What’s the Matter With Kids (and Their Parents) Today?

My View

Child rearing today is the subject of frequent and contentious public discussions, while parents berate each other on the internet over their practices. Parenting has become its own book category.

At the extremes, Tiger Moms think free-range kids are neglected and spoiled, and free-range Moms condemn tigers for tyrannical over-management. In-between mothers and fathers attempt the impossible — to provide the conditions for perfect childhoods.

Many issues enter into these discussions, including most obviously how to raise successful children in an era of global competition and how to make the most of the schooling you can afford (which involves not only public versus private, but where you can afford to live and how on top of the publically funded alternatives you are), as well as a barrage of questions about protecting the young from perceived hazards such as sex and violence online, unsafe playgrounds and vaccines, and the predation of strangers or friends. In addition, the poor have to deal with inadequate medical care, police violence and the prevalence of guns and gangs. All this has led to an age of heightened anxiety in the context of elevated expectations about parenting.

Continuing Values

As a historian, it is not my intention to resolve these matters. Instead, my latest book introduces readers to the historical dimension, to how Americans in the past raised their children and how they adapted to circumstances in former eras of change and crisis. Indeed, I argue that Americans have been self-conscious about parenting from the beginning of the republic in the early 19th century, and they understood that how children are raised has important social consequences.

In the past, that meant that Americans especially valued independence in their children and the innovation this encouraged. In so doing, they de-emphasized hierarchy and deference between parents and children and trusted their children to define their own futures. Because they believed the future would be better than the past, they imagined their children would be its beneficiaries.

I also suggest continuities and differences exist between the past and the present. For example, foreigners, in the past and in the present, often have accused Americans’ freer approach to children as encouraging permissiveness, a charge that was usually inaccurate. Americans also have valued their children’s participation in family councils and rejected authoritarian dictates.

Nevertheless, in the contemporary economic and cultural context, we are moving away from what once were deeply held commitments to the independence of children. It remains the case, as some anthropological studies have shown, that in their stated ideals, Americans continue to value the autonomy of children and the desirability of children’s independent judgment. But contemporary parents are placing far more emphasis on explicit oversight and management than their predecessors, and children’s choices and freedom of movement have become much more restricted. Parents today are directing their children toward goals that they themselves set and keeping a tight rein through imposed schedules.

A Competitive Lens

Schooling has been an important component of both the discussions and the reasons for the parenting changes, as extended schooling increased children’s long-term dependence on their parents and schooled success has become an important advantage in the modern economy.

So too, immigration, especially from Asia, has raised the bar domestically for admission to desirable colleges and universities, while global competition is making Americans anxious about how their children measure up in international evaluations. Increasingly, parents have chosen to view their children’s success in competitive, often cognitive terms, forgetting or neglecting other ways in which success can be understood: by their children’s resilience and resourcefulness, their creativity and their commitment to a range of democratic and civic values — all important to Americans in the past.

Paula Fass is the Margaret Byrne professor of history emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of The End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting From Life on the Frontier to the Managed Child.