"These kids today" (and their parents) -- early 21st century American edition

My brother is 10 years younger than me and my parents were much more protective in the way they raised him than they were with me. Now I'm afraid that I'm going even further in that direction with my own son, but I see very little opportunities to just let the kids roam free and experience the world the way I did when I was young.

of my parenting peers nobody I know is adopting the permissive approach, if anything the memory of teen excesses inspires a strictness we couldn't have dreamed of in the 70s. But...

Boomer parents have also brought us the era of zero tolerance, the criminalization of adolescent acting-out, and the elevation of safety and security to the top of the priority list. These parents, recalling only too well what they did as teens, are the founders of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Wigged out by news stories about pedophiles, drugs, Internet predators and drunk drivers, they refuse to grant their own kids the independence they themselves enjoyed.

This may be the result of external pressures. I just finished a very interesting book Decade of Nightmares by Philip Jenkins. Tracing the path from 60s liberalism to to 80s conservatism, Jenkins identifies a paranoid rightwing culture of threats-to-our-children that emerged in the late 70s to early 80s. He cites everything from MADD to child porn legislation to Anita Bryant's anti-gay crusades to the media fascination with serial killers and cults...a bit alarmist if not apocalyptic (he's a prof of history & religion)but plausible and thought-provoking to say the least.

One widely accepted truism among parents today is that our children are put under all kinds of social pressure that we weren't. Articles about trends like the rise of bullying in school or the newly minted stress and competition of applying to college etc can seem exaggerated or silly to non-parents but from what I've seen things are different. Adolescents become sexualized much earlier now, before they're teenagers in many cases, and I'm convinced this is a factor in the widespread epidemic of clinical depression and other psychology maladies among young people. Then there's the epidemic of autism and learning disabilities, something that was rarely diagnosed and/or barely acknowledged when we were kids.

Sorry I'm rambling. OTOH, baby-boomers are traditionally narcissistic and see their common experiences as somehow unique and world-historic. So you could read those articles that way, too.

Our intention for the current moment is to keep the kids safe, but we don't hesitate to get a babysitter, and certainly Alex and Julia aren't stopped from hurting themselves by playing (good Lord, Julia careens into things at such a rate that we'd never succeed at that if we wanted to try).

Teenage years are a lot trickier, and we try to have a realistic attitude about typical teenage activities. I hope it will help to be more up-front about sex, drinking, and drugs than my parents were. One of the articles cited your children's friends as being really important, and I'd certainly echo that, although I don't think you can choose your kids' friends for them. I was lucky in that during high school I had some extraordinary friends, many of whom were a lot older than I was and some of whom had some pretty serious problems. Parties weren't entirely high-school typical in this case; certainly there was drinking, sex, and other stuff going on, but there were also always several people in the group who acted almost like fail-safes if something went wrong.

I'm not so much interested in being a "cool" parent as a realistic one. I wouldn't encourage, say, early sexual activity, but the fact is that I had at least three memorable pregnancy scares myself, one during high school. I think teaching kids how to make such decisions and about ways to protect themselvs is more sensible than saying, "just say no." I wouldn't serve alcohol to minors, but I will make sure my kids know that if they've been drinking, I'd rather have them call home to be picked up than to get behind the wheel of a car.

I grew up in an urban neighborhood and was allowed to wander around pretty much where I wanted to, starting a fairly young age (around 7 or so). I have a hard time imagining that I'll let my son do the same thing.

That's interesting because you've just reminded me that my folks said that as well when I was in high school. Some advice does stay consistently good, I figure.

Mr. Coleman is right about having to view these articles through the typical 'boomer = we are CENTER OF UNIVERSE' lens, so caution advised...

That is another weird thing about being a parent right now. I'm 31 and most of the parents that I've known with kids my son's age are much older. I think it is kind of weird for all these middle age people to be having little kids right now, and it is also kind of frustrating because I don't know a lot of parents that have similar tastes, interests, etc.

