Madeleine Levine on successful parenting

“The cost of this relentless drive to perform at unrealistically high levels is a generation of kids who resemble nothing so much as trauma victims,” Levine writes. “They become preoccupied with events that have passed — obsessing endlessly on a possible wrong answer or a missed opportunity. They are anxious and depressed and often self-medicate with drugs or alcohol. Sleep is difficult and they walk around in a fog of exhaustion. Other kids simply fold their cards and refuse to play.”

...as parents and as a society, we’ve reached a tipping point, in which the long-dawning awareness that there’s something not quite right about our parenting is strengthening into a real desire for change. Families, their fortunes tracking the larger economy that encouraged so much of their excess, are crashing after bubble years in which they spent their every penny, and then some, on cultivating competitive greatness in their kids. Now exhausted, often disenchanted and (conveniently enough) broke, they’re reconsidering whether the mad chase was worth all the resources that sustained it.

-NYT

Another best-selling child psychologist chimes in about the dangers of obsessive, hyper-expectations parenting leaving even "successful" kids feeling burnt out, worthless, and unable to cope with adult challenges. I guess it's natural, but privileged US parents seem more concerned with the external indicators of their kids' success vs. harder-to-measure internal. The guest likens it to building a house, but being more concerned about the home decor instead of making sure the structure can actually stand. They love their kids and want them to do well, but they're taking the wrong approach and doing a disservice instead (a common theme for America in recent years - we mean well but we end up making it worse). And at least Levine dares to ask the obvious root question: are you doing all this crap for your kids, or yourself?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/raising-successful-children.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general (seriously one of the best article's I've ever read, and not just because I'm in agreement with her - it's amazingly written)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/books/review/teach-your-children-well-by-madeline-levine.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201208071000

The 1% are outliers, and not something we should all aspire to (and clearly not something we will all achieve). Yes that life has a lot of benefits and opens many doors, but what does that person (and their loved ones) sacrifice, often permanently, in order to get there? To some it's worth it, and to others maybe not - especially since attainment is not guaranteed regardless of how much extracurriculars/tutoring you do, what your degree says, and how great you think you are. All parents think they and their kids are "above average", but of course that is impossible. Most of us and our kids will be sub-rich and "normal". There is nothing wrong with that, as long as you are at peace with yourself. Easier said than done I know, and I feel inadequate about my professional and personal development almost every day (sometime justified, sometime foolish based on dumb social influences). I just hope those feelings don't lead me to bad behaviors described by Levine. And I would say that my control-freak dad was edging towards being a helicopter parent ahead of his time, but not that I blame him for all my issues. It's not the "losers" who are messed up, but this world's value system and economics that are perverse in my view (yes a critic would say, "of course a loser would blame the system to explain his failure"). Winners love and praise the systems that enabled them to thrive (Romney), and the opposite for the losers. What does that say about the system? Clearly it works for some but not all, though hard to judge its merits since we haven't really experienced a viable alternative, because those who profit from the system will resist reforms.

A refreshing repudiation of obsessive parenting

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704462704575590603553674296.html?KEYWORDS=erica+jong
http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201205110900

"We need to be released from guilt about our children, not further bound by it. We need someone to say: Do the best you can. There are no rules." - E. Jong

I've already posted about the "French parenting style", and apparently in France there was a best-selling book on parenting and feminism that basically argued that Anglo-American attachment/helicopter/

micromanaging parenting, with its "supposedly benign expectations victimize women far more than men have ever done... motherhood has been glamorized, and in certain circles, children have become the ultimate accessories. But we should not fool ourselves: Treating children like expensive accessories may be the ultimate bondage for women."

Instead of traditional sexist injustice, some liberated modern women are allowing themselves to be imprisoned by guilt and irrational expectations of the perfect mom (imaginary, unless you're rich and lucky), and/or the even more demeaning and vain mommy-fetish culture (i.e. the Kardashianization of motherhood: as a woman's beauty wanes, what better way to remain the center of attention and make other girls envious?). At least with tiger parenting, one can argue that it's done out of love with the hope of giving kids the best possible future. Treating kids as "accessories" is one of the most low-brow notions I've ever heard. We've all passively observed this phenomenon, but I never connected the dots before.

