NYT The Daily: The Parents Aren't All Right
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Anonymous
Again, they are anxious because the stakes are so high. If their kids end up falling behind, because the job market is so cut throat and half the population is going to do worse than their parents, they don’t want to wonder if they could be done something more. Friendships are key to success at school for many kids, especially if your child is shy or anxious and could become school avoidant because they have no friends in class. I agree, making friends is a skill they should have, but now that kids don’t roam neighborhoods etc, all friendships are mostly engineered by parents through play dates and sports, so if you don’t also fiddle your kid will be the one left behind. And these are Millenials parents, who already feel they got a raw deal, and they imagine their kids doing WORSE: American Nightmare |
Anonymous
It is easy to say that you would not, but since virtually all parents operate this way, it’s almost impossible to go against the grain. Last summer I had a sabbatical and took a month off and kept my kids out of camp so they could enjoy more of a relaxed summer like I did in the 80s. Problem was, there were no kids their age around in the neighborhood to play with during the week. Everyone was in camp except for the nannies with little kids and they were so bummed. We’d go to the library and park and it was nannies with infants and toddlers. We would go to the pool and virtually all the kids were in camp. We would go on walks and there was no one out. They would see friends in camp at the pool and couldn’t play and were mad about it - it was the complete opposite experience of what I expected. They felt bored and isolated.The days of kids riding bikes and hanging out at home together and roving in packs in the summer that we experienced are just dead and gone. We also did not do all the crazy sports teams and activities when the kids were little, but that means my kids are the only ones who are free on weekends. They miss out on opportunities to see and bond with their friends who aren’t available for play dates because they have swim meets and soccer games and practices, their friends see each other more regularly and that reinforces those friendships so they feel less close to those friends, and those kids get better at sports so my kids now feel like they can’t pick up a sport at 8 or 9 since the kids have all been playing since 5 and are very good, and are in more competitive leagues so my kids can’t even be with their friends. It’s insanity. I hate the hyper competitive rat race but am not sure us just hanging out and hiking and riding bikes as a family and not engaging in the insanity is actually better for them. I often worry they are missing out, but I don’t have the bandwidth or Budget to be a soccer mom. |
Anonymous
| The world is too interconnected now, there is less and less shielding of the special kind of privilege (ie just happen to be born in the US and growing up MC or UMC) that those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s enjoyed and still expect. Tech has destroyed the relative isolation that afforded that privilege, now we and our kids have to face the same kind of stressful competition for limited resources that is more or less the norm in other parts of the world. |
Anonymous
Exactly. We are heading to SK. Crazy entrance exams, stressing to get your kids into the right schools, no chance to date or marry unless they make enough money to earn a spouse. We will have plummeting birth rate because who wants that for their kids? |
Anonymous
Korean American here. I’m so glad my kids and I were able to grow up in the US. I listened to this podcast. I guess I participate in this intense parenting but my kids are thriving and I expect them to do well in life. I have 3 kids and they all do well in school as a given and we support them in their various interests. I often remind them how lucky they are to live in America. |
Anonymous
It’s not devaluing what a SAH parent can do. As a working parent, I still cook, but I do it at 8-10 pm and cook for 2-3 days so I don’t have to do it daily. I still help kids with homework and that’s also after I get home from work, so sometime between 7-8 pm, or after 8 (if I don’t have to cook / prep for next day). If I didn’t have to work, I’d be doing these things between 9am - 2 pm while kids are at school, I would be able to dedicate a bit more time and maybe get nicer food on the table, and I’d help kids with homework around 4-6 and be less stressed when I am helping them. It’s not devaluing what someone else does, just highlighting the reality of working parents. We still need to squeeze significant house / child care into pre/ and after work hours. |
Anonymous
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I think the SAHP v working parent debate in this context is interesting because (at least in the DC area) I think there are two kinds of intensive parenting:
1) The kind where you spend a lot of time with your kids and talk to them a lot and have more involvement in their emotional development than previous generations. This kind of intensive parenting is best represented by how people parent babies and toddlers now (baby wearing and more interactive play with toddlers and talking and engaging with kids this age in a way that didn't use to be very common). But with older kids this can look like spending time to teach kids to cook or working with them on their homework or doing hobbies and activities with kids (taking them to concerts and going on hikes with them). I think pretty much everyone engages in this kind of parenting but stay at home parents can do more of it and I think it's hard to find childcare providers who will do this. Not impossible -- some nannies definitely do this. But it's a minority. 