There has been a subject large in my mind lately. A recent discussion over on Dutch and Wood’s site regarding classism had me thinking about it again, though the subject I’ve been thinking of takes a slightly different tack.
I’ve been thinking an awful lot about a current trend/attitude of parenting, sometimes called the “New Mommyism”. It’s an attitude where the mom or dad or parents put all or a lot of their energy into raising their child (which is OK) to the extent of becoming very competitive with other parents about who is doing more, whose child is more advanced, etc. (which is the part I don’t like). There also seems to be a lot of pressure to conform to this idea of parenting and a lot of rules (and controversies) over “the right things” to do as a parent (i.e. if you don’t breastfeed you must be a bad mom). (I have satirized a number of the attitudes I’ve encountered on previous posts.) The “right things” can run the gamut from breastfeeding and having a particular stroller to being in the “right” Mommy and Me group to having your child be in advanced education programs and extracurricular activities. And there is a ton of controversy and information overload about the “right things.” All in all, there is a certain amount of pressure to be “super-parents” (and sometimes also pressure on the children to be “super-kids”).
Now I don’t want to disparage anyone’s parenting beliefs or techniques. Everyone has their own approach and it’s their right to do so, and more importantly, every child is different and may need different parenting approaches. I don’t have an issue with general parenting techniques, I just have issues with those who take things to an extreme (in either direction) and those who are excessively competitive or aggressive about their parenting philosophies/activities.
Sometimes there just seems to be a lot of jockeying, bragging, and one-upmanship of “who’s the best parent now?”
My real question, and the one I’ve been thinking a lot about, is WHY is our generation into such extreme parenting? This seems to be a generally new approach to parenting; it certainly was not part (or not as large of a part) of my parents’ generation’s child-raising techniques. Is it simply another form of competitive classism here in the US? ( I have heard that this attitude is not predominant in other countries, but please correct me if I am wrong.) Is this extreme parenting just an off-shoot of an inherent competitiveness in our culture? A “keep up with the Joneses” taken to it’s logical conclusion? I know that the US culture can be pretty competitive in general; look at sports, jobs, who’s got the biggest SUV. (I just have a hard time understanding a lot of it because I am not a very competitive person.)
Or is there some reason that we, as a generation, feel like we need to compensate for something through parenting? It almost seems sometimes that “new mommyism” is peppered with guilt. But for what, I don’t know. Is it just that we, being in the digital era, have witnessed so many sensationalized video clips of irresponsible or uncaring parents that we are unconsciously counter-reacting by trying to be the best possible parents ever? Are we reacting to mistakes our parents’ generation may have made? Is the “super-parenting” a symptom of guilt, or does it create guilt by conjuring a vision of perfect parenting that we can never attain?
Please understand that these are only my musings in the hopes of opening a conversation. This is a huge issue and has many different sides. Of course many of us want to give our children the best of everything, the best and safest equipment, the best education, and the best potential for a successful and happy life. I personally made a choice to wait to have children until I felt I was in a financially secure position. I have nothing against spending time, money, or attentive focus on a child if that’s what the parents feel the child needs to be happy and successful. Parenthood every day is a learning experience and we are blessed to have children to love and nurture. (I also have nothing against general bragging about our kids, ‘cause that’s just fun and we’re parents and people should expect a little bragging.)
But sometimes I wonder, in the extreme cases where the act of parenting has turned into a form of competition with their neighbors, whose best interest is it in? And I wonder how we came to such an extreme position; what made us turn this direction?
If anyone has thoughts on the matter I would love to hear them. – the weirdgirl
What you’re writing about is generally while I don’t ever hang out in real life with other parents. Morphing into Mama had a funny post about a month or so about a woman who wouldn’t let her kid hang out with MIM’s kid because he “didn’t have anything to offer her son developmentally” or something like that. Blood. . .boiling. . .
I think the popular medical and psychological literature that has been published in the last ten years has something to do with it—you see all those stories about HOW TEH FIRST THREE YEARS OF A CHILD’S LIFE DETERMINE WHETHER OR NOT S/HE WILL BE A FUCKING GENIUS OR NOT and so people take EVERYTHING so fucking seriously. it starts in pregnancy, doesn’t it? how many articles are there about what you should eat to develop your child’s brain cells and what kind of music you should play through headphones placed on the belly.