And let's remember that our species generally got by for centuries without mommy blogs, the billion-dollar parenting paraphernalia industry, paperbacks from the doctor-expert-du-jour, and airhead celebrities telling us what we should or shouldn't do for our kids. We know how flawed and emotionally dysfunctional our own parents were, and yet somehow here we stand as fairly decent people. If they could do it without the "parent-industrial complex", then what's wrong with Americans today? Family time used to come naturally (and back then it was just known as "time"), but now with all the working and consuming we have to do, we need to pencil in time for our loved ones (and even still we're checking work emails during the camping trip).

We are not a culture that embraces compromise (but we love to overreact and overcompensate), so there's this paradox of not being there when kids needs us, and trying to make up for it (and assuaging our guilt) by smothering them with attention/stuff that they don't really need. Overachievers or the privileged may not experience this trade-off, so they approach parenting as yet another way to remind you of their superiority, forcing the less fortunate rest of us into a cycle of feeling inadequate and hopelessly playing catch-up. And speaking of compensation, is it no surprise that the Sears couple (their marginally scientific books are credited as the foundations of attachment parenting) came from "broken homes"? In egalitarian spirit, it's totally acceptable if private citizens want to engage in attachment parenting or other forms of "extreme love." But can they be a bit modest about it, and not shove it down the rest of our throats as some political statement and/or affirmation of their awesomeness?

http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/10/has-motherhood-gone-to-extremes/

I'll close with another great quote (of many) from Jong:

"Our obsession with parenting is an avoidance strategy. It allows us to substitute our own small world for the world as a whole. But the entire planet is a child's home, and other adults are also mothers and fathers. We cannot separate our children from the ills that affect everyone, however hard we try. Aspiring to be perfect parents seems like a pathetic attempt to control what we can while ignoring problems that seem beyond our reach."

And as Jong also notes, control is an illusion from the start, which will become glaringly obvious once a kid reaches the tweens. Kids are not our little experiment; they are humans with their own wills and aspirations. Could all this be another ego trip, as parents think that their truly insignificant decisions will totally determine whether their little Rickey becomes a senator or meth dealer in 30 years? Attachment parenting proponents strangely claim that all the attachment leads to more self-sufficient children, though I don't see how. The cynic in me (which is most of me) wonders if the attachment technique is a subconscious effort to make kids need their mothers more, thereby making moms feel better about themselves. If you think I'm crazy, look at the trend of the Millennials moving back in with parents due to the poor labor market. For empty-nest upper-middle-class households, moms seem to actually love this, as they get to dote on their kid once more (even if it's doing the kid a disservice). Or is it just rebellion over the lack of power and control in our own lives that we need to play god with another life? Freud would have loved the 21st Century.

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My controversial comments are not meant to attack all the humble, loving parents out there who know the world doesn't revolve around their kid, and are considerate enough to not shove their parenting issues in our faces. I know they are doing the best that they can in the world's most demanding job, and I commend and admire them for it. Just to be fair, I'll judge and psychoanalyze myself too. My "parent hating" partially stems from my laziness/frustration over not seeing a viable way to make it all work: be there for my loved ones, develop somewhat of a career, have a decent level of life pleasures & financial security, help others in need when I can, get at least 6 hours of sleep per night, and be a "good parent". My wife and I have played by the rules and did as we were told, but we can't find a way to make this work a priori (I'm not OK with just "taking the plunge" and hoping for the best). So I want to be responsible, and not overextend my resources or burden those around me just because we selfishly want a kid. How do we balance all the stuff that society told us we were naturally entitled to?