My wife pointed out earlier that when older people have babies, they often invest tons of money just to be able to give birth at an advanced age, so the kid is already costing them from birth. Maybe this causes them to treat them in this f'ed up way described in the "Nation of Wimps" article.

otoh, my mom also told me pot wasn't really a drug.

xpost - Really interesting insight about the older parents. The pair that I know are a doctor and her lawyer husband and they had kids starting in their 40s. I hate that they want to hang out with my family for a variety of reasons. For one thing, they don't seem to have any idea how to control their son and his behavior provokes my son into behavior I've never seen before. And yeah, our interests are fairly divergent. Plus there's the fact that the father has made some of the strangest comments to me that I've ever heard (I think he's a racist and also I think he has a screw loose).

My parents were really, really, really strict. As were a lot of my friends' parents. These are the consequences I now see:

1) Most of our parents have lied or do lie about what they did at our age (my mother told me she didn't have sex until she got married AT 28 LOLOLOLOLOL). When we figure that out, we usually end up believing all the stuff they told us about x, y, or z being "bad" (which a lot of times DOES have some truth) are automatically also lies.
2) College freshmen don't know shit. I totally fucked up my freshman year because I had NO study skills/time management skills whatsoever (my parents did it for me!), and I was better off then all the kids who had no idea how to live ON THEIR OWN.
3) College freshman also go absolutely batshit crazy with teh alcohol and teh drugz. Most of the kids I know who experimented with alcohol/drugs/sex in high school handled the increased accessibility of it that comes with college a LOT better than those who were sheltered.

Basically I am a big believer that there are a lot of things that kids can only learn by fucking up, and overprotectiveness really eliminates those opportunities, which in general only leads to a more immature and dependent generation.

Here is a good Boston Globe article about the consequences of our Boomer parents' overprotectiveness

And there are a few instances of 9-year-olds with razr phones so that mom can call in every five minutes to ensure that they've chewed thoroughly. Cell phones are the new kid leashes.

a friend whose kid is now a teenager was offended years ago by one of his friend's request to be addressed as "mr (whatever his last name was)". another couple we encountered taught their daughter to address their friends as "mister/miss (first name)". this seemed to be a decent way of handling it.

I think the adult being addressed really has to figure this out with the parent in question. What is weird to me is when older adults don't communicate what they want me to call them. My in-laws never said a word and it took years for me to feel comfortable calling them by their first names.

The other thing is, many things that we may have considered "normal parenting" at one time are either illegal, banned, or strongly frowned upon now.

I think it is insane how much kids are medicated these days. Sure some of them need it, but my guess is that most do not.

I worry that my son won't have that same freedom, that's all.

OTFM. the idea repulsed me to my core!

OTFM. the idea repulsed me to my core!

let's see... spending the hottest months of the year in an uninsulated shack infested with spiders and mosquitos, expected to swim in a lake full of snakes and forced to participate in sports and group activities (when i preferred to stay in my bunk and read new-waver magazines). yeah, count me in fer sure.

Depends on what that alternative was. Given the choice between being at home with parents who were at odds with each other (dad slept on couch at the family business & mom lived in a house filled to the rafters with clutter) summer camp and boarding school was an obvious decision.

Like I said earlier, it depends... My boy scout camp was pretty lax when it came to participation. No one was forced to do anything, I loved camping and outdoor stuff and there were outlets for the non-sports geek kids like myself. The two things I leaned in boy scout summer camp was how to align a telescope and how to play poker.

(aside: on the train today was a woman who was taking care of five children from infant-age to pre-teen, including two toddlers. the toddlers WOULD NOT STOP YELPING the entire time -- not crying or screaming, just yelping. i know that's what toddlers do, but it's never too early to start teaching your kids some social skills. even adults forget that the outside world != home.)

