REPOST: HAS PARENTING CHANGED?

Has Parenting Changed?

By weissbluthmethod

When I talk to groups of parents about sleep, some parents state that it is more difficult today to be a parent than in the past. I do not know if this is true but I would like your input on how new challenges today might interact with sleep issues. Here are some observations to kick-start the discussion:

1. There is parenting information overload. With so much information and so many choices, who are you going to believe? Does this lead to a paralysis so that decisions regarding when or how to do sleep training get postponed?

2. More women are working outside the home, more men are working from home or are stay at home dads, and there is more day care and nanny care. How does this effect children's sleep?

3. Are parents more anxious or fearful regarding the health or safety of their children, either because of a real increase in potential harm or world-wide instantaneous media magnification of risk. More anxiety might cause parents to not want to let them cry to sleep better because they fear that crying might harm their baby.

4. Are parents more intrusive/directive/controlling (hovering helicopter parents) because they are competitive for their children so they want to schedule many social or skill building activities which might interfere with healthy sleep habits? Is competitiveness simply another form of anxiety; that is, "I am anxious about the successes of my child."

5. Are parents more anxious or fearful regarding the social, athletic, and academic successes of their children?

Is there any good data to support any of these observations? Please share with us your own observations?

6. As reported in the Wall St. Journal, July 9, "The Divorce Generation," half of all marriages ended in divorce during the 1970′s. The children of these families are now "orphans as parents." …"Call us helicopter parents, call us neurotically attached, but those of us who survived the wreckage of split families were determined never to inflict such wounds on our children…We hadn't slept in the same room for at least two years, a side effect of the nighttime musical bed routine…"

Your thoughts.

Marc

Filed under: Barriers to Sleep Solutions