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To Rid the World of Snowflakes We Must Stop Coddling Our Kids
Note: I’ve had this in the hopper for a few weeks, but after Bethany Mandel published My Top Parenting Pet Peeve, I figured why not hit publish?
Despite the social discord wrought by the Vietnam War, civil rights movement (an obvious good), and the loud-mouthed hippies who traveled the world seeking the ruin of standards of decency; the 1960s were a pretty good time to be a kid. In those days; which weren’t idyllic, but were halcyon compared to the present age of discontent, children had many venues in which to learn. There was a fair amount of competition among the schools; particularly parochial versus public, which motivated all teachers to perform well. The nuns of Holy Rosary School, where I came of age, taught both the three Rs, and truths of eternal importance: Our lives are not our own but belong to God. We were to know, love and serve Him this life by doing good and avoiding evil, and thereby live with Him forever in heaven. It’s been fifty years since my last catechism class, but that lesson is permanently fixed in my mind.
There were many other less formal centers of learning as well.
Back then families tended to be large. My folks had the six of us, but we were a relatively small brood compared to my aunt and uncles’ crew of eleven. Many homes were filled with eight, ten, even fourteen kids. This was sometimes true of Protestant as well as Catholic homes. Large families were a principle center of learning, not just to instill good manners and a healthy fear of the Lord and His adult enforcers, but also because kids had no choice but to learn how to compromise, sacrifice for the greater good, and treat siblings as if they were equals in the distribution of wealth and attention. Marxism’s second premise was, in a certain sense, confirmed in large families—to each according to his needs, within the restrictions imposed by the overall resources and events of the household. In the families of those days, equality was understood as equality of love informed by day-to-day exigencies.
The skills learned at home were carried out into the world at large. My neighborhood was home to countless numbers of children, each of whom was considered a friend, and all of whom were welcome in our play. Our games were an exercise in negotiation and compromise. We would play “Army,” divvying up the bad guys from the good guys. No one wanted to be a German soldier, but the battles required a villain, so we took turns or flipped a coin to set up the ranks. In football, we accommodated the unskilled, often by choosing them first to spare them embarrassment (had it been otherwise I’d have spent most of my childhood red-faced). When the sides were uneven players would switch teams, playing one down on offense, then over to the other team for defense. I don’t know how the girls handled things, but among the boys, the unstated rule was “whatever makes things work for everybody.” We learned that we were not only to hone our skills but to rend our hearts to the advantage of others.
We got in trouble together too, sometimes barely escaping with our lives.
The adults had little say in the day to day of play: That, odd is it may seem in our hyper-anxious age, was the key to making things work. We weren’t totally unsupervised; most of the adults knew who we were and were prepared to step in if we were at inordinate risk. Otherwise, we were left to our own developing devices. Life in our neighborhood was improvised chaos, but we all made it out alive and, as far as I know, nobody ever went to prison (although I do wonder about Jimmy).
There was much more at stake than survival. We were learning to negotiate the world. The only way this could work was if our parents set us pretty much free to figure things out on our own in the company of a band of fellow pupils in the school of life. We wandered freely, and through varied experiences, grew into reasonably competent adults. Most importantly, we took those skills out into a world where respect, fortitude, and compromise are mandatory virtues.
Now, sadly, those days, if not completely over, are approaching absolute entropy.
My wife and I live in a neighborhood populated by the old, the middle-aged, and young families. There’s a little park a couple of blocks away, and when we go out to walk we often stop there to abide amidst the trees and green grass. The space, unfortunately, is usually ours’ alone. No kids, or if there are any, they are always accompanied by a parent. The whole neighborhood is like that. Despite the many young families that live around us, the sight of a ten-year-old wandering alone celebrating his freedom is vanishingly rare. I can’t remember the last time I saw a group of boys playing football in the generally empty streets, getting up a sandlot baseball game, or just hanging out with slingshots in their back pockets–things we did without much thought. Now, if kids are strolling through our current neighborhood an adult is always leading the pack. Free children are a rare breed around these parts.
