All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood

by Jennifer Senior

HAD THE CHILD’S ROLE been the only role to change within the family, that alone would have been a significant historical development. But industrialization and modernization inevitably changed the role of parents too. As time went on, mothers and fathers also lost their traditional function in the family economy. Before the Industrial Revolution, parents provided educational, vocational, and religious instruction to their children; they also tended to them if they got sick, helped make their clothes, and supplied the food on the table. But with industrialization, these jobs were gradually, one by one, outsourced to non-family members or entire institutions, to the point that the idea of the “family economy” practically ceased to exist. The sole job of parents became the financial and physical security of their children. Ever since, every debate we have had about the role of parents—whether they should be laissez-faire or interventionist “Tiger Moms,” attachment-oriented or partial to the rigors of tough love—can be traced back to the paring down of mothers’ and fathers’ traditional roles. Today, we are far less clear about what “parenting” entails. We know what it doesn’t entail: teaching kids mathematics and geography and literature (schools do that); providing them with medical treatment (pediatricians); sewing them dresses and trousers (factories abroad, whose wares are then distributed by Old Navy); growing them food (factory farms, whose goods are then distributed by ...