Many parents claim that they gladly gave up the other life stuff when they started a family, which became their new source of purpose and satisfaction. Maybe that can work, but I wouldn't feel good indirectly putting so much pressure on my child. Even if you don't explicitly state it, the kid eventually realizes that all your hopes and dreams are on her. So she has to grow up to be wonderful and live the greatest life ever, in order to honor and validate her parents' sacrifices. That's not fair, and I think it explains a lot of the juvenile burn-out that is all too common and unfortunately tragic at times. I guess the easier route is just to spoil the kid rotten, take pleasure in her pleasure, and let her grow into a self-centered brat? Maybe the pressure for everything to be perfect is even greater now that we're having fewer kids, and having kids is more expensive, and competition for access to a better life is harder than ever. Maybe my kids will be part of the first US generation to have it worse than their parents. A lot of uncertainty and worry over the biggest decision in life.

My feelings could also be due to jealousy of peers who seem to have it all without much compromise or sacrifice. As an example, we have a family friend whose kids are the quintessential "power couple." Two young, attractive, "perfect" SoCal specialist MDs who had a kid while the wife was in residency. You can imagine their work hours, so how do they find time to parent? Well they don't, really. "They take a lot of photos to look back on later," I was told. They can afford a good nanny, and grandma (a semi-retired cancer survivor) flies down from SF every week to babysit, so the parents can have some couple time too. She says she doesn't mind, and loves spending time with the kid, but you know it can't be easy on her. Going to such lengths so the perfect couple can have the perfect life? Good for them I guess. Even if my mom offered such generous assistance to me, I wouldn't feel comfortable accepting it just because I chose to have a kid before I could handle it.

Maybe that is an extreme case, but what do other parents do who aren't so lucky? I can't imagine what it would be like for recent immigrants working multiple unsteady jobs in a high-cost-of-living area, with no traditional social network to rely on, and maybe even family to support back home. And yet thousands of them do it just fine. But it shouldn't need to be that hard, right? Is our civilization truly advanced if it makes even the basic necessary life function of procreation so challenging? It's a fact that birth rates decline as a society gets richer and healthier, but I only wish the guilt and frustration over family decisions/compromises would decline too.

French parenting vs. Tiger/helicopter parenting

http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201203071000




I know before we discussed the merits and pitfalls of obsessive, micromanaging "Tiger" or "helicopter" parents in the US, but here is the opposite extreme: the "laissez-faire" French method. I have never been a parent, but the French method seems likely to reduce overall family stress with little to no harm to the kid (and in fact may teach beneficial habits like patience, self-control, and self-sufficiency). But in general, the kids are not the center of the family, they are the "supporting cast." The couples' marriage is still the top priority. So the adults may maintain higher satisfaction, and the kids are less likely to become egocentric, spoiled brats. They learn that when they cry or mess up, there aren't frantic, doting parents/grandparents immediately racing to their aid. I guess Americans fear that if they don't come running, their kid will end up scarred for life, or they look like negligent deadbeats? And despite all this attention, the kid will probably resent, rebel, and drift apart later anyway, whereas French kids grow up and happily continue to spend time with their parents. Of course these are all generalizations, and no one knows how much parenting techniques actually affect a child's future.



Of course there is a spectrum of behaviors, but the French model is not about being "perfect parents" to give their "precious darlings" every possible joy and opportunity in life. That's impossible anyway, so why run yourself ragged trying? French parents are not obsessed with consuming "parenting paraphernalia," nutrition, and tutoring, yet French kids end up better educated, more law-abiding, and healthier than Americans on average (and middle-class birth rates are higher in France). Of course French society is a lot more mature and adult-centric than ours, and there are many more social services available to make parenting easier on the French. So for Americans, our gov't provides very little help, and our parents put more pressure on themselves to engage in nonstop parenting, so it's a recipe for disaster. Also, schools in France are for education, not for babysitting and learning bad social habits, like they are here.



Another difference is how self-expression is encouraged/managed. Americans, despite being micromanaging, also tend to go easy on the discipline and limits, for fear of damaging self-esteem, creativity, or something. I guess that's why we always hear at the malls, "Mommy I want, I want, I want!" But what is the value of a creative, confident, expressive kid who expects a level of attention that is probably impossible to sustain when they're older? The French philosophy is that unreasonable desire leads to an unhappy and imbalanced kid, so they need to learn limits or that will hurt their self-esteem, creativity, etc. 2 means to the same end I guess. Boredom is also a tolerated and even encouraged part of childhood. Instead of staring at a screen or having an adult entertain them 24-7, maybe kids should learn to sit quiety and imagine/contemplate the world.



