptance from their peers or from a report card"). Plenty of Gen-Xers were latchkey kids and we don't seem to have suffered for it.
The explanation I personally favor is that children and teenagers aren't allowed to do anything the slightest bit dangerous anymore -- even the playgrounds are padded -- so they can't calibrate their sense of what really is dangerous, and therefore everything feels dangerous.
Certainly social workers in some countries (including my own) think otherwise. When we got our child there were heaps of "how to bond with children" guides given to us.
> The explanation I personally favor is that children and teenagers aren't allowed to do anything the slightest bit dangerous anymore -- even the playgrounds are padded -- so they can't calibrate their sense of what really is dangerous, and therefore everything feels dangerous.
Even if playgrounds are padded, children have plenty of opportunity to learn the cause of their actions with their parents in a safer environment. I don't see how children would develop any less just because they don't end up being disabled due to playing in dangerous environments.
Speaking from my own experience, I really wonder how I would have developed the way I did without being allowed to handle (very dangerous) tools from an early age, roamed all over Amsterdam from the ripe old age of 6, toyed with chemistry, explosives, electronics, household power and petrol engines all of which could have easily killed me.
I'm probably more careful rather than less careful because of this and none of my friends or me ended up disabled. Long before we got to the stage where we could have become disabled we learned how to respect the stuff we played with.
Trying to imagine the alternative universe where all my tools had been plastic, safe imitations, where I was only allowed to work with batteries, being limited to the local playground (supervised, of course) and chemistry would be limited to playing around with salt & vinegar.
I'm treating my own children in much the same way, I trust them to use their heads when it matters and I show them the consequences of failing to do so in as controlled (but very real) a way as possible.
Of course other parents think I'm nuts but that doesn't overly bother me.
Neither, but that does not mean that your parents did not bond with you. Here is what happened in my generation: the time I spend with my parents and family was significantly bigger than most children today. For me personally the reason for that was that my parent took me to their office and I could spend time there. For many others in my generation it was because one of the parents stayed at home. Here is what's happening right now: children enter Kindergarten at 6 months of age or when they turn one. The only person that can tell them what to handle or not is most of the time a randomly assigned caretaker.
Note that when people talk about bonding they do not talk about a 6 year old child, they talk about a newborn to toddler of less than two years of age.
You're from the Netherlands where there is a proper maternity leave. Not everybody is in that fortunate situation and I assume the article is written with this in mind.
//EDIT: also to leave another note on older children: I'm not sure how it was for you in the Netherlands, but parents and teachers used to be proper authorities to me. This is something that is becoming less and less the case. There are brats around our flat that would not even listen to police if it came to it.
You have no clue.
Giving such things to everybody is an easy way to make sure that people who will benefit from them will get them.
When I think of parenting now I think of extensive concern with kids' emotional well-being, parents who take kids sides in quarrels with teachers, etc.
I don't know if these impressions are broadly true, but it's interesting that my impression is of an opposite trend.
I agree with the overall premise of the article, which is that kids are more fragile than they have been in the past. I'm just not sure that a decreased parent/child bond is the right explanation.
I don't think that's detached, but precisely the opposite. Treating one's parents like anyone else says, 'you don't matter any more to me than anyone else does,' whereas treating one's parents as one's superiors says, 'you are my parents, older and wiser than I am, and I treat you unlike some random people on the street.'
Seems like human society has for millennia worked by having formal rituals, and it's bound people together pretty well. I'm more than a little cautious about throwing all that out.
> That only creates a relationship of command.
What's wrong with that? A 'relationship of command' is exactly what the relationship between a parent and a three-year-old must be: when the parent shouts, 'don't touch that stove!' the kid must immediately shrink back; there's no time for inner reflection or external debate on the merits and demerits of stove-touching. As the child grows, the relationship becomes less and less commanding, but a wise adult will always listen to his parents (because they really do have more experience) and a wise adult will not command his grown child except as a last resort (because it's the only thing with a chance of getting through).
The magic combination seems to be: 1) let your kids discover the world (and make mistakes) on their own, just enough to let them learn and grow up; 2) be there for them when they need you. At one point in our history, this combination seemed intuitive. These days, after several generations of successive, fear-based sales of self-help books, advice, and programming, our culture has short-circuited parental instincts.
Just as in role-playing, the parent gives little to no concern to other issues that are important for the child's development. The helicopter-parents focus on something to build into the child or to preserve the kid from; the absentee-parents merely minimize effort/time spent on the child.
Do things with your kids. Connect to them. Love them, not "because", but unconditionally.
Everything I have read, and everything I have seen, suggests that parents have to actually parent their kids. This isn't to say they need to discipline, or treat; it is to say that they cannot be idle. It's too easy to sit your kid in front of the TV and let them be "themselves", and that doesn't do anything.
Isn't it normal to feel these things? It's how an individual grows.