It isn’t surprising, then, that so many young adults are inveterate crybabies. Far too many of these kids were fobbed off on daycare centers in which the “teachers” settled every disagreement and devised all the activities. Many elementary schools have abandoned recess. Parents schedule play dates for their kids or cram their young lives with endless adult-organized activities. There is little time for kids to just be kids.
Simply put, Millennials have been deprived of the lessons taught in the rough and tumble of childhood.
In his new book, Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, Professor Anthony Esolen offers insight into the plight of today’s children. In days gone by
…a childhood culture [was] in part independent of the adult world and gave children a chance to be the lords and ladies of their own ‘society,’ with its habits, its laws, its entertainment, its rivalries, and its language. It is a deeply human thing…We are the odd ones out. We are the people whose neighborhoods do not ring with the voices of children at play. A student of mine, an Eagle Scout, once told me that he had to teach the boys in his troop how to organize a game. They enjoyed it, but they could not do it alone. …it was like having been confined to a cubicle for the first ten years of their lives, so that they never really knew how to run or how to walk with strong strides. Such youths are cripples, not by nature, but by un-nature: crippled by neglect.
I’d put that in a slightly different way: We have rejected benign neglect. And all because we’ve surrendered to the belief the world is a dangerous place for children.
A few weeks ago, the lady who cuts my hair commented that the contemporary world is just too dangerous to let kids run free. This is ridiculous. The truth is in the statistics: Crime rates are at historic lows, while the possibility of a child being abducted by a stranger is less than the chance of being hit by a watermelon tossed out of an airplane. Sure, kids can hurt themselves, but as French philosopher Simone Weil noted, risk is a fundamental need of man. No risk, no courage. When I was young, there was a serial killer lurking in our town. Among his atrocities was the killing of a boy scout who was on a troop camp-out (my two elder brothers had to take a lie detector test to rule themselves out). But even then, we were still largely on our own. Our parents knew that, although the danger was real, the odds were overwhelmingly in our favor. Coddling, on the other hand, was sure to be our ruin.
Today’s Millenial “snowflakes,” paralyzed with the fear that their feelings might be hurt, simply do not have the skills necessary to engage courageously with those with whom they disagree. Instead, far too many Millennials indulge the delusion that life should be a safe space free of even the tiniest threat to their insular sense of self-worth.
But is it really their fault? The doors of the school of life have been shut. Listening to the young lady who ripped into Yale Professor Nicholas Christakis is irrefutable proof that far too many children of the last two decades have lived in a bubble too confining to teach them how to grow up.
So what do we do?
First, we must recover our understanding of reality. The world has always been dangerous, but we do not, no matter what the experts might say, live in a jungle filled with lions, tigers, and bears. The belief that our children need twenty-four-hour coddling is to deny the brute fact that growing up is impossible when kids are trapped in adults’ unreal jungle.
Secondly, stay at home motherhood should be the default position in public policy. According to a recent Gallup poll, fifty-six percent of working mothers would prefer to stay at home to raise their kids. If there were plenty of mothers in our neighborhoods keeping that sideways glance on the shenanigans, our kids would again enjoy the freedom to grow into adulthood with confidence–to become citizens rather then an arbitrary numerical category of people who happen to be eighteen years old. It won’t be easy to accommodate that hope; women make up 47 percent of the workforce, so if there were a mass exodus, we’d suffer serious negative economic consequences. But perhaps fewer new and exciting toys would be a price worth paying for our children to learn how to make their way through the world.
We should also strongly encourage the return of the traditional neighborhood, where parents can confidently set their children free, knowing that their neighbors are quietly keeping an eye on the roughhousing, but are otherwise leaving the kids free to grapple with the world and each other. And there out to be a law against loading kids up with an endless number of activities which leave them too spent to just go outside and play.
To sum up, perhaps a few steps back to a time when children could be children would do the world a lot of good.
And having a few more kids around would be a good idea too.
Published in General
Excellent post! You are preaching to the choir (nothing wrong with that, adds the part-time choir director) and brought back many memories.
