Kennedy: Parents: Shadow or step back?

photo Mark Kennedy

American parents are stirring. You can feel public opinion beginning to turn on decades of soft parenting.

When we baby boomers and Gen Xers were kids, one of the worst things you could say about our parents was that they spoiled us. Back then, this moral misgiving had a name -- "over-sheltering" -- and kids subjected to over-sheltering were thought to be unprepared for the rigors of their teen years, never mind adulthood.

Under this 20th-century parenting code, mothers and fathers were called upon to provide for a child's material and spiritual needs and to survey the boundaries of proper behavior, but to otherwise give a child space to succeed -- or fail -- on their own. This describes my childhood. My parents were hands-off in their approach to child rearing. Discipline was swiftly administered and quickly forgotten.

Too, my parents weren't overly concerned about protecting my self-esteem. I remember being told as a 13-year-old that my baseball career was over. Not said, but clearly implied, was: "Because you're not very good, kid, and we're tired of taking you across town to practice."

All right, then.

I quickly turned my energy to drumming, an activity at which I actually had some talent, and I eventually earned a college scholarship as a percussionist. Still, for years I put myself to sleep at night mentally perfecting my baseball swing.

Nowadays, I hear a chorus of experts pining for those good old days when kids were kids, adults were adults, and they came together for about 30 minutes every evening over a platter of Hamburger Helper.

Part of this attitude change, I think, is based on envy. In some ways, our 20th-century parents seemed to have richer lives than we 21st-century parents do. Some of our dads amazingly found time to work on their golf games or to play poker with the guys. Our moms didn't fret over our math homework; they went to Tupperware parties and read Southern Living magazine. They certainly didn't write long notes to our teachers, or steer us into year-round sports teams, or send us to overnight enrichment camps to learn to write computer code. I would bet a week's pay that neither of my parents ever uttered the word "awesome" to describe me or my sister.

An opinion piece in the New York Times earlier this month by journalist Pamela Druckerman points to our growing over-parenting problem in the U.S. as exemplified, she says, by "the guilt-ridden, sacrificial mother -- fretting that she's overdoing it or not doing enough."

Oddly, the French -- not commonly cited as a cultural reference point for American families -- are being held up as 21st-century versions of old-school American parents. France, it seems, "is a rare rich country where helicopter parenting isn't the norm," Druckerman writes.

Meanwhile, some thinkers are beginning to note that the consequences of over-parenting might be damaged marriages, as husbands and wives neglect their adult relationship to care for -- some would say hover over -- their children.

"Sometime between when we were children and when we had children of our own, parenthood became a religion in America," writes Danielle Teller, a physician and researcher, and her husband, Astro Teller, head of Google X, for the online magazine Quartz.

Everyone seems to know a couple who split up after their children left the nest; presumably because they grew apart while being preoccupied with kids.

Some of this focus on parenting is beginning to sound like shallow, trend-of-the-moment analysis. The truth is that many of today's parents wouldn't spend so much time with their kids if they didn't feel like their own parents failed them. I know I always planned to shower my children with love and affection precisely because I felt that, as a kid, I could have used more emotional support.

Some of today's parenting style is no doubt just the normal whipsaw of one generation reacting to the last. Our parents were detached, so we have become hyper-attentive. Would it surprise anyone if our kids, feeling smothered, decide to give their own children more space?

Mark my words: The next generation of American children will get fewer soccer participation medals, will be given more freedom to thrive or fail academically, and will probably think it's weird to text their parents regularly from college.

So what are modern parents to do? First, understand that no generation gets parenting exactly right. Detachment and attachment are like hot and cold running water: Both have their place.

Beyond that, my gut advice is this: Split the difference and go play golf.

Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.

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