What social changes gave us “helicopter parenting” and, now, even more “intensive parenting”? This New York Times podcast from a few weeks ago, inspired by the Surgeon General’s report on parental burnout, explains all.
Michael Barbaro, host of “The Daily,” interviews Claire Cain Miller, the Times reporter covering family issues (and the mom of kids 8 and 12). Cain Miller defines intensive parenting as “child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor intensive and financially expensive.”
Plain old hovering is so 1999! To be intensive, she says, a parent walking with their kid in the fall wouldn’t just admire the pretty leaves. They’d say, “Look, the leaves are changing. Do you know what drives that?” and turn it into a lesson.
First came the milk carton kids.
How did we get to this point? Cain Miller harkens back to the ‘80s when a few high-profile abductions, coupled with the missing kids’ pictures on the milk cartons, led to “this idea that kids needed to be constantly watched and supervised.”
Slowly, that focus on “stranger danger” spread to other dangers, like falling off a bike without an adult there to swoop in. Parents got the message that they should always be around to keep kids safe from almost anything. But, Cain Miller said:
“It is not yet at this point, in the ‘80s, really about the intellectual development and enrichment, and the idea that you’re always supposed to be teaching your children. It’s more about you’re always supposed to be protecting them.”
Then came the 7 AP classes kids.
Those enrichment demands took hold partly due to growing economic worries – if a kid didn’t get into a “good” college, they might not end up in a good job, neighborhood, or life. At the same time, new neuroscience research purported to show that every interaction could make or break a kid’s future.
(I addressed this in my Free-Range Kids book with a chapter called: “Relax! Not Every Little Thing You Do Has That Much Impact on Your Child’s Development.”)
Alas, the more parents were told that there’s no such thing as a free childhood moment – either you fill it with gold or flush it down the toilet – the more parents became anxious about getting it right. That left them open to expert advice that was both insulting and demanding, like this nugget Cain Miller dug up:
“Talk, laugh, sing and play peekaboo often, so that children hear you speak.”
Somehow we just kept underestimating kids.
As if children would not otherwise hear their parents speak! As if parents would otherwise not talk, laugh, or sing to their kids, unless an expert told them to!
The push for constant optimization has brought us to today when parents feel overwhelmed by the idea they must watch, help, soothe, engage, and enrich their wunderkind Every. Single. Second.
The antidote?
Well, Cain Miller told “The Daily”:
“You might have heard of the Free-Range parenting movement. It’s basically this idea that kids should still be able to run free until the streetlights come on. These are parents who are actively resisting both the helicopter parenting and the intensive parenting. The problem with Free-Range Parenting is that there are no other kids out in the street after school for their kids to run free with.”
Yes! Exactly! This is why the Free-Range Parenting movement grew into the nonprofit Let Grow!
Let’s not dismiss “Free-Range Parenting” as pie-in-the-sky!
Let Grow’s independence-building programs for parents and schools recognize that a collective problem – no kids outside – requires a collective solution: everyone sending their kids outside!
That’s why we recommend schools and other institutions (churches, libraries, synagogues, rec centers) assign kids The Let Grow Experience: Kids get the homework assignment: “Go home and do something new on your own, WITH your parents’ permission but WITHOUT your parents: Walk the dog, make lunch, run an errand…anything!”
Nudged to let go, parents do, because everyone else is too – it’s homework!
Then, when they see their kids doing something new on their own in the real world, THEY feel a surge of new confidence and pride, and so do their kids! The cycle of anxiety is broken!
And so is, perhaps, the grip of intensive parenting itself.
Everyone wins!
That would be a relief. Not only are parents feeling overwhelmed, says Cain Miller. But with kids growing up so supervised, “there have been very valid concerns that this…could be decreasing kids’ independence and their resilience, their ability to solve problems on their own.”
All the more reason for America to give The Let Grow Experience — and our other school programs — a whirl. (And did I mention? They’re free!)