To me this seems so obvious that I bet even our progressive friends would agree. Problem is, this didn’t happen overnight, and it will take a while for the pendulum to swing back. What can we in the trenches do? We’ve been hoping for grand-kids . . .
I, older than you but no wiser, know this: We the People have done this to ourselves. Why? What lessons did we fail to learn? “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”
That “truth” here arising in the context of faith in Christ is applicable in “the world” as well. You can not learn what you do not hear. And neither will “students” learn what they hear if they do not trust their “teachers” to practice what they preach|teach.
Morning Mike,
Yes childhood, family life were good in the 60’s, the Cleever family and the Father Knows best family” were not yet thought to be jokes, however the 60’s generation was the one to state that they were jokes. We were the generation who stripped moral authority from our parents and claimed it for ourselves. Yes parents of that time could and would let their kids out the door and not see them until lunch, however the virtues of our parents were set aside by parents and children like. Good parenting is allowing children freedom to grow under loose supervision but it is also a discipleship in what it means to be an American. That was lost during the 60’s, maybe because of the emergence of a teen culture, maybe TV, maybe parents did not know how to communicate the values they had received form their parents, maybe affluence and boredom. Mike, I am thinking your Catholic education and your family roots may have given you a different view of the 60’s. I agree that parenting was better concerning benign neglect, but as measured by the behavior of the next generation’s ability to treasure what is of value and to improve what one can, the WWII parents failed, and we as their children failed.
I agree. Well said.
duplicate comment
My experience growing up was similar. Although many of the moms were working, my grandma took up her place on the porch on a daily basis and wasn’t afraid of telling the neighborhood bully he was out of line.
I absolutely agree with the idea that kids are overscheduled by adult-run activities. Some parents spend their entire weekends hauling their elementary aged kids to sports tournaments (especially hockey up here in the North). There is no time for real play, and even if there is, it is taken up by a reliance on video entertainment. So I’m not always sure that the empty parks is the result of stranger danger as much as the kids are in the car riding to their next ‘activity.’
Having worked in an elementary school, it’s the parents who eschew the bus, drive their kids to school, and, not content to drop them off, walk them in and carry their backpacks for them (!!!) that really send me into a spin. Seriously? I know a seven year old can carry their own junk, get to their locker, and hang up their own coat!! If they can’t, because you haven’t taught them how to do that, then I would suggest that you have no business being a parent.
There was one parent and child I would see when I was driving in to school in the morning. Usually it was Dad waiting with the little girl for the bus. From where they were standing, if they took one step to the left, they could see the school, a half a block away. Why on earth was this child not walking to school? (You have to pay to ride on the bus if you are within a two mile radius of the school.) And, if the parent was concerned about sending her alone, he could either walk with her, or watch her go the whole way, right into the door.
We have snowflakes because that’s how they have been raised. Parents cannot bear for their children to be unhappy and allow them to make decisions over their own five to ten year old lives. You don’t want to carry your backpack, no problem, I’ll do it. You don’t want to sit quietly in the restaurant while I finish eating, no problem, run around and get some of that energy out. You want to get to the next level on you video game instead of doing your homework, no problem, I’ll call your teacher and tell her you just don’t have time (yes, that one is real).
I really wonder what this world will look like in fifty years.
School choice and home schooling could also go a long way towards making things better; many women work so their family can buy a home in the best school district possible. They aren’t all being materialistic; if the education issue where taken out of the equation, many women would happily stop working.
I used to work cleaning houses; most of these homes were in relatively wealthy areas; streets filled with big, beautiful homes, and not a soul in sight. It was like being in a ghost town; bizarre and scary. I was seriously afraid of being in those neighborhoods; on the off chance that we ran into a psycho, there was nowhere to run for for help, and no one would have heard us if we screamed. There was literally nobody other than the maids for miles around. I definitely wouldn’t allow my child to wander around an abandoned neighborhood like that.
