<p>A pertinent article by Christine Rosen in Policy Review:</p>
<p>**the children of …1970s narcissists are now forming their own families. None of them, evidently, is merely average. Many of them embrace an increasingly egalitarian family structure…(they) uncritically and enthusiastically use personal technologies that alter the rhythms of private life and isolate family members from each other, and approach institutions such as schools and the workplace with a healthy sense of entitlement. They spend less time with their children… rely more on experts for advice about how to deal with them when they do, and begin building a resumé of activities and test scores for them from an increasingly early age.</p>
<p>…It is not a surprise, in this climate, to find that the ability to win praise and attention has become the marker of success in the culture. As Charles Derber argues in The Pursuit of Attention, such efforts have only increased… We live, Derber claims, in an attention-seeking culture where self-involvement is so great that it even imposes on regular social interactions in the form of conversational narcissism. Today we find ordinary Americans setting up webcams in their dorm rooms to broadcast their daily activities over the Internet. </p>
<p>…In a much-discussed 2004 article in Psychology Today, Hara Estroff Marano bluntly argued that the hothouse parenting techniques of todays mothers and fathers are creating a nation of wimps. With few challenges all their own, kids are unable to forge their creative adaptations to the normal vicissitudes of life, Marano wrote. That not only makes them risk-averse, it makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the process theyre robbed of identity, meaning, and a sense of accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real happiness. </p>
<p>… In 2002, Professor Harvey Mansfield of Harvard sparked controversy when he publicly criticized his university for issuing as to a quarter of all undergraduates (another quarter received a-minuses). There is something inappropriate almost sick in the spectacle of mature adults showering young people with unbelievable praise, Mansfield wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education…
**</p>
<p>“Psychology Today”
I dunno- isn’t this kinda ironic?</p>
<p>That not only makes them risk-averse, it makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the process theyre robbed of identity, meaning, and a sense of accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real happiness.</p>
<p>"…In a much-discussed 2004 article in Psychology Today, Hara Estroff Marano bluntly argued that the hothouse parenting techniques of todays mothers and fathers are creating a nation of wimps. With few challenges all their own, kids are unable to forge their creative adaptations to the normal vicissitudes of life, Marano wrote. That not only makes them risk-averse, it makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the process theyre robbed of identity, meaning, and a sense of accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real happiness. </p>
<p>yeah. right. There are the kids in single-parent families, in lousy schools, with incomes below the national family median (in case he hasn’t noticed, it is $52k a year), with health care iffy at best, mother one paycheck away from homelessness; almost a third of all kids born into poverty; the bottom 20% of the population poorer than it was 30 years ago. Right - they have “few challenges of their own” and are "unable to forge their - a-hem - “creative adaptations” to the - double a-hem - “normal vissitudes of life”. </p>
<p>What planet does this Marano man live on? I think he needs some “reality therapy” to deal with his “healthy sense of entitlement.” Sick.</p>
<p>It’s sick when you make generalizations which marginalize more than a half of all American children, and their parents. It’s sick because it is a classic psychological sympton of the same sick narcissism and feeds feeds the same narcissism that the author attempts to rail against.</p>
<p>What makes for “a nation of wimps” is the refusal to stare reality clearly in the eye.</p>
<p>I was one of your "third of all kids born in poverty"orphanage–living on my own as a teenager++ and the whole bit. With a little effort and luck things are different for my own children. They still matter even though they are not sufficiently impoverished to be a cause to be swung about as the indignation stirs like bile from the nether regions of those who need just such props and bits.</p>
<p>Your tin-pontifications ring hollow in my ears. But then, you are not really whining because you are not describing your own lived experience, but the one you imagine to be, or have seen, or have statistics on, yet lived by others. </p>
<p>No indignant opportunity missed in a culture of resentment.
<p>I became a teenager in the 1950s and a parent in the 1980s. As I recollect haven’t we found fault with every generation that comes along? It’s something that the popular press and politicans seems to revel in. Don’t you think that this is more of the same?</p>
<p>The sex, drugs, and rock and roll generation becomes hothouse parents. Irony of ironies.</p>
<p>My in-laws were born into abject, you-cannot-imagine-it, poverty.</p>
<p>Their four children, born into that same poverty, raised with 60’s and 70’s sex, drugs and rock n roll, are now upper middle class hothouse parents. Big time. Go figure. </p>
<p>Interestingly, they don’t carry around a mantle of poverty the way you do, mini. They do look after the family left behind, in an extraordinarily generous way, but they WHOLLY identify with the upper middle class group they now live in. They would all enjoy this article as a talking point.</p>
<p>Sometimes an intellectual discussion of generalized theories does help us organize our outlooks. The generalizations MAY pertain to the readers of this particular (wildly) ‘success-oriented’ site, most of whom are middle and upper class citizens.</p>
<p>tsdad…were you overpraising me there? You didn’t need to. ;)</p>
<p>In all fairness, Cheers, I don’t recognize any kids I know in the conclusions expressed in the excerpts you posted on line. “Risk-averse”??? No way… it seems if anything that young people are encouraged to lead far more adventuresome lives than was the case in my generation. I think minis’ observations apply to poor and middle class kids, and even some upper class ones as well. </p>
<p>So really, I think the “resort to insult” started with your original post, coupled with the thread title. I’m not saying you intended it that way… but essentially you began a thread on the theme, “why all American children are spoiled rotten”… and then recoil when someone challenges you on that assertion. </p>