A caller on the program: "American parents think their little darlings are gifts to the world, and expect that the rest of us should adore them too." That's probably some sort of psychosis associated with the parents' own inferiority and vicarious ego issues, as well as our cultural values.



FYI, British parenting resembles the American model more than the French

Controversy over the Tiger Mother

Maybe you guys have heard about this recent parenting memoir from a Chinese-American law prof at Yale who tried to raise her two daughters in the traditional, strict Chinese way. Here is an excerpt:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html

So of course the descriptions of verbal abuse and hours of forced piano practice rubbed many the wrong way, and Chua felt the need to explain herself on various interview shows: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201101201000. She comes across as very open-minded and compassionate, the exact opposite tone of her WSJ piece.

I have not read her book, but the WSJ article suggests that the point of it is to promote the "Chinese way" of raising kids with obscene academic expectations (A- = F, get to Carnegie Hall or Harvard or both) and draconian rules (no TV, no sleepovers, no extra-curriculars except piano or violin, which they will have to practice 3 hrs/day even during vacations). Even the title, "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior" says it all. Chua's argument is basically Western parents spoil and coddle too much (maybe true), and if they truly love their kids, it behooves them to push them to excel and give them tools to survive in the cruel world, rather than constantly tolerating or even praising mediocrity and lack of direction. Previous emails have touched on this, and i think she has a point. But clearly the opposite extreme is not healthy either, and since many of us are children of Asian immigrants, we know that excessive micromanaging, criticism, and such may push us to get over the hump and into a good college, but may also end up damaging the parent-child relationship thereafter.

http://www.pacificcitizen.org/site/details/tabid/55/selectmoduleid/373/ArticleID/490/reftab/36/Default.aspx?title=The_Growing_Rate_of_Depression,_Suicide_Among_Asian_American_Students_

There are plenty of anecdotes of Asian-Americans grateful for their strict parents now that they have gone to MIT or become successful surgeons. These stories are counterbalanced by many alienated or strained family relationships, and worse tragedies. The incidence of depression and suicide among Asian-heritage students is higher than other races in America, and it's even worse in nations like India, Korea, and China with a super-competitive college preparatory process. I think Cho who killed all those people at Virginia Tech was raised very strictly and always told by his Asian immigrant parents that he wasn't good enough, and a failure compared to his older sister who went to the Ivy League. There's no point pushing a kid too far. You can't let your kid be a lazy slacker in life (well I guess you can, but there are consequences for that too), but there has to be a middle ground. 

So long story short, the WSJ article created a parenting buzz, the blogosphere lit up, and Chua was blitzed with mostly negative feedback. She then engaged in damage-control PR mode, claiming that WSJ chose that inflammatory title without her knowledge or permission, and her eldest 18-year-old daughter felt the need to write to the WSJ and defend her mother. Chua's explanation is that the book is exaggerating and satirical (half of the mean things she wrote about doing to her kids never actually happened), and that theme comes out if you read it, so the WSJ piece was taken out of context. In fact, after some resistance she finally let her kids volunteer, hang out with friends, and play tennis instead of piano. She says that she has a great, loving relationship with her kids, they've had many fun leisure times together, and they are not traumatized introverts or whatnot. Her book was meant to be a cautionary tale, as her journey climaxed in a big fight with her younger, more resistant daughter who finally told Chua that she had it. Chua realized that piano wasn't as important as losing her child, so she relented and vowed to change. So all the talk about the verbal abuse and forced practicing was a snapshot into the "bad mom" before she saw the light. That is all fair and good, but then why publish the misleading and limited WSJ piece? If I have one page to entice readers and give a glimpse of my relationship with my family, I probably wouldn't focus on the worst times.

Maybe it was just a strategic (and apparently successful) piece of marketing. She usually writes about foreign policy legal issues, so this was her first foray into pop literature. So why not make a big splash, ruffle feathers, and get people talking about a previously unknown?