Re comment #4
It maybe isn’t thought about often enough that however wonderful the WW2 generation was, they didn’t have a talent for cultural transmission.
I am feeling kind of defensive here, because my parents and a few of their siblings are WW2 generation. They are from another planet, a planet that was better in some ways, but not in all, and I suspect that they went too easy on their kids (me included) because the world they grew up in really was far too harsh in many ways.
For instance, my maternal grandfather was a police officer during the 30’s and 40’s; he dealt regularly with women who stayed married to men who never brought any money home. These men had jobs-in a few cases, they actually had very good jobs, but they preferred to spend their money on liquor and other women, rather than on their wives and children. The wives worked in order to pay the bills; one of these women had a husband who would drive by in his car with his girlfriend as his wife walked home from work-he and the girlfriend would laugh at the wife and wave at her as they drove by. My grandfather, who was born during the Victorian era, and who was a very serious Catholic, would beg and plead with these women to leave their husbands: he would point out to them that they were working anyway, their husbands were literally contributing nothing, so why are you putting up with this? But it never worked. The stigma against divorce was so strong that none of these women ever left their husbands; apparently, my grandfather was something of an outlier. He told his WW2 generation children about this, and he also told them in no uncertain terms that he never wanted any of his daughters to put up with such treatment.
That is the world that WW2 folks came from.
Evening Judithann,
My lament is that my generation, I’m 70, was so successfully destructive of the values and traditions and character of my parents. That generation, the WWII generation, lived passed the expectations of their parents, my generation did not even meet our parents expectations and we prided ourselves at belittling them and stripping them of moral authority. I do not know why my generation undercut so much, however our parents did not successfully pass on their drive, or civic pride, or national pride. I wish I knew how cultures fail in transmitting those core values which inspire the next generation to love their country, imperfect as it is, and to wish to be good citizens. Unfortunately our anthem was,
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
I am not trying to find fault with my parents, they did what they thought was the best, tragically it did not click.
Just last week, I had a 70-year-old man who lives a little farther up our country road (maybe 5-10 cars drive by in an hour) confront me at a neighborhood party. He had driven by my house and had seen my 7-year-old and 8 year-old eating their picnic lunch that I had made for them by the banks of a little pond on our property that is no more than 18 inches deep, and only full of water after it rains. They were sitting and eating a nice lunch that I had made them, and generally enjoying the beautiful 8-acre property that their father and I have worked so hard to provide for them. I was watching them from the house about 200 yards away.
This man proceeded to threaten, insult, and yell at me in front of 25 other people because “no one was watching these children! Where was their MOTHER? Were you too busy to watch your own CHILDREN?” I told him all my children know how to swim. I told him it was 18 inches deep and they were 7 and 8 years old. My husband told him that we are committed to giving our children some freedom (at least on our own freaking private property!) and that we thought some risks were worth it for a better quality childhood. This man just kept attacking my parenting until his grandson, who is my age, stepped in and apologized for his grandfather’s tirade.
I have a PhD and am not a stupid person. But people assume if you stay home with your kids, you’re too dumb to keep them safe. Because of course all the smart people have jobs. He threatened to drive in and knock on my door if he saw them out there again, looking into their own glorified rain puddle without “adult supervision”.
The feeling of intrusion and invasion of privacy was great. My husband and I both agreed that the scariest thing wasn’t this confrontation, but the likely scenario of a passerby calling CPS after observing my kids, on their own beautiful ranch of meadows and old oak groves, sitting near a completely non-threatening body of water without an adult hovering over them. At least this man confronted me publicly, and didn’t just call CPS.
It’s almost impossible to raise decent kids in this day and age. If you try, people are jealous or angry that you have a parent at home or your kids have any freedom at all, and they will seek to take what you have away from you.
