Kennedy: Are Chattanooga parents coddling their kids?

COLUMN

On Christmas morning 1969, when I was 11 years old, Santa Claus brought me a tape recorder.

This was before cassette tapes. It was a small, battery-powered reel-to-reel unit. Recording the human voice seemed like a godlike power. I sang "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies into my tape recorder and played it back for my 6-year-old sister.

Interestingly, I remember that toy all these years later not so much for what it did on that Christmas morning but for what it did not do. Somehow, I accidentally depressed the "pause" button on the tape player - who knew about pausing tape? - which rendered the unit mysteriously inoperable.

After I had spent a few hours stewing, I remember my mother and father knocking on the door of my bedroom. They both walked in and sat on the opposite corners of my bed. My mother, who was holding the tape recorder in her lap, smiled and pushed the "play" button. Immediately, I heard her voice from the speaker: "Mark, I think we've fixed your tape recorder. Merry Christmas, son."

I remember this small act of parental kindness because it was not an everyday event. My parents were loving, caring folks, but parenting in the 1960s was not nearly as preoccupying as it is today. Midcentury parents did not appear to feel responsible for the minute-to-minute happiness of their offspring. Put it this way, had my tape recorder malfunctioned on a random day in February, it would not have been considered a family emergency.

When I was a kid, I remember the label "overprotective parent," being thrown around as a term of derision. Parents who smothered their children with love and attention were viewed as, at best, soft and, at worst, selfish.

"Overprotective parent" is not a term you hear a lot these days. Short of locking your children away in a room, I'm not what it would take to get such a label now.

The April issue of Psychology Today magazine includes an article called "How the American Dream Undermines Us." The article points out that American parents often sacrifice an adult social life for the sake of optimizing "family time." Meanwhile in Europe, where parents seem to be happier and less stressed, children are part of a complex social web, we're told. Kids in Europe are not always positioned at the center of the family universe.

The American parenting model can lead to "social isolation, lack of outside support" and an unrealistic expectation of parenting bliss, according to researcher Robin Simon of Wake Forest University.

I remember, as a young adult, being grateful that my parents had given me enough elbow room as a kid to make mistakes. But I also remember feeling a sense of personal isolation that lingered into my 30s.

Today, with two sons ages 9 and 4, I struggle with balance. Partly as a result of my childhood, sometimes I think I've become too involved with my children, as if I am riding a pendulum that has swung too far away from the 1960s tough-love model.

But then my 4-year-old snuggles up to me on the couch, lifts my arm and places it around his neck.

"How much do you love me?" I'll say. "I love you to the end of the road and back," he'll say sweetly.

Suddenly, my mind disengages, my heart hums, and I resolve not to worry too much about what passes for happiness in Europe.

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