Stories

A recent editorial in the New York Times titled “This Simple Fix Could Help Anxious Kids” makes the point that the rise in childhood anxiety may be due, in part, to shifting parental norms. Whereas in the recent past, children had more freedom and less parental supervision and monitoring, today it is normal for parents to be an ongoing presence in their children’s lives. This shift in norms is largely due to parental anxiety: fear of their children being harmed and the belief that parents must help their children succeed in the competitive world we live in. The problem is that these parental fears and anxieties get transmitted to children, who are not allowed the freedom and space to develop the maturity and resilience they need to truly mature.

When I was a kid, parental norms were different. Parents were, of course, concerned about their children, but we were given much more freedom than children today. We were expected to handle this freedom responsibly, and for the most part, we did. (And when we did not, we learned from our mistakes.) These parental attitudes and norms instilled confidence and resilience in us, and my siblings and I remember our childhoods as a kind of golden age.

But are things different now? Is the world a more dangerous place? Is it rational to be so anxious about our children? Statistics say no. But the media often distorts reality to attract viewers and clicks, and to stay sane and balanced, a parent must filter out the manipulations embedded in much modern media.

We all want to protect our children from harm. We all want our children to succeed and be happy. And we might very well be undermining those goals by being too protective, by not letting our children have the opportunity to do things on their own and develop their own agency and resilience. The simple fix proposed in the Times article certainly worked for generations of children. Perhaps this is a good time to learn from – and adopt – past parenting norms and tune out the media drumbeat that instills so much unnecessary fear and competition in parents.