Call me a bad parent, but I never played no freakin’ mozart through no headphones to my baby. I swear I told people this and they looked at me like I just threw away Junebug’s potential admission to Juilliard.
There’s this idea that if you don’t do it right you are screwing them forever, and that’s idiotic. There’s also the if YOU can’t spend all day with the kid, the more money you spend on it will somehow make up for it.
Some of my favorite parents are laid-back hippie parents. unfortunately most of the hippies around here are Type A Rainbow Grocery hippies, and they can be the WORST.
Sorry I don’t have a better snappy point to make here. I think class comes into it to the extent that those of us in upper-middle class are competitive by nature.
I think Capitalism is part of it. New products to make babies better in utero like baby headphones. Classical music to make them smarter. Einstein videos. New electronic manipulative Fish Price toys.
Both of my kids’ favorite toy is the plastic pop corn popper – AND it helped them strengthen their legs while learning to walk.
I think parenting elitism is simply just ONE way Americans are trying to up one another.
From bigger homes to nicer cars. These days, most parents are “stage moms” and dads. Just go watch any soccer game – parents go Nazi and don’t make it fun for the kids.
For many, their children reflect on them…and their children are a new type of status.
Pretty sad, but it’s the truth.
It IS sad. I feel especially bad for the kids who get caught in a pressure trap of expectations. I think a lot of people also still believe the old myth that we only use 10% of our brains. They think they can help their kid get ahead by filling up the other 90%, but in truth we actually DO use most of our brain (and I think the parts they aren’t sure about are just doing things we can’t track yet). It drives me nuts how often people will quote “science” that they’ve never researched or substantiated besides “I heard from so-and-so that we only use 10% of our brains but Mozart makes babies smarter.”
I never played Mozart on headphones either. Come on, that’s what Bugs Bunny is for… to teach our children classical music. And Dutch, as a child raised by actual 60s era hippies, I SO know what you mean about the type A Rainbow Grocery ones.
And, Oh My God!, if someone ever said to me what they said to MIM I think I would go absolutely circus freak apeshit! How pompous and elitist and RUDE can you get? How will that poor kid find real friends if his mother keeps holding out for something “better”?
As a single-parent of two girls (ages 8 and 5) I have had my share of parents tell me in no uncertain terms how “bad” they felt for me and my girls. “Poor me, having to work and support the girls all by myself.” “Poor girls having little contact with their dad.” Etc., etc.
The girls and I have a pretty darn decent life. We aren’t rich, but we have the best circle of friends that love and support us like you wouldn’t believe (weirdgirl – you and Keen are tops). We are blessed with good health, and laugh our heads off most of the time.
I don’t do everything right, and I make a lot of mistakes, and yes I even yell at my kids. But overall, I fucking rock as a parent. So screw anyone who thinks they could do a better job than me with my kids.
P.S. Have you ever noticed that the parents who pay so much attention to what “they have to do” to have “healthy, happy, and adjusted children” have the worst freakin’ kids on the planet? And that the best kids are usually from the parents who would never qualify “under the new rules and regulations”.
There’s so much excitement around every transition and every beginning, so from childbirth thru young adulthood when a person’s pattern is established, the outside world is watching to see how things are progressing. Sounds like a lot of pressure to me, if it’s let in…. from family, parenting groups, ideals of geniuses, children in other countries exceeding at younger ages(at what? being human computers??)…
We see all the knee-jerk reactions to everything in the media, when yes, the bigger picture is more important. Just because some of us saw the era of children’s ability to sue their parents, that doesn’t mean we should now be scard into thinking we need to be so perfect lest our children are taken by social services, blames us for all their problems (they’ll do that anyways until they mature), or doesn’t do the one thing we think kids should do.
Yes, we’ll also put enough pressure on the kid ourselves, why let any in from outside the home? I think a good dose of information from the other parents about what’s going on in their homes with a healthy ego to not compete or defend, but just swap clues, is great. It’s good to be proud and help each other out, but let the little ones grow in the balance of discipline and fun.