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December 9, 2019 - April 6, 2020
“The problem with this ‘everything is dangerous’ outlook is that over-protectiveness is a danger in and of itself.”26
by placing a protective shield over our children, we inadvertently stunt their growth and deprive them of the experiences they need to become successful and functional adults.
“natural growth parenting.” Working-class parents tend to believe that children will reach maturity without needing much guidance or interference from adults.
the parents of Baby Boomers were strongly influenced by the writings of childrearing expert Dr. Benjamin Spock, who taught that “children should be permitted to develop at their own pace, not pushed to meet the schedules and rules of adult life.”37 Spock encouraged parents to relax and let children be children, and indeed, Baby Boomers and GenX children were generally given the freedom to roam around their neighborhoods and play without adult supervision. But Putnam notes that, beginning in the 1980s and accelerating in the 1990s, “the dominant ideas and social norms about good parenting [had]
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This change happened primarily among middle-class parents, who were immersed in news reports about the importance of early stimulation (for example, the erroneous idea that babies who listen to Mozart will become smarter)39 and who wanted to give their children every possible advantage in the increasingly competitive race to get into a good college.
This shift did not happen among working-class parents.
It would be a mistake, however, to think that working-class kids had an overall advantage.
Working-class kids, in contrast, have generally had less exposure to adult institutions and have not seen their parents engage with these institutions with the same sense of strength, rights, or entitlement to good treatment. Working-class kids are therefore more likely to feel like “fish out of water” in college.
Moderate stress buffered by supportive adults is not necessarily harmful, and may even be helpful, in that it can promote the development of coping skills. On the other hand, severe and chronic stress, especially if unbuffered by supportive adults, can disrupt the basic executive functions that govern how various parts of the brain work together to address challenges and solve problems. Consequently, children who experience toxic stress have trouble concentrating, controlling impulsive behavior, and following directions.
although kids are naturally antifragile, there are two very different ways to damage their development. One is to neglect and underprotect them, exposing them early to severe and chronic adversity. This has happened to some of today’s college students, particularly those from working-class or poor families. The other is to overmonitor and overprotect them, denying them the thousands of small challenges, risks, and adversities that they need to face on their own in order to become strong and resilient adults.
When we overprotect children, we harm them. Children are naturally antifragile, so overprotection makes them weaker and less resilient later on.
Children today have far more restricted childhoods, on average, than those enjoyed by their parents, who grew up in far more dangerous times and yet had many more opportunities to develop their intrinsic antifragility.
have been deprived of unsupervised time for play and exploration. They have missed out on many of the challenges, negative experiences, and minor risks that help children develop into strong, competent, and independent adults
Research has shown that anxious children may elicit overprotective behavior from others, such as parents and caretakers, and that this reinforces the child’s perception of threat and decreases their perception of controlling the danger. Overprotection might thus result in exaggerated levels of anxiety. Overprotection through governmental control of playgrounds and exaggerated fear of playground accidents might thus result in an increase of anxiety in society. We might need to provide more stimulating environments for children, rather than hamper their development [emphasis added].
Given this research, and given the rising levels of adolescent anxiety, depression, and suicide, which we described in chapter 7, our educational system and parenting practices should offer kids more time for free play. But in fact, the opposite has happened.
Unfortunately, outdoor physical play is the kind that has declined the most in the lives of American children. The study that offers the clearest picture of the relevant trends was carried out in 1981 by sociologists at the University of Michigan, who asked parents of children under thirteen to keep detailed records of how their kids spent their time on several randomly chosen days. They repeated the study in 1997, and found that time spent in any kind of play went down 16% overall, and much of the play had shifted to indoor activities, often involving a computer and no other children.14
In contrast to the decreased time spent in play between 1981 and 1997, that same time-use study found that time spent in school went up 18%, and time spent doing homework went up 145%.
One of the major reasons for the decline of all forms of unsupervised outdoor activity is, of course, the unrealistic media-amplified fear of abduction,
children, early education was very different than it is today. Take a look at a checklist from 197921 that helped parents decide whether their six-year-old was ready to start first grade.
IS YOUR CHILD READY FOR FIRST GRADE: 1979 EDITION
Kindergarten in 1979 was devoted mostly to social interaction and self-directed play, with some instruction in art, music, numbers, and the alphabet thrown in.
Today, kindergarten is much more structured and sedentary, with children spending more time sitting at their desks and receiving direct instruction in academic subjects—known
The college admissions process nowadays makes it harder for high school students to enjoy school and pursue intrinsic fulfillment. The process “warps the values of students drawn into a competitive frenzy” and “jeopardizes their mental health,”
“Students are prepared academically, but they’re not prepared to deal with day-to-day life,”
One paradox of upper-middle-class American life is that some of the things parents and schools do to help kids get admitted to college may make them less able to thrive once they’re there.
Children, like other mammals, need free play in order to finish the intricate wiring process of neural development. Children deprived of free play are likely to be less competent—physically and socially—as adults. They are likely to be less tolerant of risk, and more prone to anxiety disorders.
Free play helps children develop the skills of cooperation and dispute resolution that are closely related to the “art of association” upon which democracies depend. When citizens are not skilled in this art, they are less able to work out the ordinary conflicts of daily life. They will more frequently call for authorities to apply coercive force to their opponents. They will be more likely to welcome the bureaucracy of safetyism.
Young people have come to believe that danger lurks everywhere, even in the classroom, and even in private conversations.
efforts to protect students by creating bureaucratic means of resolving problems and conflicts can have the unintended consequence of fostering moral dependence, which may reduce students’ ability to resolve conflicts independently both during and after college.
we urge students to treat deviations from population norms as invitations to investigate further.
Prepare the Child for the Road, Not the Road for the Child
kids need some unstructured, unsupervised time in order to learn how to judge risks for themselves and practice dealing with things like frustration, boredom, and interpersonal conflict.
The most important thing they can do with that time is to play, especially in free play, outdoors, with other kids.
Visit LetGrow.org,
Having people around us who are willing to disagree with us is a gift. So when you realize you are wrong, admit that you are wrong, and thank your critics for helping you see it.25
Give more recess with less supervision.
We propose that Americans consider adopting a new national norm: taking a year off after high school—a “gap year”—as
High school graduates can spend a year working and learning away from their parents, exploring their interests, developing interpersonal skills, and generally maturing before arriving on campus.
In her book Galileo’s Middle Finger, she contends that good scholarship must “put the search for truth first and the quest for social justice second.”
Evidence really is an ethical issue, the most important ethical issue in a modern democracy. If you want justice, you must work for truth. And if you want to work for truth, you must do a little more than wish for justice.
we showed that there is no simple explanation for what is happening. You have to look at six interacting trends: rising political polarization; rising rates of adolescent depression and anxiety; a shift to more fearful, protective, and intensive parenting in middle-class and wealthy families; widespread play deprivation and risk deprivation for members of iGen; an expanding campus bureaucracy taking an increasingly overprotective posture; and a rising passion for justice combined with a growing commitment to attaining “equal outcomes” in all areas.
Dalai Lama
What we need to do is to pay more attention to the ways in which we are the same as other people.11
If we can educate the next generation more wisely, they will be stronger, richer, more virtuous, and even safer.
