Modern parenting isn’t working

Our kids are stressed, entitled, fat, over-medicated and lacking resilience. And they’ve got that way because parents have assigned their power over to their little princes and princesses.

RendezView. Mother at breaking point. (Pic: iStock)

Josh is 19. He finished school 14 months ago and has been enjoying a “gap year”. But his “gap year” — rapidly becoming two — hasn’t been spent in Asia or Africa or even flipping burgers at the local McDonalds.

No, Josh has spent his gap year in his room, playing Xbox round the clock, emerging only at dinner time to eat whatever his mother, Karen, has cooked for him.

So last week Karen went out for the day taking the Xbox with her. All afternoon she ignored the increasingly furious texts and phone messages from Josh. When she returned home, he was livid.

She held her ground.

“You’re not getting it back until you find a job,” she told him.

And that’s when her son exploded.

“You f***ing bitch,” he screamed at her, raising his arm as if to strike her. “Don’t think I’m going to get a f***ing job.”

It’s an indication of Karen’s distress that she even confided in me. Our children — and how they turn out — are the deepest measure of ourselves. To tell someone your child is lazy, belligerent and violent is to invite judgement of that most noble and elemental of acts: parenting.

Yet as my children canter into their teens these are the stories I’m hearing more and more. Revealed after a drink or in a moment of desperation, they point to a growing culture of entitled kids and floundering parents.

There’s the single mother whose daughter shamelessly steals from her wallet; the porn-addicted teen who told his sister he wants to shove his girlfriend down the stairs; the mum who’s come out the other side of breast cancer to discover her 16-year-old is squandering his life to ice. All nice kids from nice homes with nice parents. So what’s going wrong?

I was contemplating this as I stepped on the escalator at my local shopping centre. Ahead stood parents with a toddler. The toddler was running up and down the escalator blocking a long queue of fellow shoppers.

“Come hold my hand,” called the little girl’s mother, at which the child laughed and dashed ahead.

Did the mum scoop up her child? Did she tell her that we don’t play on escalators? Or that we need to consider others? No, she laughed. Then looked at the rest of us to join in mutual celebration of her child’s cuteness.

I’ve always been a champion of parents. Support, listen, don’t blame. We’re all doing the best we can. But modern parenting isn’t working. Our kids are stressed, entitled, fat, over-medicated, fragile and lacking resilience. And they’ve got that way because parents have assigned their power over to their little princes and princesses.

“Parents are at risk of losing primacy over their children,” says psychologist Leonard Sax, sounding a warning in his new book, The Collapse of Parenting.

Indeed, in the generation between being a child and raising a child, I’ve witnessed the demise of the benign dictatorship and the emergence of the family democracy. Sure, in the Republic of Spineless Parenting it’s very loving and everyone is heard, kids are asked what they’d like to eat, prizes are plentiful, bedtimes are flexible and everyone has the newest iPhone. But in focusing on nurturing we’ve forgotten that other key pillar of parenting: governance. That someone has to be the boss.

Yet, as Sax writes, “this is at odds with modern society where we eschew hierarchy in favour of equality. Children are no longer minors but another minority group to be upheld even though, as he points out, “parents who are authoritative have better outcomes”.

So how do we weave boundaries, discipline and calm governance with the necessary warmth, fun and open communication we’ve brought to Parenting 2.0?

Research (and common sense) tells me it’s self-belief. Sure, parenting prowess is not factory loaded but our instincts are generally sound. On a picnic when my kids were small I noticed all the children were eating in the camping chairs while their parents sat on a rug. “Something’s not right here,” I laughed and have since used that scene as a reminder that children need to be considered not exalted.

Surely, too, we need to model to them our best selves. If we want relaxed kids we need to be relaxed. If we want kindness, be kind. Likewise humility, empathy, humour and joy.

What else? We need to take care of our own relationships. An essay earlier this year spelled out “how American parenting is killing the American marriage”.

Parenting, argued the authors, has become a religion wherein it’s sacrilegious to say anything bad about your kids or love your partner as much as your offspring.

We need to issue fewer questions and more instructions — “put on your shoes” not “can you put on your shoes?” And when they don’t, there needs to be a consequence: “What a shame we can’t go to the park”.

Finally, don’t plug your absence with stuff. Kids don’t need to be the kings of castles, but dirty rascals.

Originally published as Modern parenting isn’t working