People Are Reluctant To Admit That The Real Societal Problem Is Shitty Parenting

Because, if you say that specific quiet part out loud, your own path to relevance may now lie in tatters.

This one is a complicated topic and every person’s interaction with said topic is very different based on their age, generation, upbringing, belief in success markers, whether they’re a parent or not, etc. I will try to paint the edges here as best I can. And yes, my own sperm is slow and I can’t impregnate my wife and she probably resents me deeply for it and that does color some of my writing, absolutely. I’d admit that upfront for anyone.

Let’s start with a David French column

French has done some good work since he went to New York Times, as an aside. Better work than a lot of their op-ed columnists.

In that column, he’s talking about gender differences and parenting and whatnot, and this part stands out:

But whenever we lament “kids these days,” it’s always important to look at parents. And Generation Z is in many ways the product of Generation X parenting trends that substituted the extraordinary freedom of our own upbringings with a stage-managed childhood that inhibited free play, discouraged independent conflict resolution and channeled much of childhood into a series of micromanaged activities that help build glittering college applications but deprive kids of much of the spontaneous joy and fellowship of youth.

Yes.

The most ironic thing about people saying “kids these days” is that the people who say that are usually the parents or grandparents of those kids. So, like, if they wanted “kids these days” to be different, they themselves had an opportunity to aid in that.

You can look at the above paragraph and say, “Well, that’s just one opinion writer. Where is the data?” You’d be right in saying that, and while there is data, any data about parenting styles and impacts is deeply-biased at core and probably won’t be believed by 75% of people, because then — if you yourself had kids — you have to admit, “Oh man, maybe I wasn’t that good at this in reality.” If someone has to decry their own parenting, short of sitting in a jail cell awaiting execution, they usually will run 120 MPH in the opposite direction first. Parenting is the greatest source of relevance most people have, because it’s the only time they embraced “creation.” It certainly wasn’t in their cubicle, ya know? And look at billionaires. They often ignore their kids (many examples), because kids are needy and emotional, and the other thing they created, I.e. their company, is much more fun to deal with.

So, anecdotally I do think many of us would read that above paragraph and think, “Yes, there’s some truth to that.” Even if we don’t see it in ourselves or admit it there, we know that kids are micromanaged and, in the words of one Medium commenter I had a few months ago, “Parenting has become an Olympic sport these days.” That’s the core of the issue at some level. Parenting is so deeply tied to identity, especially among women, that everyone is terrified to f*ck up. So they over-correct and become “snowplow” parents, which doesn’t aid their kids at all.

The 1990–1991 Problem

There’s another article from NYT about “peak millennials,” which are those born around 1990–1992. I know a ton of people from this subset, even though I was born in 1980. I used to sit next to a 1990 birth at work a few years back. It was an agency where you could drink at work if you wanted. My 1990 birth friend would regularly have about three glasses of red wine on a Tuesday, claiming he was “unlocking creativity.” I’ve been a fall-down drunk many times, so I am not throwing stones, but that was essentially my “introduction” to the 1990 birth cohort. I’ve met dozens of others along the way.

There are a bunch of various stats in that article, and some are “pro” 1990–1992 births and their place in society, while some are “anti.” The general tone of the article is that 1990–1992 cohort births are struggling, as an indice of a broader generational struggle, including:

Still, evidence of a struggle lingers under the surface. Men in the early 30-something group are employed at much lower rates than 30-something men were in previous generations, part of a long-running trend. Debt delinquencies for auto loans and credit cards are picking up sharply for people aged 30 to 39 as student loan repayments restart after a pandemic hiatus and put the generation under financial pressure. And today’s 30-somethings are having historically fewer kids.

While that last one can be chalked up to a wide array of societal factors, people cite financial concerns as one of the top reasons they are not procreating.

Some have referred to this as America’s “failure to launch.”

So like, we had this secondary “baby boom” from 1990 to 1992, which makes sense because the economy was OK-ish following a decade of Reagan and a small slice of Bush the elder, and now 34 years later, some of those kids are like, still living with their mom and restocking Trader Joe’s and not hitting the conventional markers.

You can blame that on “the economy” or “the phones” or any number of things, but wouldn’t kinda sorta maybe all of it start with their parents?

Now let’s bring in two Abigail Shrier videos

Shrier is very ideological in the sense that she wrote a book that’s anti-trans or, rather, anti-transitioning, so conservative parents fucking love her. Put aside some of her ideology and she makes good points, though. In that video above, she talks about the decline of parenting as evidenced by so many social situations — from University on up — where current 20-somethings think they can reroute the entire gathering for their needs. Anecdotally, we’ve probably all seen that. This clip is popular among the right-leaning:

Here’s another Shrier clip where she talks about anxiety and therapy and parenting:

In that clip, she basically derides “snowplow parenting” (see above) as removing barriers from children, which in turn makes them less functional adults. Anxiety, depression, stress, and challenge do not feel good in the moment, but they help shape you. Removing them entirely is bad, and some parents attempt to do that. Maybe more parents than we admit? Indeed.

