All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood

by Jennifer Senior

Whyte described the postwar United States as a “filiarchy,” or culture in which kids run the show, at one point even calling children’s influence “dictatorial.”

The sole job of parents became the financial and physical security of their children.

But because middle-class children today occupy privileged positions within the family, and because their parents have overextended themselves on their behalf, kids sense that they have the power to make their boredom their parents’ responsibility.

PARENTS WOULD DOUBTLESS FEEL a lot less pressure to keep their children busy or entertained—and more confident about their kids’ ability to make their own fun—if they felt comfortable sending their children outdoors.

Adolescents, in his view, are the human equivalent of salt, intensifying whatever mix they’re in.

Steinberg likens teenagers to cars with powerful accelerators and weak brakes. “And then parents are going to get into tussles with their teenagers,” says Steinberg, “because they’re going to try to be the brakes.” It’s a dicey business, being someone’s prefrontal cortex by proxy.

this so-called “emerging adulthood” is really adolescence in earnest, the first time children have a chance to experiment and find themselves, which they once did far earlier as a simple matter of custom, a matter of course.

as Dr. Spock points out, raising happy children is an elusive aim compared to the more concrete aims of parenting in the past: creating competent children in certain kinds of work; and creating morally responsible citizens who will fulfill a prescribed set of community obligations.

Indeed, one could argue that the whole experience of being a parent exposes the superficiality of our preoccupation with happiness, which usually takes the form of pursuing pleasure or finding our bliss.

Having worked so hard to have children, parents may feel it’s only natural to expect happiness from the experience. And they’ll find happiness, of course, but not necessarily continuously, and not always in the forms they might expect.

And that’s what choosing parenthood does: gives strength and structural integrity to one’s life through meaningful tension.