Are Americans turning their kids into wimps?

by Jennifer Jordan (Subscribe to Jennifer Jordan's posts) Jun 25th 2008 6:07PM

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Time Magazine recently interviewed an editor-at-large from popular magazine Psychology Today. The topic? Children, and whether or not we're turning our kids into wimps. Hara Estroff Marano, the interviewee, had much to say on the subject of children, and how we raise them. Marano, who is also a grandmother and author of a new book titled A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting, says we are turning our kids into wimps. She says we need to let our kids have bad experiences as it's the only way they learn.

Marano pointed out her research on the college campus, noting that her colleagues commented that many of the students they were treating lacked coping skills. Says Marano, "...they have no idea how to manage the vicissitudes of life." Why has this happened? Well, according to Marano we're worried about our kids being successful. We push them too hard to achieve, and we worry more about branding than experience, focusing on sending them to the best schools, etc., when perhaps the brand name of Harvard or Yale is not what they need. Access to information through the Internet makes everything fleeting and transitional and ultimately obsolete before we can even understand it fully.

Marano also argues, along with much of our nation, that our children are being over-medicated and that play time is not valued as it should be. And, shocker, she feels we're too involved in every aspect of our children's lives. So how to deal? Well, according to Marano, we need to step back, let kids prove their competence, let them play, and make sure we eat together five times a week. I don't know if doing these things will save our kids from being wimps, or if they're wimps in the first place, but she does provide an interesting perspective.

Your thoughts? Do you think we overprotect our children and undervalue their ability? Or is that what it takes to get through this crazy modern world?

Pic by summitcheese.

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Comments (13)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Katheryn 6-25-2008 @ 6:31PM

I agree with all of it.

Jenni 6-25-2008 @ 6:44PM

I agree too! I get the impression everyday that parents would put their children in a little protective bubble if they could so that they couldn't be hurt by anything. I've seen parents make a huge deal out of scraped knees...and I'm not kidding or exagerating.

Karen Dukess 6-27-2008 @ 2:56PM

We are too protective and I think the end result is that kids don't learn to judge for themselves what's safe and what's not. I wrote this article not long ago that tells how CRAZY overprotective my kids' school is and the affect of that, http://www.burbia.com/node/1697

eugene 6-25-2008 @ 7:58PM

Completely agree. Learning to deal with hardship and adversity is an essential life skill.

And there's nothing wrong with falling down, breaking a bone or two or even getting a splinter on those old wooden jungle gyms.

CLM 6-25-2008 @ 9:17PM

I don't think parents undervalue their children's abilities, but I do think they undermine those abilities. An overprotective parent deprives a child of the opportunity to learn how to handle things independently. Part of being the adult is to restrain those (completely natural) impulses to intervene. Children cannot learn to succeed if we do not allow them to fail.

Mcihele Nissen 6-26-2008 @ 1:30AM

I agree with you that parents are over doing it - the helicopter parent as I call it. Always hovering about to make sure that not one thing happens to their precious bundle. They are precious but isn't that conditioning the child and undermining their sense of self-confidence and competence? It's only though making mistakes that we learn which path to take.

Kelly 6-26-2008 @ 6:29AM

I don't think she was talking so much about physical overprotection as emotional and social overprotection. Today parents tend to engineer their kids' lives so that they never experience anything but success. Kids can't learn coping skills and resilience unless they have to face an occasional disappointment and failure. For example, parents pressure pricincipals to put their kids in certain classes with teachers that are "a good fit." That's code for "I'm afraid my kid can't handle a strict teacher." Yet what happens when, later in life, they have a bossy coach, an aggressive colleague, or a tough boss? Kids need to deal with what life throws at them, and they need to learn how to deal with different kinds of personalities, but overprotective parents deprive them of learning how to deal with "real life." And they have to learn that no, they're not great at EVERYTHING. It's actually very useful to know what you're not good at.

Jenni 6-26-2008 @ 10:35AM

The physical and social overprotection go hand in hand. The parent who won't let her child climb the ladder up the slide at the park without hovering over them is the same one who hovers over their social problems too.

Jenni 6-26-2008 @ 10:36AM

Oops, meant to add that you are right as well with the teacher comments.

Jan Bay 6-26-2008 @ 11:12AM

My friend has a little boy I find it rather perplexing that she insists on dressing him in the most feminine little boy outfits that she can find even even to play outdoors. No jeans, no T-shirts and the pants have patterns more like pants that were made for a little girl.

She's constantly running around, blocking him from bumping into this or tripping over that and people are always rolling their eyes and commenting about what a sissy she and her husband going to have on their hands. The good news is that he's a very smart little boy and in spite of her obsessive parenting, he's very well-liked by the other children and other than his appearance is not wimpy at all! It's rather sad to see that he would love for her to step back a bit and give him more space, but she does seem dead set on making him as wimpy as possible.

Jan from http://www.unique-baby-gear-ideas.com/

Nicola 6-26-2008 @ 11:23AM

Agreed. Absolutely. We live in a town where a large percentage of families have a stay at home parent, usually mom, and the kids here are so ridiculously overprotected in every sense that they grow up into whining "me me me" adolescents who can't even figure out how to manage their after school time, let alone any potential social or academic problems. They grow up into college bound children, in no way capable of surviving in the "real world" without mom and dad's constant intervention.

Our son is only 4 1/2, but he is permitted to make mistakes, to work out social disputes at school or at the park, to fall over and scrape his head while running with careless abandon. That's how you learn. We are raising a happy, healthy, and confident young man. Not a perfect little specimen, a "mini me", but an individual. And a darn good one at that!

Nicola 6-26-2008 @ 11:27AM

Sorry, just a quick clarification that my first statement was not meant to imply that a stay at home parent automatically breeds a wimpy child. You'd have to live in this town to understand it. There is a culture among these moms, an endless competition, oneupmanship in everything from children's clothing to future college prospects. I had a conversation with one of them recently who sobbed her heart out when her four year old was finally allowed to start preschool for two days each week, two hours in the morning. She couldn't even let go for that long and sat outside the building peering in the windows every so often. I kid you not...

Timmarilyn 6-26-2008 @ 11:30PM

I was a product of middle class blue collar america and so are my children. Most of my peers, myself included, had divorced parents which left us with working single parents. Therefore we had no direct influence from our parents to make good choices. We figured it all out for ourselves. This allowed us to focus on the boys that we thought we were in love with and the girls that we were jelous of instead of school. Many didnt graduate high school and those that did didn't go to college. We worked low-paying jobs and had babies way too early in life. Many found themselves in marriges that were abusive but felt trapped due to no education and a house full of kids. I see myslf as an overprtective highly invasive parent. My biggest fear is leaving my kids to figure it all out for themselves and them becoming unsuccessful as a result. I don't see wimpy as a bad thing. What is the alternitive, a rough neck factory worker that doesn't take crap from no one, over worked and under paid living in a low class community were people fight over petty things like parking spaces. I'd rather have a wimp.

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