Angela Mollard: Parents need a lifeboat from the warped ideology of intensive parenting

I’ve had a gutful of this generation’s intensive parenting where success is the new metric and character apparently counts for nothing, writes Angela Mollard.

She looked like she was going to cry. She was an HSC mum, she told me, which was odd because she looked too old to be doing her final year exams. Turns out it’s her daughter who is about to embark on those crazy tests and, according to the mum, the little minx wasn’t studying. “I’m so anxious. I feel physically sick about it,” she told me, clutching her stomach to make the point.

Of course I should have empathised. There are few things more frustrating for parents than a lacklustre approach to exams, particularly for those who have spent a fortune on private schooling and regard the outlay as an investment rather than a bet. But I’ve had a gutful of this generation’s intensive parenting where success is the new metric and character apparently counts for nothing.

Coincidentally, the HSC mum shared her anxiety with me the very day I read the US surgeon general’s warning in The New York Times that parenting has become too hard and too exhausting, and that the consequent stress was a looming public health crisis. How can the most basic biological function – reproduction – be the cause of such distress? But apparently it is. Nearly 50 per cent of parents say most days their stress is “completely overwhelming”, reported Dr Vivek Murthy.

Nearly 50 per cent of parents say most days their stress is “completely overwhelming”. Picture: iStock

Sounding the warning, Murthy cited the increased hours parents spend working and caring for their children, the culture of comparison amplified by social media and the surfeit of parenting advice as causes for this new domestic burnout. Something had to change to make this vital work easier, he argued. Better and more accessible childcare, workplace leadership that aided parents, and community and familial support was paramount.

I read his essay with despair because his solutions will take too long. Trying to reverse 30 years of intensive parenting is like trying to turn round the Titanic. Parents need a lifeboat now because this warped ideology of flooding our kids with time, attention, money and opportunities may have started with good intentions, but it’s morphed into the most damaging and counter-productive doctrine to ever infect families.

This warped ideology of flooding our kids with time, attention, money and opportunities has morphed into the most damaging and counter-productive doctrine to ever infect families. Picture: iStock

Never have children been more anxious, depressed, entitled and lacking in resilience. Conversely, parents are overwhelmed as they compete in a relentless rug-rat race they know is destructive but they can’t seem to sidestep.

When first described 30 years ago, intensive parenting in its early incarnation made sense. As an extension of 1970s parenting, when love rather than “respect your parents” became the new family dynamic, intensive parenting favoured keeping children safe and bolstering their development. This new parenting style was “child-centred, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labour-intensive and financially expensive,” wrote Sharon Hays in her 1998 book The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood.

Yet wanting the best for our kids has turned into an insane quest to improve, stimulate, monitor and enrich them to the point we’re running ourselves ragged and becoming so overwhelmed there is no time for ease or kindness.

New research shows 47 per cent of us spend less than an hour relaxing per day and 18 per cent spend less than 30 minutes chilling. Yet surely one of the greatest gifts we can give our kids is a sense of peace, of home being the calm in the maelstrom?

I temporarily bought into the intensive parenting nonsense. For a brief, lunatic period in my children’s lives I was a helicopter parent, a tiger mum, a hot houser. It did my kids no good, it did me no good and, when it came to their exam results, I doubt it made a blind bit of difference.

But I got sucked in. I swelled with pride when they succeeded, worried excessively when they faltered and hovered mindlessly. I told myself I was their advocate; looking back I was unwittingly signalling to them that they weren’t capable of running their own race.

Unlike today’s kids, I enjoyed so much unscheduled play I believed that, like Drew Barrymore’s Gertie, I might be secretly visited by ET. Picture: Universal/The Kobal Collection

Ultimately, it was a quiet examination of my own childhood which made me change. Mine was magical and peaceful. Unlike today’s kids, I enjoyed so much unscheduled play I believed that, like Drew Barrymore’s Gertie, I might be secretly visited by ET.

Yet the predominant and enduring feature was my mum’s smile. Not the forced textbook smile you see from parents as they rush from pool to park to tutor, and not the relieved and self-satisfied smile you see at awards ceremonies. Rather it was a reassuring, unambitious smile that transmitted a sense that all will be well.

Generic photo of a single parent with child. Picture: iStock

As parents, we can talk about what needs to change and we can wait for policies to support us. Or we can dig deep into our own common sense and reject intensive parenting.

Do we need daily childcare reports from carers to satisfy over-invested parents? Does each birthday need to be marked with a party? Might your teen underperform at school but have the chutzpah to flourish in life? Is an overseas holiday necessary or, as expert Steve Biddulph suggests, do children fare better with breaks that are simple and familiar? Is a cuddle on the couch the epitome of good parenting?

After all, surely your own contentment is the greatest predictor of theirs.

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Originally published as Angela Mollard: Parents need a lifeboat from the warped ideology of intensive parenting