Some time in the early 90s Americans schools got an extra $400 or $4000 (I forget) from the government for every child that got diagnosed as "special" and needed drugs. I forget most of the specifics on this but all of the sudden schools had every incentive to dope kids up on ritalin and other drugs to get more money.

so yeah there's tons of stuff here and I don't know how to get at it w/o getting wildly off-topic and also because it's just so hard to know what to say about other people's kids. I did like the actual studies quoted in the wapo article, so much of this stuff is just spinning theories out of air. I mean, if you have some kooky parenting theory, someone else has already thought of it and published a book and you can go pay money for it and feel reinforced.

(Also, Dan would totally be a great dad; how fun - and funny - would it be to be his kid?!)

My son is 8 and wants to be out all the time and luckily for us we live in cul-de-sac with a field at the end and so I think he pretty much can be. He's not unsupervised (there's usually other kids/parents about) but he does cycle about on his own and him and his friend take a neighbours dog for a walk. This involves being near a railway but we've just brought him up to be aware of the danger and how to cross it safely (just like you show a kid how to cross a road) but not to make it a barrier that can't be crossed ever.

I do a lot of volunteer work with kids and its is very very easy to build structures for kids to experiment in (not specifically with drink and drugs, although I'd be incredibly naive not to know what goes on) give them a safety net and not let them know its there until its needed. Agree boundaries, let them cross them a little but let them know when they've really stepped out of line. Quite often things come with their own punishments and all you have to do is hold the bucket and laugh.

The factors that account for the baby boom help to explain why it took so long for the baby boomers to have children and produce what demographers call the baby boom echo. The baby boomers were the product of a relatively small cohert of people who had been born or who had come to maturity during the depression. As economist Richard Easterlin had hypothesized, small generations follow large generations in predictable patterns. Small generations create labor shortages, rising wages, more opportunities, more optimism and more children. Large generations face more competition, falling wages and more frustration and ultimately decide to have less children. Alternatively, one might argue that the generation that grew up in the 30s developed lower expectations that were exceeded by the prosperity of the 40s and 50s. Hence its members elected to have more children. The generation that grew up in the 50s and 60s developed high expectations that were not met in the 70s. Hence they started their families later and had fewer children.

from "Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies" by Edward D. Berkowitz (Columbia Univ Press 2006)

Adolescent alienation isn't a new phenomenon. But the unhappy teenagers clinical psychologist Madeline Levine sees in her practice aren't merely going through a developmental phase, she writes.

In her new book, "The Price of Privilege" (Harper Collins, $24.95), Levine says that over-involved parents who pressure their children to be stars -- in school, on athletic fields, among their peers -- have created a generation that is "extremely unhappy, disconnected and passive." Unabashedly materialistic and disinterested in the wider world, they are both bored and "often boring," she writes. A large number suffer from depression, anxiety and substance abuse.

Levine, 57, the mother of three sons, draws heavily on her 25 years of clinical experience in Marin County, Calif.

(I'm stopping there since that will probably tell you if you want to go further.)

but yeah, I'm in a poor/urban school district and the concern is certainly not overinvolved parents.

i was reading when i was 1 1/2. not... novels or anything, but definitely whole sentences.

oh yeah, non-animated hanna-barbara cartoons and bicentennial ghost was real food for the mind. wait, you might not be as old as me. anyway, i loved TONS of crap when i was a kid. i can't deny my kid ALL crap. crap is the stuff of life.

i'm sure i watched crap tv too, but all i really remember from those years is the CHILDREN'S TELEVISION WORKSHOP sorta stuff. then again, we didn't have cable until a bit later so my options were limited. we had hbo though, and sometimes i was allowed to watch that.

oh, and my parents RULED for letting me stay up to watch SNL on saturday nights.

There WERE days when my mother was desperate for adult company, though. One morning she prayed (she's the praying kind) that she'd be sent someone over the age of 16 to talk to, and she had so much faith that she started baking. That afternoon a member of a passing motorcycle gang wiped out in front of our house. My dad (who also rides) brought him inside to make sure no ambulance was in order, and my mom served the whole gang tea and chocolate layer cake around the dining room table. I remember everyone being perfectly charming, beards, bandanas, and all.