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/blogs/the_angle/2011/01/amy_chua_manipu.html?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed6

But then what is her point? She claims to want to fight stereotypes about Asian parents, yet she writes a semi-fictional book with silly discipline stories that perpetuate some stereotypes? And without a disclaimer or explanatory note, how is the reader to really know what is factual? I didn't read the book so maybe her intentions would be clearer if i did, but humor and sarcasm are subjective and can be misinterpreted in print (I would know). I really took Chua's WSJ comments to be literal at first because I do know of real Asian parents who do things like that (no dinner if the kid gets an A-, hit them with a stick if they miss a note during piano practice, never saying good job or I love you, etc.), so I didn't know if she was mocking or promoting those tactics. I guess she tried some of it herself, so she must have bought into the approach, but later realized that she had to change. Unless she just wants to start a controversy and attract attention to boost sales, I don't know why she wrote the book in that manner. Just stick to the history, don't exaggerate to make a point. It's a memoir, there doesn't have to be an agenda.

Some Asian women have said that the last part of the book (where Chua and her younger daughter Lulu are really falling out) made them cry. So there is a good story arc there with conflict and redemption, but why not stick with that and dispense with the distracting exaggeration, parental politics, and ethnic-baiting at the beginning? She tried to do what she thought was best for her kids, she tried to love them in the best way she knew how, which was the strict example from her Chinese parents. And it worked for her apparently - she is a Yale prof, but so is her husband who grew up in a liberal, relaxed Jewish household, so there are many ways to nurture success and a kid's future is not 100% determined by parenting. She even attempted to train her dogs in the "Chinese way," and it failed miserably: "Don't you want them to realize their potential?" she asked her husband (OK, that is good humor to include). But later she realized that she didn't have it all figured out and had to change when she and Lulu had a breakdown. That is a great message for families of any race struggling with many of the same issues. Who wouldn't want to hear their mom admit that she was wrong? Why not put some of that in the WSJ? It would have made her look more reasonable and human instead of a psycho. But I guess her kids did accuse her of being that from time to time. They're already rich, why do they need to create a shit-storm around the book for sales? No one likes to get racist hate-mail all day saying they're a cold bitch. So basically, I think the controversy is not helpful to advance the discussion on good parenting and multiculturalism.


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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html

http://resistracism.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/p-s-you-suck/ 

As I am considering starting a family, my biggest fear is to get caught up in this competitive BS. My top goal would be to raise a kid who has good values and who respects him/herself and others. Someone who makes a positive difference and be a better person than I was. The last thing the world needs is another selfish, competitive jerk. I don't know how Chua's kids are in terms of manners, personality, morals. But for the successful peers I know who were raised by super strict Asian parents (who think A- = F), I find them to be shallow, narrow-minded, uninteresting, uncaring people when they were kids and as adults. All they know how to do is obey and study. It's almost like a hollow person. I don't want that for my kid.

So what if they don't win awards or go to Harvard? That is not the measure of a person's worth. Of course you want to equip kids to be able to survive in this cruel world (for all the advantages I had growing up, I am struggling now just to make ends meet and keep a job). You want to help your kids survive, but not at the cost of their soul and their honor. I'd rather my kid be happy going to San Jose State than pushing and fighting and being someone they're not just to get into Yale. All the religions talk about humility, living a balanced life, and putting others before you. It is totally opposite to be a crazy parent like Chua pushing their kids to be the best.

What is the point of being an expert in a musical instrument these days anyway? Either the kid is a prodigy or not, you can't "create" a Mozart. If a kid needs 3 hrs/day to be good at piano, maybe it's not what they were destined to do? I know practice makes perfect, but even very good musicians can't make a living doing that. Maybe it will help them get into an elite college, but think of all those hours Chua's kids have spent practicing those old symphonies. I'd rather teach my kids economics, computer programming, and more practical stuff. Even better, I'd rather they spend time VOLUNTEERING to help others (you can also put than on resume), or just reading and learning about the world. The more kids know, the better decisions they will make in life.

