Parents need to grow up - so their children can do the same. Hara Estroff Marano reported recently in Psychology Today about the negative effects of parental hyper vigilance on children's lives. Marano rightly points out a strange paradox in contemporary parenting: parents are more determined than ever to turn out high-achieving children, yet they're also determined to shelter their kids from adversity, competition, and other parts of life that tend to bruise (but not shatter) one's self-esteem. The result: kids are confused, anxious, and hypersensitive. We've also sanitized and made mundane the rough-and-tumble world of real childhood. Gadfly's concern, of course, is with the widespread trend of discouraging competition in schools and colleges, perhaps most clearly evidenced by grade inflation, a trend that Marano rightly decries. Marano casts her net a little wide, however, implicating parental anxiety for everything from bulimia to stalking. Overall, though, she makes a strong case about the deep dangers of over-coddling our children. (You can find a parallel critique of the schools in Michael Barone's fine recent book about "soft" and "hard" America.)
"A nation of wimps," by Hara Estroff Marano, Psychology Today, November/December 2004
"Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future," by Michael Barone, Crown Forum Books