My secret to good parenting is compassion, consistency and honesty - the rest is just detail.
As a father of two small children, I have noticed (along with my wife) that a lot of people in various social settings seem rather uncomfortable having our kids around. It's almost like this unspoken question is hovering around us, like "why aren't they in preschool" or "why aren't they with a babysitter" or "why do you have to bring them in here? This store is for adults only!"
A lot of businesses don't have good facilities for taking care of kids (changing tables, etc.). Only recently have we seen local malls remodel and include private nursing areas, etc. So sure maybe there's some progress here, particularly as a result of greater awareness of the needs of breastfeeding mothers and so forth, but I think there's still plenty of prejudice against kids in certain sectors of society.
Somehow, and I could be mistaken, it seems to me that in past cultures (particularly in rural or tribal settings), it was a given that children were heavily involved in the "business" of home and community. Children would work the same farm as the parents, for example. Obviously a lot of that kind of family cohesion was lost during the Industrial Revolution, so maybe it could be argued that things were worse off in 1916 than 2016. I don't know. It just "feels" to me, subjectively, like children and teens need to feel more included in "adult" society, and adults need to be more actively interested in the world of children across the board.
It turns out that this article is written by a parent, rather than by a teenager.
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my aunt: why u kids always on them phones cant u have a real conversation
me: puts down phone crosses legs why did u melt the ice caps
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I'm a young adult, and I can say that anecdotally, if there's a strain in the relationship between my parents and myself it happens because I grew up in a world which is fundamentally different from the world they knew. This is partially due to technology, but it also comes from the fact that I (we) need to live in the world that "they" created.
My mother didn't understand why I wanted to sell the stock in Exxon Mobil that I was given by my grandmother. But I am the one who will have to come of age in a world of rising sea levels and global temperatures, at least partially created by that firm's wilful deception[2]. I avoid animal products in meals for the same reason. But in trying to tell my parents this, they seem to believe I am disingenuous, or they don't take the issues as seriously as I do.
Perhaps I'm reading too much into these issues. Perhaps that this is just the most recent iteration of the generational conflicts that have occurred throughout time. But it feels like the world I will inhabit is radically different from my parents', and I just don't know if there will ever be a good way to bridge that gap.
[1] https://twitter.com/what_eve_r/status/681246826746523649
[2] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-c...
Hyperbole. Let's hear about these [fundamental] changes. Life is 'a bit' unforgiving and discounting experience of survivors of this natural regime [is non-optimal].
> .. why did u melt the ice caps
So you could waste your life obsessively staring into a 3x4 glowing surface.
[edits]
> I'm a young adult
You're certainly young, but are you an adult? Adults treat one another respectfully and kindly, not vituperatively.
> But I am the one who will have to come of age in a world of rising sea levels and global temperatures, at least partially created by that firm's wilful deception[2]. I avoid animal products in meals for the same reason. But in trying to tell my parents this, they seem to believe I am disingenuous, or they don't take the issues as seriously as I do.
No, they don't take those issues seriously, because they are wiser than you and know that you are making mountains out of molehills. Twenty years from now the sea will be just fine, life on Earth will be just fine, and you'll be saying to your folks, 'gosh, I'm sorry I was such a boor.'
Don't worry — most of us go through the same thing. Lord knows that I did too.
Hasn't this always been the case?
> As one Scotsman told me, “We don’t even think much about ‘generations.’ We just all enjoy doing things together.”
Unless that Scotsman is 13, that's pointless. He may love doing things together; his children might be counting down the minutes 'til they can hop back online and talk to their friends.
> If you have the opportunity to move closer to your child’s aunts, uncles and grandparents, do it. (We did.)
That's good, but I'm not sure what this has to do with the parent-child thesis.
I'm not sure why the author hasn't considered the possibility that, just like in other areas of mental health, recognition that these issues exist and better means of diagnosing and treating them have come to light. It may well be the case that there were a great deal of anxious and depressed children around, but went undiagnosed and untreated for a long time.
1. Here's how things are.
2. Here's how things should be, if only people would listen to psychologists.
In this way, psychology has occupied the vacuum created by the departure of religion, in the minds of people who believe life should have a particular outcome, and who think someone is (or should be) in charge.
Meanwhile, parents, children, indeed everyone, are doing their best to fulfill personally chosen goals. Those goals are freely selected by independent agents in a morally neutral universe ruled only by evolution. Some plans will succeed, some will fail, but consulting authority is always a mistake, because in evolution, there is no authority.
Psychology has a long history of condemning behaviors it thinks the public dislikes, then changing their tune when public tastes change. It was once a mental illness to run away from your master in the antebellum South (Drapetomania). It was once a mental illness to be a homosexual (not very long ago). More recently, it was a mental illness to be creative and intelligent (Asperger syndrome). All these and many other imaginary ailments have been abandoned as public tastes changed.