<p>I don’t know many hothouse parents or overpraised kids. I do know there has been a tendency over the past couple of decades toward the “everyone wins a trophy” attitude in school and athletics for children, but I honestly don’t think that it is endemic enough to significantly alter the typical experiences kids have growing up. Most parents are imperfect human beings who yell at their kids and occasionally say demeaning things when they are angry - so most kids have weathered plenty of criticism along the way. If anything, today’s parents push their kids into competitive situations more readily, more frequently, and at an earlier age than in the past – that may work harm in a number of ways, but I don’t think it produces “wimps”. </p>
<p>Anyway, I will apologize in advance because I didn’t bother to read the article you linked to, so perhaps the excerpts don’t tell the whole story.</p>
<p>Actually, I concur with the article - as a teacher, I deal with those parents on a daily basis. Not all parents, but a good percentage. In their efforts to create a false “perfect child” and buy them out of any and all difficulties, they are doing their children no good. Major topic of conversation among teachers. We are concerned that these children will not be able to handle day-to-day pressures or disappointments that life doles out. BTW, I teach in a middle-upper middle class suburban HS. We do not see this in the lower socio-economic parents, perhaps because of job responsibilities, lack of resources, or lack of knowledge of how to play the game. Other parents keep threatening us with their attorneys, keep going to doctors until they find one that will say what they want them to say so the kid won’t have to take a class, shop the teachers that give easy A’s, etc., and do anything in order that their child’s transcript prepares them for HYP. They don’t care if their child learns anything or not, just get the grade. These kids do not learn that there are repercussions to their actions. These parents view the teachers and schools not as partners, but as adversaries to stop their child from getting into HYP. I don’t know how many times I have been told that I was keeping their child out of HYP, with no mention of the zeroes the child racked up, or lack of study. Many of these kids are withdrawn from our school and sent to the “You pay for A’s” private school in the area, never to one of the reputable ones. These parents blame everyone except their child, so the child learns that everyone else is wrong, and he is always right, and entitled to A’s, etc., no matter what. These are the kids that won’t be able to keep a job or deal with authority well, be it at the workplace or anyplace else.</p>
<p>I see the article (at least the excerpts) as part of the huge generalization for everyone except my kids syndrome. it gets applied to every generation, as has been pointed out. And I agree with Calmom tht the article is implicitly insulting, as is the title, and that when the phrase “nation of wimps” is used, it’s not just aimed at the UMC, it’s meant to describe everyone; thus, I think that Mini has a point, too.</p>
<p>Since my kids attended schools with very diverse populations, I have seen the situations described by both Mini and Evitajr. There are parents who are overinvolved, who are overly concerned about the kids’ self-esteem (and not just their kids’). Then there are the parents who, for whatever reason–lack of time, lack of English facility, lack of knowledge of American education–are totally uninvolved. And finally, there are the parents who push their kids too hard. We see them all.</p>
<p>I see this a little of this with parents of older kids, but much more with parents of younger kids. For instance in my younger D’s Brownie troop, a couple of the moms decided it was necessary to shield their daughters from the fact that some girls got more prizes for selling more cookies. So this year, I guess, the prizes are going to be put in wrapped boxes, and the girls are not supposed to open them in front of each other (or at least not in front of any “sensitive” ones). Whatever . . .</p>
<p>Notwithstanding Elvis, the man in the gray flannel suit, tranquilized suburban mothers, little boxes made of ticky tack, juvenile delinquents, nudity in the movies, marijuana, LSD, motorcycle gangs in black leather jackets, Afros, rock and roll, the New Left, miniskirts, teenage pregnancy, the Black Panthers, coed dorms, high school dropouts, anti-war protesters, and feminism this is absolutely the worst generation ever with the most terrible parents and the country is going to h—.</p>
<p>The Op seems to have struck quite a nerve amongst some from the free-love generation.</p>
<p>Anyhow, it seems pedantic to a fault to suggest that for one to critique anything they must critique everything in its totality.
I would think a sicker form of narcissism would be to think one can or even should speak for all things as if speaking for themselves. Then, perhaps I lack the total Gods eye view granted to those capable of such totalitarian shrewdness (curiously common to those who eschew the possibility of such a view, in fact, as a matter of principal).</p>
<p>Well, now I have gone and read the link - at least the “Hothouse Parenting” segment… and I find it even less compelling and more insulting. Essentially it is a rant written from the point of view of an advocate of an authoritarian parenting style, relying on anecdotal examples that would apply only to the most economically privileged (top 5%) of our society: those with the means to hire nannies with whom to compete, or to provide their kids in private suites in their well-appointed homes. </p>
<p>The irony is that the argument is supported by citation to a lifestyle that exists only among the privileged: the rest of us (and I say “us” because those of us in the lower 90% income bracket happen to be in the majority) are financially shut out of the ability to indulge our kids in such a manner. So it doesn’t even matter whether we would want to – we’re stuck in the world that the hothouse parents pull their kids out of. In other words, I never met any of the families attending Evitajr1’s school because those families would never choose to live in my neighborhood or send their kids to the public schools in this area. It’s not that I haven’t seen over-protective or over-indulgent parents, it’s just that without means, they can’t manage to do a very good job of sheltering their kids from life in the real world.</p>
<p>Woodwork–“nation of wimps”, implies everyone, not some. Critiquing some if fine; critiquing some and calling it everyone sure is narcissism.</p>
<p>If the author meant some folks but not others, then he/she coulda said so, and identified them. But huge sweeping generalities are way more fun…</p>
<p>There ya go. I did not realize mini meant ‘sick’ in the clinical sense. </p>
<p>Face it, many CC kids are overpraised by parent posters. I’ve read many such posts. Many.</p>
<p>That’s why I posted the article. It’s a good talking point for this group. Me included. Many of the issues are not new CC point; pressured students, working mums, “My gifted child!”, segregating non-drinkers from drinkers.</p>
<p>Apparently I should have included a disclaimer to warn readers that the article contained genearlizations that did not refer to the poor. My bad.</p>