Now we get to “the phones”

Months ago, I went to breakfast with some of my neighbors. Most were over 65 and done with raising kids, if they had kids at all. There were about 12 of us. We sat down at a table, and the table over was a family of four — two parents, two young kids. I’d guess 4 and 7 on the kids’ ages. As soon as that family sat down, they handed the two kids iPads. The mom even put headphones on the younger kid as he navigated his iPad. Then, you’d assume the mom and dad did that so they could talk, I.e. “adult time.” Instead they didn’t talk, sipped coffee, and then stared at their own phones. When the waitress came, the elder kid wanted a cheeseburger, but it wasn’t on the breakfast menu, so he screamed at the waitress in between f’ing around with his iPad.

It’s easy to look at this as the decline of society, absolutely. And I do think phones and tech play role, sure. But at any point in the above anecdote, the parents could have actively parented. So like, is it really a problem “of the phones?” Or are we just saying that because we want to let parents off the hook for their inactivity?

Then, of course, we need to get into why people even have kids

You think about this a lot if you experience infertility, so I am a semi-expert on this topic. Kids obviously went from “economic necessity” to “nice to have” in about 100 years, as we weaned ourselves away from being a predominant-agricultural society. But they’re not really a “nice to have.” For many, they are a “need to have,” but the question becomes: why? In reality, the main answer is actually “We need a taxpayer base” and “We need the young to take care of the old.” Those are not sexy things to say out loud, so instead we talk about love and family and generations and legacy and life and the Bible and whatever, but the actual reason most people have kids is “on accident.” Once you move past “on accident,” the actual №1 reason is — social relevance.

And when you had kids to keep up with Lindsay down the street or Gemma from the sorority, then how would you possibly be a good parent? You didn’t get into it for any “right reason.” You got into it because “it’s what you do” and/or “My friends did it.” So even if you read all the books and watch all the clips, your heart isn’t really in it. You did it for Joneses. So of course you’re not gonna be super good at it.

Here’s another brief anecdote: I recently got laid off from this church gig I was working, OK?

Well, one of the reasons I got piped was because I ran afoul of the entitled moms contingent downstairs at the day school (read the article to find out how). While I was working there, the head of the day school — an entitled mom herself — sent an email to all the parents saying that school next year (2024) would open a few weeks later via construction. Moms went nuts, emailing her and saying, “I cannot possibly have my kid for four more weeks. You must open on time.” If you ever went downstairs to dismissal at this church, almost every mom was currently pregnant. So, they can’t deal with their kids for another few weeks, but they’re having more kids? What gives?

It’s because the kids don’t matter as human beings — they often matter as social markers. And that has declined parenting in many ways. I can count on less than one hand the amount of women I’ve met (OK, maybe two hands) who want to be mothers because they deeply and truly have a desire to be a mom and parent and go through all of it, good and bad. Most women I know or have known want it for the social currency.

How would we ever expect parenting to be elite when that’s the driver?

The repercussions section

Very slowly, we’re seeing shifts in “bad parenting” and repercussions, apart from the obvious Child Protective Services stuff, which we’ve already seen for generations. We’re even seeing it around Instagram.

So, a shift might be coming. But it’s slow, absolutely.

Back to the phones and “still face” for a second

Some of the “science” and “data” in there is relevant to all this, too.

What is “parenting,” really?

I think part of the problem with the modern parenting discussion is that it’s heavily front-loaded, especially in an age where IVF is common knowledge among people. We love pregnancy and new moms (although we give them no social safety net) and babies. We love all that shit. Babies are cute and represent a major turning point in the story of a given family and they don’t talk back.

We don’t love teenagers as much. Young adults? Let them play on TikTok and hopefully there’s a job somewhere for them. Most parenting books are about pregnancy and 0–3 years. We don’t really have a lot of network or context beyond all that, so it’s easy for people to see parenting as a destination, not a journey. In reality, if you have kids at 30 and you live to 85, you’re a parent for 55 years — not for the first 18 before they go off to school or adulthood. I think we’ve lost sense of that. I cannot tell you how many times, at a backyard BBQ, you now hear: “Only seven years until we’re free.” That to me speaks to, “I really wanted to have kids, and I liked the baby part, but now I’m over this shit.”

You see the destination/journey problem in work leadership, too. People become executives and think “Hell yea, I’ve arrived,” forgetting that the actual work is now in front of them. I think that’s kinda the same issue with parenting, and that perspective has screwed up generations of kids. It’s not about woke parents (part of it) or overworked parents (part of it) or lack of safety nets (part of it), but it seems like we start parenting from the wrong place, and then expect it to magically work out for the kids involved. That’s folly.

What’s your take herein?