An Anxious Generation—of Parents
Back home in the States, we’re constantly worried about our kids. It’s well-documented and generally accepted that smartphones, social media, and a lack of childhood independenceand free play contribute to creating what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt famously dubbed an “anxious generation.” But in all this collective handwringing, we tend to overlook a closely related and equally pervasive problem: unchecked, socially normalized parental anxiety and the smothering parenting style it produces.
There’s nothing new under the sun, and I’m sure, to some extent, that’s true of parental worries. Throughout the ages, parents have feared losing their children to sickness, accidents, or violence. Right now, while I worry about volleyball team tryouts and first day of school jitters, mothers around the world worry about bombs and bullets, famine and frontlines.
The problem of the relatively comfortable, like us, seems to be what we do with our worries. Our parenting strategies successfully soothe our own fears, but that doesn’t mean they meet our children’s developmental needs. We disempower our kids instead of helping them grow into competent, confident adults. We rebrand hyper-concern as proof of love and treat our pursuit of safety and ease like whipped cream on hot chocolate: If some is good, surely more will be better.