H. G. Wells said, "Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe." It was a positive step to abandon religion. It will be another positive step when we abandon psychology and begin to think for ourselves.
We? Problems? Under what calculus are defiance, disrespect, and disconnection, "problems"? Maybe the current state of the world (or maybe just Canada) deserves defiance, disrespect, and disconnection?
The observation being made here is purely subjective; one side believes they deserve something (obedience, respect, attention) that they may, in fact, not.
More likely we are seeing a rejection of the state of the world and many of the people who caused the state to be the way it currently is.
They are not the proper attitudes of those with lesser knowledge, skill and experience to those with greater such. That they are prevalent is indicative of, among other things, bad parenting.
Guess what? Your folks were your age once. They experienced the same emotion-addled thought processes. They believed ludicrous things to be true for the same reasons that you do (and I did, and sometimes still do). And they can look at your situation from a distance and say, 'you know what? relax!' and be right.
Defiance, disrespect, and disconnection are absolutely the correct way to interact with those who insist on destroying a fundamental part of who you are.
A fundamental part of who you were when you were born was crying every time you were the least bit upset; it was evacuating your bowels without even trying to contain them. A fundamental part of who you were as a small child was being a psychopath who didn't fully realise that other people are, well, people. A fundamental part of who you were as a teenager was an underdeveloped brain — and another was the overdeveloped hormone production which didn't help your decision-making skills any.
None of those are unique to you: they are the common lot of all of us.
The whole point of good parenting is to destroy all the fundamental parts of children which are animalistic and contrary to survival in the world as it is, and to inculcate the development of secondary parts which are humanist and support survival. Now, many parents fail at those tasks, but those who succeed produce healthy, functional adult human beings. Bad parents produce selfish, brutal, cruel, unkind, animalistic demihumans.
Evil people don't think they're evil - instead, they think things like "spare the rod, spoil the child". Just... goddamn, be careful with spreading that line of thinking, okay?
We both work til about 5:30 or 6 every week day. Our kids go to after school programs where they play with friends, do homework, etc before we pick them up. We get home around 6 and they need to get to bed by 8. That gives us 2 hours every weeknight to make/pickup dinner, do something together as a family, talk about our day, and get ready for bed.
If either of us got off at around 3 every day both of the kids could come home. We could go to the store together and get things to make for dinner together. I could start cooking and they could help or do homework and then when my wife got home dinner would be ready for us to sit down and have a family meal. We'd end up eating healthier and being less rushed. On a lot of days the kids could have their friends come over for a couple of hours until dinner time and potentially that child's parent(s) could come over to visit while the kids played.
Instead, we're left with this weekly rush. I honestly don't have much of an idea who the parents of my kids friends are at school...because I don't ever see them. I barely see my kids friends. This is before we factor in things like soccer practice.
On weekends, over 2 days we try to balance house chores with family time with going to the store to get everything we'll need for meals for the week before anything else that might come up.
I cannot imagine that we're the only family with 2 working parents that experiences this. The seeming solution to the problem is for one of us to scale back, but that means figuring out something at work that will allow us to do that and ensuring that we're able to adjust costs to take a hit somewhere (assuming that asking to scale back doesn't put the entire job in jeopardy). The other solution is to try to invest what's left of that spare time into creating a side income so you can afford to scale back...which just feeds the problem.
As I've gotten older I've started to place a significantly larger amount of respect on stay at home dads or moms, because the longer we've been pushing this dual career thing the more I realize what we're giving up. It seems like so much chatter, movie references, TV references, etc over the last 2-4 decades has mocked stay at home parents as either being unimportant, uneducated, people who sit around watching TV and what not that as a society we've pressured an entire generation into feeling like raising a family instead of having a job makes you somehow less.
And I think it's breaking more of society than we want to admit. This isn't a gender roles thing either. I don't think it matters WHICH parent spends more time at home as long as one of them does.
We fuel this issue by generally meeting our significant others in college...where we are both training to have full time careers and taking on student loans that we'll have to work to repay. All just seems to be a huge, interconnected mess of a pattern.
I'm not actually sure what you could do to fix it, aside from providing companies tax credits for allowing "parent friendly" jobs to incentive them to have positions where the day ends when kids get out of school.
Each generation thinks they either invented sex or worry.
Children are first and foremost people, and they deserve to be treated as such. They should be able to define their own relationships, even if that means forming close bonds of friendship at an early age. Maybe the friendships won't last, maybe they will, but that's not for anyone to decide but those involved. Taking that away from a kid, telling them their friendships are somehow superficial and don't matter because so much of it happens through "magic computer-boxen and apps" that seem to be the root of all of today's ills, well that sounds pretty domineering and narcissistic to me.
If a parent wants a strong bond with their child, they can take all the steps they want to encourage the growth of that bond, but trying to force it, as with any other relationship, will only lead to the opposite result.