Today I bring you not my words, but the words of another. And these are the words of not just a writer, but a researcher as well. These words are not opinion, but the result of intentional study. These words ask the significant question of why do American children depend on their parents to do things for them that they are capable of doing for themselves and they offer answers that speak truth into our culture and into our lives. I will tease you with a portion of Shirley Wang’s article, “A Field Guide to the Middle-Class U.S. Family”, as seen in theWall Street Journal on March 13, in hopes that they will inspire you to read the full article. The words speak for themselves, loudly and clearly.
By studying families at home - or, as the scientists say, “in vivo” - rather than in a lab, they hope to better grasp how families with two working parents balance child care, household duties and career, and how this balance affects their health and well-being.
How kids develop moral responsibility is an area of focus for the researchers. Dr. Ochs, who began her career in far-off regions of the world studying the concept of “baby talk,” noticed that American children seemed relatively helpless compared with those in other cultures she and colleagues had observed.
Asking (American) children to do a task led to much negotiation, and when parents asked, it sounded often like they were asking a favor, not making a demand, researchers said. Parents interviewd about their behavior said it was often too much trouble to ask.
It isn’t that the kids were unable to do the tasks or that their parents didn’t express a need for help, say the researchers. Rather, the studied children didn’t seem to view it as their routine responsibility to contribute, researchers say.
In about 75% of the families, the mothers came home first and began to “gyrate” through the house, bouncing between the kids and their homework, groceries, dinner and laundry, according to the group’s analysis published in the Journal of Family Psychology in 2009. When the fathers came home, 86% of the time at least one child didn’t pay attent to him … … The kids are oblivious to their parent’s perspectives.
Researchers are also examining how U.S. parents view family life and work. Parents tended to describe a “very prescribed way of being together,” says Dr. Kermer-Sadlik.
This structured and idealized way of being together appears to pressure parents to achieve these moments and also avoid other instances that might ruin it, like a child’s temper tantrums.
I write frequently and furiously about the American parenting culture. I feel anxious every time I watch a family give in to the whims of their children. I feel sad every time I hear a parent say that he “is glad it’s Monday and he is back at work.” I just kills me the way American parents say that being a parent is the hardest job they have ever had, and treat it as if it is something to be endured, rather than enjoyed. I am disheartened when after all of the over-parenting, over-providing and over-protecting, I see young people on the cusp of their lives shut down, unable to cope with the demands of adult life. Clearly the cultural paradigm isn’t working, and yet parents continue to pursue it with ever increasing determination.
I always want to cry out, It does not have to be this way. The difficulty isn’t the children. The difficulty isn’t the magnitude of the role. The difficulty isn’t even the culture. The difficulty rests in the minds of the parents. The difficulty is that the children don’t need to change (though they do), and the magnitude of the role is not going to change, or that the culture needs to change (though it does), the difficulty is that the parents need to change. They need to change their minds, and then their actions. And even when we know that the end result will be better, the natural human instinct is to resist change.
I am going to close today with the words of Pamela Druckerman, printed in a recent edition of the Wall Street Journal. Although it is a bit long, I so hope you will read it. Then read it again. Read it as many times as you need to, if it will give you the courage to change your minds and approach. Because if you do, it will change your life, and for the better.
When my daughter was 18 months old, my husband and I decided to take her on a little summer holiday. We picked a coastal town that’s a few hours by train from Paris, where we were living (I’m American, he’s British), and booked a hotel room with a crib. Bean, as we call her, was our only child at this point, so forgive us for thinking: How hard could it be?
We ate breakfast at the hotel, but we had to eat lunch and dinner at the little seafood restaurants around the old port. We quickly discovered that having two restaurant meals a day with a toddler deserved to be its own circle of hell.
Bean would take a brief interest in the food, but within a few minutes she was spilling salt shakers and tearing apart sugar packets. Then she demanded to be sprung from her high chair so she could dash around the restaurant and bolt dangerously toward the docks.
Our strategy was to finish the meal quickly. We ordered while being seated, then begged the server to rush out some bread and bring us our appetizers and main courses at the same time. While my husband took a few bites of fish, I made sure that Bean didn’t get kicked by a waiter or lost at sea. Then we switched. We left enormous, apologetic tips to compensate for the arc of torn napkins and calamari around our table.
