Parents, MIA

Last December I flagged a post by Freya India, a 20-something Brit who writes on Substack. She also contributes to Jonathan Haidt’s site, “After Babel.” Haidt is the author of the best-selling The Anxious Generation that is about the cost to kids of spending too much time on phones and devices and too little time in unstructured play with friends.

India questions the conventional wisdom regarding contemporary parenting that today’s parents are overprotective. She says that may be true with regard to physical safety, but in terms of moral guidance? Not so much. Parents, she argues, need to be more on the job in that area. You can read the whole piece but here’s how she opens her post.

“It’s pretty much accepted as fact that parents today are overprotective. We worry about helicopter parenting, and the coddling of Gen Z. But I don’t think that’s the full story. Parents aren’t protective enough.

“Or at least, what parents are protective about has changed. They are overprotective about physical safety, terrified of accidents and injuries. But are they protective by giving guidance? Involved in their children’s character development? Protective by raising boys to be respectful, by guiding girls away from bad influences? Protective by showing children how to behave, by being an example?

“As far as I can see many parents today are overprotective but also strangely permissive. They hesitate to give advice or get involved, afraid of seeming controlling or outdated. They obsess over protecting their children physically, but have little interest in guiding them morally.”

That said, I don’t envy parents today. There are so many challenges we didn’t face. Phones, social media, easy access to awful stuff via the internet, not to mention the whole COVID experience and its impact on relationships and socialization. Parents have my empathy and, for those parents to whom we are closest, our support and admiration.

Part of the reason that parenting has gotten tougher has been the weakening of social institutions like neighborhood, church, and school. “It takes a village” is a cliche, but nonetheless true. It’s tough to provide moral guidance and boundaries if you, as a parent or family, are flying solo. It’s a little like observing a sabbath day, a practice which has enjoyed a rediscovery in the last 25 years as an antidote to the 24/7 frenzy. But many of those trying to keep a day set apart for rest and reflection discovered you really need to be part of a strong community that is doing this together.

Parents who wisely resist getting their 8, 10, or 12-year-olds an iPhone are met with, “but I’m the only one in my class without a phone!” Parents need social support when they try to buck the pressures of consumerism and technology, not to mention ideologies that privilege autonomy and freedom defined as “doing whatever I want” over moral formation and tradition. Which is where religious congregations come in. When we were raising our kids our church was our primary community, and we were joined in parenting by a host of other trusted adults in our faith community. Fewer people have that, or choose that, today.

But another thing we are short on these days is adults. Or maybe we’re unclear about what being an adult means. “There’s this broader cultural message,” writes India, “that adults should focus on their own autonomy and self-actualization . . . They stopped being role models of responsibility and became vessels of the only culture left, a therapeutic culture, where it’s only acceptable to be protective of one thing, your own mental health and happiness . . .  Adults talk about finding themselves as much as teenagers do.”

The idea that adults have wisdom or skills to pass on has pretty much been lost. So comments India, “Now all that’s left for adults to do is desperately attempt to stay young.” It does seem like a lot of people who are chronologically adult work pretty hard at acting like, even talking like, teenagers, which I find sort of pathetic. (But then some would say I’ve been an adult since I was 12. Hazards of being a first-born.)

A couple random zingers from India’s piece that I especially liked:

“We pride ourselves on our non-judgemental morality while judging anyone that came before us.”

“But then I guess to hand something down adults would have to believe in something first. When everything is subjective, when all is debunked, when all is a social construct, how can you pass it down?”

“Nobody who looks honestly at young people today can believe parents are protective enough. Children are crying out for more protection. They need reassurance that there is a right and wrong.”

There might have been a time when such sentiments would be thought conservative, but these days they are a non-partisan. The left dropped into the abyss of identity politics and elite “luxury beliefs.” While today’s so-called conservatives, under Donald Trump’s influence, are without any moral compass at all. Not a good world for children or parents.

But, if Freya India is any indication, perhaps we are waking up to what we’ve lost?