I have come to believe our country is fueled by anxiety. Anxiety sells and buying and selling are the foundation of American culture. The Protestant work ethic is alive and well in America, which is good because you need to work a lot to buy the things that will make you happy. We must be happy, we deserve to be happy. Now. And happiness is always one transaction away. Or so the implicit story goes. What is happiness? How do we achieve it? I don't know the answer or even if there is one, but what I tell the kids when they are complaining about getting a green shaker instead of a red shaker is, "happiness is wanting what you have, not getting what you want," (usually just after I've said "you get what you get and you don't throw a fit"). If there is an answer to happiness I believe this is at least part of it. The pursuit of "getting what you want" is anxiety-inducing because it makes our own happiness dependent on outside factors.
Parenting does not escape the anxiety society. Parenting is anxiety inducing in and of itself, without the cultural anxiety that is added to it. We want our children to be happy, but are we going about it in the wrong way? The current parenting lore is to create a happy child you give them happy experiences and try to avoid unhappy ones. This is what our "instincts" tell us to do. Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman in their book Nurture Shock refer to how much credence is given to parental "instincts." They argue we confuse "instincts" with the societal and social lessons we've implicitly learned. The actual biological parental "instinct" is the "impulse to protect and nurture one's child" (Po and Merryman, pg. 6). How we protect and nurture is cultural and is learned, and to be an American is to be a consumer, unless you are consciously fighting against societal norms. It used to be that parenting started long before a woman had children. Parenting was a collective effort, typically by a group of women, where cultural parenting styles were implicitly passed down from multi-generational groups living and working together. Today we live mostly isolated from one another, removed from the education provided by the communal raising of children. Due to societal expectations placed on parenthood, not only are we anxious about our children surviving and thriving, but we are anxious about giving them every (usually commodified) learning opportunity available. Often free play and exploration are replaced by adult initiated activities. Some of this is due to societal shifts. It is no longer safe to send your kid outdoors to play with neighborhood kids until it gets dark. Part of it is a societal pressure insinuating that to be a good parent you need to pay for classes, activities, experiences. I believe it is important to try to recreate natural and organic interactions in safe places, wherever they may be. Kids need to be allowed to explore their surroundings, with the security of knowing someone is looking out for them, but not with someone directing their expoloration. Sometime in the past 20 years or so parents have become children's playmates. I'm known for saying "I don't play with kids." Developmentally, I'm beyond make believe. I love kids. I love spending my days with kids. I love talking with them, cuddling with them, reading with them, helping them navigate social interactions, exploring with them, but I'm not their playmate. Play is the important work of childhood, not parenthood (or caretaker-hood, as is the case with me). I don't want to guide their play. I want them to be bored and be forced to use their imaginations. I want them to be OK playing by themselves or in a group. My job is to create an interesting, stimulating and enriched environment and then step back. Be there for comfort or to help negotiate a difficult social interaction, but otherwise to observe, looking for signs of what they will be ready for next.
Alfie Kohn, the father of the Unconditional Parenting philosophy asked the question "what are the qualities you want your child to possess as an adult? Are you parenting in a way that nurtures those qualities?" We can't give our children these qualities, they need to be nurtured. With so much anxiety around protecting our children and giving them every opportunity we can, we are taking away the time and space needed for children to learn the important lessons of childhood, the lessons that help them become emotionally healthy adults. Childhood is the time to learn to manage disappointment, anger, struggle, persistence, not just looking forward to the next experience that is going to bring happiness.
I see the collective consciousness turning. I work with families everyday who are invested in their children experiencing their own emotional journey. But when fighting societal norms the inevitable questions arise "How are other parents viewing this?" "Am I being a bad parent?" But the science on child development is pointing against the societal norms of child rearing, against keeping our children protected form harsh experiences, towards the realization that the more anxious parents and caretakers, the more anxious their children are likely to be. There are more and more articles and books that are asking parents and caretakers to step back and look objectively at their role and consider it in terms of child development. An article I read that opened my eyes and changed a lot of the way I approached my role was "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy" by Lori Gottlieb, which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 2011. There is an air of accusation about it that doesn't sit well with me. I send it to my friends before they have children hoping it doesn't feel like a personal attack, so if you already have children, proceed with caution! The thing about our current parenting culture is that it isn't anyone's fault. It's the water we fish are swimming in, but it's important to get some perspective and approach our roles with children as honestly and thoughtfully as possible. And relax. Not worry so much about making the perfect decision or the perfect kid. Our job is to nurture the qualities we want to see in kids and think critically about the best way to do that, so they realize those qualities in themselves.
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