Parenting Lessons at the Weekly Standard

Raising children has likely never been more challenging than it is today. The parenting editor of eHow notes in the first two lines of How to Overcome the Challenges of Raising Children:

“Children do not come with a user’s manual nor with a lifetime guarantee. What they do come with is challenges.”

Adding to the complexity for today’s moms and dads is a plethora of information. Too much, maybe. In fact, while there is a wealth of advice available to support parents on the challenging journey, all too often, the instructions of one expert totally contrasts if not patently contradicts that of another.

Kindergarchy
Over at the WeeklyStandard.com, Joseph Epstein, a contributing editor to the online magazine, would certainly not be considered a child expert. However, Epstein has authored a very unique assessment of the changing place of children in American landscape.

It is a piece that will likely have many adults nodding their heads. Those who think today’s parenting advice has led to a generation of exceedingly self-absorbed children will find “The Kindergarchy, Every Child a Dauphin” a very interesting read.

At the same time, those that support the type of parenting advice that appears on a site like ZenHabits will most likely think Epstein is simply someone who should not have had children.

We must state that within his piece Epstein offers some very notable insights. Certainly, one cannot find fault with his assessment that children have in fact “gone from background to foreground figures in domestic life.”

Whereas once upon a time, the idea was that “children are best seen not heard” and adults would say, “speak only when spoken to,” today Epstein notes a different picture:

“On visits to the homes of friends with small children, one finds their toys strewn everywhere, their drawings on the refrigerator,” and the family television set is “turned to their shows.”

This position of prominence has Epstein’s attention, but the writer is clearly critical of this transformation. Epstein notes that “all this concern about children…… has exercised a subtle but pervasive tyranny of its own.”

In not so flattering terms, he notes that today’s children have “more and more attention centered on them, their upbringing, their small accomplishments, and their right relationship with parents and grandparents.”

Epstein even has his own name for the phenomena.

“This is what I call Kindergarchy: dreary, boring, sadly misguided Kindergarchy.”

As with Most Baby Boomers, a Different Childhood
From what we name our kids to visits to Disneyworld, Epstein weighs in on raising kids under the new Kindergarchy. According to Epstein, today’s parenting expectations can be equated to the phrase:

“No effort on behalf of one’s children is too much nor is any expenditure too great.”

Epstein notes a different world during his childhood, one that saw a mom at home and five or six years between siblings. Most of the youth he describes contrasts harshly with current parenting notions.

“My mother never read to me, and my father took me to no ballgames, though we did go to Golden Gloves fights a few times.

“When I began my modest athletic career, my parents never came to any of my games, and I should have been embarrassed had they done so. My parents never met any of my girlfriends in high school.

“No photographic or video record exists of my uneven progress through early life. My father never explained about the birds and the bees to me; his entire advice on sex, as I clearly remember, was, ‘You want to be careful.’”

As for the need for children to be assured of a parent’s love, Epstein notes his childhood experiences never saw such an assurance.

“When we were together, at family meals and at other times, we laughed a lot, my parents, my brother, and I, but we did not openly exhibit exuberant affection for one another. We did not hug, and I do not remember often kissing my mother or her kissing me.

“Neither my mother nor my father ever told me they loved me; nor did I tell them that I loved them. I always assumed their love, and, as later years would prove, when they came to my aid in small crises, I was not wrong to do so.”

Not So Successful Effort at Parenting
Epstein’s tale notes his own efforts as a dad, one that sought to introduce the latest parental advice. Apparently, it did not go well.

“I was always telling my two sons how much I loved them. I told them this so often that I should imagine they must have begun to doubt that I had any real feeling for them whatsoever.”

There is much more about his role in the parenting process, in particular raising children during the 60’s and 70’s, which just so happens to be yet another difficult time to be a parent. There is the world of therapy and Epstein is clearly not enamored with the move from a father being the family provider to not only participating in the child-rearing process but even spending time in the delivery room.

In simplest terms, Epstein’s efforts as a father were part and parcel to the long slippery slope of moving children to their current place of prominence.

As for the future, Epstein is hopeful that the Kindergarchy will one day disappear.

“My own hope is that the absurdity of current arrangements will in time be felt, and people will gradually realize the foolishness of continuing to lavish so much painstaking attention on their children. When that time comes, children will be allowed to relax, no longer under threat of suffocation by love from their parents, and grow up more on their own.

“Only then will parents once again be able to live their own lives, free to concentrate on their work, life’s adult pleasures, and those responsibilities that fall well outside the prison of the permanent kindergarten they have themselves erected and have been forced to live in as hostages.”

Double Negative
Clearly, Epstein sees aspects of today’s parenting practices as being detrimental to both kids and parents. His summary also comes at a time when more and more child experts are in fact noting that today’s parenting practices are serving to shelter children too much.

However, no child expert today would fully support his assertion that adults should be completely “free to concentrate on their work” and “life’s adult pleasures.” As for being held hostage, there is no doubt that those same experts would frown upon those parents who created a “permanent kindergarten.”

We began by stating that raising children has likely never been more challenging than it is today. We also noted, that all too often, the instructions of one expert totally contrasts if not patently contradicts that of another.

But that is because the family dynamic is different in each and every household. No one method could work for everyone.

In the meantime, Epstein has given us further food for thought as we contemplate this incredibly complex process.

Flickr photos courtesy of Billie/PartsnPieces and Angela7Dreams.