I think the kid who killed all those people at Virginia Tech was raised very strictly and always told by his Korean immigrant parents that he wasn't good enough, and a failure compared to his older sister who went to the Ivy League. There's no point pushing a kid too far. You can't let your kid be a lazy slacker in life, but there has to be a middle ground.

I'm sure you are familiar with the term "helicopter parent". This psychological study thinks that the emergence of helicopter parents in the US, but not in Canada, is due to the vast inequality in our colleges. In Canada, there are good and not-so-good schools too, but the difference is meager. Parenting is a lot more relaxed up there, and the kids turn out fine. In the US, your career prospects are so much different if you have a Harvard vs. a Chico State degree. And this fuels the ridiculous industry of trying to give kids every possible tutoring and extra-curricular and advantage or they will be "left behind". It's an interesting topic though. I am not a parent so I can't claim to know anything about what works and what doesn't, but I know that many parents go too far and miss the big picture. Do they push their kids out of love, or is it for their own egos and insecurities?

http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/03/23/helicopter-moms-sacrifice-self-for-kids/12322.html

Here's another longer article on the subject: http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/

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Interview with Amy Chua: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201101201000

I found her interview very interesting, and I feel bad that I jumped to so many negative conclusions about Chua - but she didn't help herself with the bad press and lack of clarification on her part.

She is basically deflecting all the controversy about her book by saying that the book was taken out of context: definitely not a how-to guide for parenting, nor a promotion that the Chinese style of parenting is best. She admits that there is a lot of variation in parenting among Chinese, as well as other cultures who adopt the "Chinese style".

She is saying that half of the mean things she claimed to do to her kids never happened, and a lot of her writing is meant to be exaggerating and satirical. But you'd think that if Chua really just wanted to write a semi-fictional satirical memoir, there would be some sort of explanatory note in the book so it wouldn't be misinterpreted, as she is saying it is.

Chua said that the Chinese style wasn't working with her youngest, more resistant daughter, and it got to the point where she decided to change, because she feared losing her daughter after they had a big fight. Eventually Chua let her quit the violin and do tennis instead to be happier, because discipline without love is a recipe for disaster. So this book was meant to be a journey explaining some mistakes she made and the parenting lessons she learned. Her claims that A- is failure was an exaggeration, although all of us know parents who feel like that. Her message is that Western parents may have too low expectations, and are too quick to accept mediocre performance from their kids (maybe except for sports, where Western parents go crazy about football and Asians don't care). I guess Chua just wanted to make sure that her kids gave max effort and realized their potential. That is reasonable, but what do you do when the kids are not living up to your expectations - how do you motivate improvement without anger, threats, etc.?

I really took Chua's comments to be literal at first because I do know of real Asian parents who do things like that (no dinner if the kid gets an A-, hit them with a stick if they miss a note during piano practice, never saying good job or I love you, etc.), so I didn't know if she was mocking or promoting those tactics. I guess she tried them herself, so she must have bought into the approach, but later realized that she had to change. But unless she just wants to start a controversy and attract attention to boost sales, I don't know why she wrote the book in that manner. Just stick to the history, don't exaggerate to make a point. I didn't read the book so maybe her intentions would be clearer if i did, but the excerpt in the Wall St. Journal was taken out of context and it made it look like she was promoting harsh Chinese parenting. She says that WSJ did this without her knowledge, and even her eldest daughter wrote an op-ed defending her mom in the same paper.

Like in the interview, if she also communicated to the audience that she felt that her family was still a loving household, she currently has a good relationship with her kids, and that she hit bottom, doubted herself, and eventually relented, it would have made her look more reasonable and human instead of a psycho. But I guess her kids did accuse her of being that from time to time.

Feedback to NPR's story on parenting temperamental teens

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129150658

To Morning Edition,

As I contemplate starting my own family soon, I was fairly disgusted with this story on parenting strategies for dealing with temperamental teens. While I think your guest, Dr. Kastner, had good general advice for conflict mitigation among familial ADULTS, I don't think kids deserve to be reasoned with that way. Kids are already too spoiled and coddled today, even versus Gen X's youth. Parenting is not about bargaining and compromising to make everyone happy; parents are the authority because they provide food, education, shelter, and many luxuries that you and I didn't have as children. The least modern kids can do to show their respect and appreciation is to behave properly and not talk back. They are not the bosses of the household. I understand the desire to cultivate self-esteem, and plenty of strict, angry parents unfortunately turn abusive, but would parents rather have their kid grow up to feel good about him or herself, but become an egotistical, undisciplined jerk in the process? America already has too many of those.

