Abstract
This short book summarises key debates in the recent cultural changes to middle class parenting and links these changes to the abilities of children to develop resilience. Its main argument is that through reducing the opportunties for children to explore, take risks, and be exposed to difficulties, that childhoods are generally becoming ‘tamer’. This hyper-protectionism leads to decreased resilience in young people as they are presented with fewer opportunities to face criticism, problems they must solve themselves, or difficult challenges in general. They are also told through a ‘praise culture’ they are exceptional in every way, so when inevitable challenges come, they have limited ability to respond – they’re ‘snowflakes’ unable to shake it off. This book explores these concepts in an accessible fashion, pointing out the origins of this movement in policy and social changes, and its effects on parenting, educational systems and community spaces.
The book manages to discuss these issues in a manner that doesn’t take the easy route of parent blaming, pointing out the wider forces at play. For example, the authors describe the process leading to parents engaging in ‘helicopter’ parenting, but locate it within a context of neoliberal individualism, competition and inquality. They suggest this parenting style results from a combination of pervasive discourses about external risks, and strong beliefs about the relationship between intense involvement in every aspect of children’s lives, (including all manner of educational oppportunities), with narrowly conceived ‘success’ (that is, educational and employent ‘success’). Heightened involvement continues far beyond the age at which parents in earlier generations would have slowly backed away. Children’s physical spatial zones are now limited to the home and school, at the same time as concerns about technology use in the home increase, yet parents feel powerless to do otherwise. The authors point out that this development takes place in a context where ‘parenting’ itself (a recent verb) is constructed as requiring some sort of expert learning, ‘intervention’ and direction. This has created a cult-like following of certain types of parenting, and a market for ‘parenting advice’ that presupposes that there is a correct, special knoweldge required in order to parent ‘properly’, adding to parenting anxieties. Parents become overinvolved and as the authors point out, there may well be a short term pay off of higher grades at school, but children may not learn ‘a range of other skills and attributes that would benefit them in the long term. . . Parents see their children as an objects to be managed, and not as a person who needs guidance to act autonomously’ (p. 66). The expectations of parents are to therefore invest every moment of time and resources into their children’s care, surveillance, education and safety. The assumed pay-off is, in a neoliberal culture of increased competition and inequality, a seat at the middle class table, and the status and reputation of a parent of a ‘successful’ child. This is both an economic and an emotional investment, with a promise of future payoff, in a time when notions of social investment, and early intervention are prominent in policies of many kinds.
There were some ineresting nuances in this book. The observation that parents have become more emotionally expressive, but (in an age of deep attachments to mobile phones) less actually emotionally engaged with their children was prescient. Another interesting direction was the inclusion of how children themselves might reciprocate some of the expectations of being parented further into their lifespan, for example expecting ongoing economic support well into adulthood, though in a time of precarious labour and a rapidly changing work environment, it’s hard to see how this is not also explained by broad changes in economic conditions.
The technological dimensions proposed as part of ‘taming’ were particularly fascinating. The use of phones and apps was mentioned in relation to enabling more parental surveillance and overinvolvement – but I think it’s more complex than that. Phones can paradoxically enable more child exploration by providing a way to let children do more alone while having a backup plan if it goes awry. This may be differentiated depending on age – that is, phones might enable younger children to have more freedom, while subjecting older children to a less positive form of parental surveillance. It may also, of course, encourage child reliance on parents to bail them out far beyond when that might be reasonable. Parenting is constantly beset with such considerations of extending, then withdrawing support, and decisions take place within a community context. True risks of stranger attack might not have really increased, but community involvement in parenting is certainly challenged by employment migration patterns and the expectation of family self-reliance.
Another aspect to consider, is that ‘overinvolvement’ extending into young adulthood must be considered in the current employment context. Smartphones and messaging in particular can enable ongoing communication and a relational closeness between parents and children into adulthood in a manner that once would have been impossible. Is this really just enabling a crippling dependence and overinvolvment, or providing deep relationships that buffer against the increasing stresses of precarious employment, global and internal migration, and exposure to social media criticism that are the emblems of young adult lives?
The authors point out that the combination of neoliberal individualism, combined with social media identity production produces a type of narcissm, and restricted and idealised options for identity for young people. The role of social media as a cause of anxiety could have extended the arguments here, as well as posed some interesting questions about the causal mechanisms of ‘lack of resilience’. Exposure to the judgements of peers, arguably, is one of the other keys to the increased anxieties (or lack of resilience) seen in young people. Being constantly exposed and contactable by one’s peers, who can comment semi-publically in ways they would not face to face, has a signficant anxiety-provoking effect for many young people. In terms of the mechanisms of resilience building therefore, it may be that in this domain at least, it’s not so much that children haven’t been exposed to enough adversity, challenge or criticism, but instead, are over-exposed to the intense criticisms of their peers. This contributes to the hyper-anxieties around things like giving presentations to a class (an example given by the authors as evidence of the decrease in resilience). This nuance speaks to a deeper issue about conceptualising resilience. The metaphor for resilience as something ‘built up’, like a callous, through exposure to difficult or challenging cricumstances requires some examination. It strikes me that an increase in anxiety-related mental health problems may not be because children have too few challenges, but too much exposure to the hyper-critical world of social media.
Another interesting debate the authors raise is the role of technology creating parental anxieties and risks, while children’s physical spatial domains are constricting. They contend this adds further to their ‘taming’. However, it could be that the use of shared gaming platforms particularly, can also increase and expand the lifeworld spaces of children, despite the reduction of their physical environments. There are both risks and valuable social ineractions through gaming technology that may provide possibilities for learning about social rules, responding to social challenges, building friendships and negotiating shared goals in a similar way to spaces once conceived of as only physically outside of the home, and like historic ‘outside play’, are spaces largely invisible to the surveillance of parents. These two examples – of social media and shared gaming platforms remind us of the many diverse types of technology-enabled activities and spaces our children are growing up with, that have differing and divergent effects on how they learn and interact with others, including on their levels of perceived ‘resilience’. As the authors note, children are growing up in a landscape of ‘confusing and contradictory’ discourses, and where and how and who to be is not immediately clear to them or those of us who are parents. This book definitely caused me to reflect on this conflictual environment, and empathise with both parents and children as we navigate our way through it all.