2) The kind where you spend a lot of money on your kids in terms of enrichment and safety and convenience. Activities and lessons and tools for at home enrichment. Travel is a big one for a lot of parents now who want to give their kids the gift of broad experience in different places. Immersion and montessori preschool programs. Very intensive music programs. Travel sports of course. I think part of the stress of modern parenting is when the expectations is that you be able to parent both of these ways. Because they are in opposition with each other -- in order to have enough money to offer your kids #2 it's going to cut into how much time you have to offer #1. I think a lot of the debates over parenting stem from parents struggling over which one of these is more important. And of course wealthy parents can offer both because if you have family money or one extremely high earner then you can afford for at least one parent to work less or not at all and that facilitates the first kind of intensive parenting. But this is a tiny sliver of families (though one overrepresented on this board). The majority of families will have to either try to strike the perfect balance or give up one in favor of the other (maybe one parent going PT or SAH in order to do the time intensive parenting but having to give up lots of travel and dining out at restaurants and super expensive activities). The cost of living in the DC area and other major cities makes this pinch feel especially acute. In order to do the second kind of parenting in this area you really need like 400k or more in income -- so few families can offer that on one income and lots of families have two working parents AND one of them has a pretty intense job which is going to make the first kind of parenting hard. We opted for a baland (I am part-time and DH's job isn't too intense and we also skimp on things like housing and transportation in order to try and afford more experiences and enrichment). It's a very delicate balance. We are thinking about moving somewhere with lower cost of living just to make that balance a little less stressful. |
Anonymous
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Money is key. You can deal with parenthood better and easier with it. I'm not saying this is a good thing at all but realistically, often almost always money and time are totally related. There's just not enough time to simply be parents in our modern world. Whether you helicopter parent or not. Seriously. Between activities, work, taking care of the needs of a kid like appointments, meals, just basic stuff, it's a lot. Self care is a lot even for many!
Money takes a lot of responsibilities off the table allowing focus on just a few things and that's a huge stress reliever. You can come by money by making it or by having govt help you the way they do in certain countries. Subsidized school, care, time off work, etc. but we don't have any help in the US and that's why it's true - having kids is not for the weak. I think once upon a time it was for all and any of us but now it really isn't. Either you or your kid may turn out for the worse! I agree with PP who said her kids lose out with other friend opportunities for her kids since everyone is being helicoptered. I also agree with PP who suggests that it's possible to work your way up a business ladder which means school isn't as critical a priority. I would add that there's a zillion ways to make a living nowadays and a variety of lifestyles. None of this makes parenting easier - in fact it's harder. I have a 7th and 9th grader and for me, while I'm happier my kids are older and have their own personalities, parenting has become in many ways much harder now. Some is because of age but some is because the times and culturally, things are so out of control. |
Anonymous
This!!! I am a single mom who works. My kid is in elementary school and then goes to about 2.5 hours of after care. I still need to clean my house, do the laundry, go grocery shopping and get healthy food on the table. I do all the stuff a stay at home mom does, I just have to be more efficient about it because I don’t have 6 free hours in the day while my kid is at school. I batch cook at night, or with the crockpot. I bake all our bread, one weekend a month I do 4 loaves and freeze them. What that looks like is mixing the dough in the morning and leaving it to rise while I take my kid to his soccer game, then baking it in the afternoon. I work from home and I’ll often do a quick grocery run between school drop off and when I start work. But I don’t have an hour to navel gaze my way around the store. I go in with a list and zoom through in 10 minutes. |
Anonymous
This was exactly our experience. If my daughter doesn’t do activities with her friends during the week and weekends she doesn’t see them. The few people I know who do nothing during the academic/work week have their kids doing multiple activities a day on both Saturday and Sunday to “make up” for not doing anything during the week, which seems more stressful - especially with multiple kids and birthday parties/one off activities happening on weekends. |
Anonymous
Why the nasty and unnecessary commentary? No reason to shiv SAHMs here. I WFH and most moms I know (SAHM and WOH/WFH) just order online and do pick up. No one is navel gazing. How odd. |
Anonymous
+1. No one cares that you make bread at home. Talk about unnecessary. |
Anonymous
Oh please. We’ve all seen the endless posts where sahms make a case for what they do all day and how it’s sooooo much more than what working moms do. It’s always stuff like grocery shopping, meal planning and “paying bills”. |
Anonymous
Homemade bread is delicious. |
Anonymous
Try to understand that you are creating a false image of what SAH parents do all day and then judging real people who have many diverse situations against that vague image that you have manufactured for yourself. Classic straw man. It’s insulting really. Like a white person explaining the life of a black person. |