Evening, @jimbeck: my parents had us when they were older, so though my parents are WW2 generation, I wasn’t born until 1970; I wasn’t around during the 60’s, and didn’t see it first hand. It seems as though lots of different factors came together to create the perfect storm. My Dad fought in the Pacific during WW2; I once asked him why he thought public reaction to Vietnam was so different from public reaction to WW2; he said that our reasons for being in WW2 were very clear, and our reasons for being in Vietnam weren’t. That might be just one more example of a WW2 man being too charitable, but I wouldn’t dismiss my Dad’s explanation: there is probably something to it. Also, the fact that so many baby boomers went to college; the older I get, the more convinced I become that college is a just one huge indoctrination camp.
Still, for all of our problems, America is still in much better shape than any other country. I wouldn’t say that WW2 parents totally failed to pass on their values; they obviously didn’t have a 100% success rate, but civic and national pride exist far more in America than they do in Europe. WW2 people did a lot of things right :)
“benign parenting” is what I called: The Jane Goodall method. Observe, but don’t interact. (I know she did, and regretted it. I did on occasion also, but don’t regret when I did)
My kids all have a very spotty education record; son #1 has a degree (USNA). Daughter went to community college for a couple of years and used her old Honda as a mobile bong. (She’s now married and the stay at home mom of two) Son #2 did three years at a state college then enlisted. Son #3 went to the same state school for two years but got serious with his girlfriend, dropped out and got a full time job to save up for marriage.
I mention all of this to note that I might well be prejudiced in what I’m about to say.
My kids all went to Catholic school K-12 (got a great education). I’ve stayed in touch with many of the moms and the stories about their adult (college educated) children make me pray extra hard. One in particular is 23, a lesbian and works at a hospital helping gender confused children “transition”. 23! What the hell does she know?
I have very bright nieces and nephews with fantastic degrees that I can’t even have a conversation with – they’re pissed off about income inequality and the “patriarchy” and complain about their jobs and how hard they have to work and the “stress”. Stress?? One poor nephew (UCLA grad) recently tried to sell communism to son #1. (It didn’t go well.)
I knew all of the above kids as children and I know their parents. They all had childhoods similar to my own children.
But … they all went away to college.
I regret that all my kids don’t have degrees. But they’re solid Conservatives, pro-life, and very good at “adulting”. (sad that it’s a verb …)
This is terrifying.
I have six tadpoles all of whom are or were homeschooled, and I also live on a country road and my children are often in the yard. I do worry that someone is going to freak out on me because they are flying down the hill in the old jogging stroller again or sledding at breakneck speed over the jumps they built or 35 feet up a tree somewhere.
I live in fear of CPS.
I would not be surprised if that man does call them on you. Are you a member of HSLDA?
As well you should. They don’t wear BrownShirts yet, but all they lack is the outward uniform
I’m technically a Millenial at age 32, and I don’t understand the whole snowflake behavior thing. I also didn’t really see much of it with my peers. But I think your on to something here with this theory, as I was very much raised with “benign neglect” for large parts of the day when playing outside with other kids in the neighborhood. I think the kids younger than me were not, though there weren’t that many so I can’t be sure.
I’m also an outlier in other ways; I developed political opinions early thanks to having a father who escaped communism and listened to Rush Limbaugh, which were in opposition to the prevailing blue state culture that I grew up in. So I was pretty much constantly in disagreement with everyone around me, which is great for developing a thick skin and the ability to consider other ideas without feeling threatened by them.
Fear the Goat!
Every parent has to worry about CPS. Especially if you have more than one or two kids. They just don’t have any limit on their ability to interpret for themselves what “child endangerment” means. HSLDA is one protection, and we are members. I also found a public charter school to enroll my kids in their independent study program. That way I get several elements of homeschooling but the kids are “in the system” in that their immunizations, state testing, dentist visits, etc are all boxes that I’ve checked off. You can’t ever leave your kids in the car, for any reason, at any age, in any place, while running errands. You just can’t do it. We don’t own a swimming pool because I don’t want to watch every kid that comes on my property like a hawk. In addition, I’ve made friends with the head social worker in my little county, and I have no reason to believe our local CPS is one of the bad departments you hear about. I’ve also got the number of an excellent local lawyer who has sued CPS successfully in California in my phone, just in case.