When did the central aim of parenting become
preparing children for success? This reigning
paradigm, which dictates that every act of nurturing
be judged on the basis of whether it will usher a child
toward a life of accomplishment or failure, embodies
the fundamental insecurity of global capitalist culture,
with its unbending fixation on prosperity and the
future. When each nurturing act is administered
with the distant future in mind, what becomes of the
present? A child who soaks in the ambient anxiety that
surrounds each trivial choice or activity is an anxious
child, formed in the hand-wringing, future-focused
image of her anxious parents.
“How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the
Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for
Success” seems to lie at the precise crossroads of this
inherently conflicted approach. Like so many others,
Julie Lythcott-Haims has identified overparenting as a
trap. But once you escape the trap, the goal remains
the same: to mold your offspring into thriving adults.
Whether a child is learning to ride a bike or doing his
own laundry, he is still viewed through the limited
binary lens of either triumphant or fumbling adulthood.
The looming question is not “Is my child happy?” but
“Is my child a future president poised to save the
environment, or a future stoner poised to watch his
fifth episode of ‘House of Cards’ in a row?”
Lythcott-Haims, who brings some authority to
the subject as Stanford’s former dean of freshmen
and undergraduate advising, has seen varieties of
extreme parental interference suggesting not just
a lack of common sense, but a lack of wisdom and
healthy boundaries (if not personal dignity) as well.
Instead of allowing kids to experiment and learn
from their mistakes, parents hover where they’re
not wanted or welcome, accompanying children on
school trips or shadowing them on campus. Caught
up in what the author calls the “college admissions
arms race,” parents treat securing their children a
spot at one of 20 top schools (as decreed by U.S.
News and World Report’s popular but somewhat
dubious rankings) as an all-or-nothing proposition.
Concerned about the effects of a flawed high school
transcript, parents do their children’s homework, write
or heavily edit their papers, fire questions at teachers,
dispute grades and hire expensive subject tutors,
SAT coaches and “private admissions consultants”
(26 percent of college applicants reported hiring these
in 2013). Even after kids graduate, the madness
continues. Lythcott-Haims offers anecdotes of parents
touring graduate schools, serving as mouthpieces for
their shy, passive children, and submitting résumés
to potential employers, sometimes without their
children’s knowledge. These behaviors do more
than mold kids into dependent beings, she argues;
they corral and constrict their possibilities and their
imaginations. “We speak of dreams as boundless,
limitless realms,” Lythcott-Haims writes. “But in reality
often we create parameters, conditions and limits
within which our kids are permitted to dream — with
a checklisted childhood as the path to achievement.”
Lythcott-Haims takes pains to demonstrate that
overparenting doesn’t merely threaten a child’s future
income; it also does enormous psychological harm.
She cites a 2011 study by sociologists at the University
of Tennessee at Chattanooga that found a correlation,
in college-student questionnaires, between helicopter
parenting and medication for anxiety or depression.
One researcher at a treatment center for addicts
in Los Angeles found that “rates of depression and
anxiety among affluent teens and young adults
correspond to the rates of depression and anxiety
suffered by incarcerated juveniles.” Other studies
suggest that overparented kids are “less open to new
ideas” and take “less satisfaction in life.” For Lythcott-
Haims, the message behind this research is the
same: Kids need to sally forth independently without
constant supervision. They need to try and even fail.
And when they fail and look around for a parent to
bail them out, they need to hear the words, “You must
figure this out for yourself.”
By Heather Havrilesky, (with slight adaptations). On 6/15/2015; The New York Times. Available at: http://www.nytimes. com/2015/06/21/books/review/how-to-raise-an-adult-by-julie- -lythcott-haims.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&r=0
In the fragments “Lythcott-Haims offers anecdotes of parents touring graduate schools, serving as mouthpieces for their shy, passive children,” (lines 50-52) and “We speak of dreams as boundless, limitless realms,” (lines 57-58) the words mouthpieces and realms mean, respectively