That hypothetical academic exercise of the teen writing a statement reflecting on the consequences of vandalizing a neighbor's house is ridiculous. Pediatrics and behavioral science can help us understand the tumultuous process of growing up, but can't be simply used to condone and explain away bad behavior. Kids are not wild animals. Even in the heat of the moment and under peer pressure, a 13-year-old should still be able to practice good decision making and do the right thing. If not, then the parents and society have truly failed. If kids really were that out of control, they shouldn't be allowed to go out unsupervised and put themselves and others in danger. If I was caught spraying shaving cream on a neighbor's home, my fairly liberal immigrant parents would paddle the lesson into me, prohibit me from hanging out with those "bad influence friends," and I would never do it again. In fact, the shame of bringing that trouble on my family would be motivation enough. I wouldn't have needed to reflect and share about it like a support group.

"Why parents hate parenting"

An interesting discussion and lengthy article about why many American couples may not want kids, or aren't happy because of them:

http://nymag.com/news/features/67024/
http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R201007301000

As a rule, most studies show that mothers are less happy than fathers, that single parents are less happy still, that babies and toddlers are the hardest, and that each successive child produces diminishing returns. ...Robin Simon, a sociologist at Wake Forest University, says parents are more depressed than nonparents no matter what their circumstances—whether they’re single or married, whether they have one child or four.

...all parents spend more time today with their children than they did in 1975, including mothers, in spite of the great rush of women into the American workforce. Today’s married mothers also have less leisure time (5.4 fewer hours per week); 71 percent say they crave more time for themselves (as do 57 percent of married fathers). Yet 85 percent of all parents still—still!—think they don’t spend enough time with their children.

...Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize–winning behavioral economist, who surveyed 909 working Texas women and found that child care ranked sixteenth in pleasurability out of nineteen activities. (Among the endeavors they preferred: preparing food, watching TV, exercising, talking on the phone, napping, shopping, housework.) This result also shows up regularly in relationship research, with children invariably reducing marital satisfaction.

Well that's a bit of a loaded question, since what kind of masochist enjoys child care? They enjoy playing with their kids, showing off their kids, and watching them do cute things, succeed, and grow up. But who would like the maintenance? You may love driving your sports car, but that doesn't mean you like getting dirty to change the brake pads. But personally, I will always prefer napping to anything involving a kid. Also, I'm sure many single or child-less people also wish they had more personal time (I surely do).

LOL:

It was big news last year when the Journal of Happiness Studies published a Scottish paper declaring the opposite was true. “Contrary to much of the literature,” said the introduction, “our results are consistent with an effect of children on life satisfaction that is positive, large and increasing in the number of children.” Alas, the euphoria was short-lived. A few months later, the poor author discovered a coding error in his data, and the publication ran an erratum. “After correcting the problem,”it read,“the main results of the paper no longer hold. The effect of children on the life satisfaction of married individuals is small, often negative, and never statistically significant.”

Any why is this happening?

Before urbanization, children were viewed as economic assets to their parents. If you had a farm, they toiled alongside you to maintain its upkeep; if you had a family business, the kids helped mind the store. But all of this dramatically changed with the moral and technological revolutions of modernity. As we gained in prosperity, childhood came increasingly to be viewed as a protected, privileged time, and once college degrees became essential to getting ahead, children became not only a great expense but subjects to be sculpted, stimulated, instructed, groomed. (Princeton sociologist Viviana Zelizer describes this transformation of a child’s value: “Economically worthless but emotionally priceless.”) [me: raising a kid in the US from age 0 to 18 now costs $250,000 on average] Kids, in short, went from being our staffs to being our bosses. [me: this of course affects parental discipline]

This is especially true in middle- and upper-income families, which are far more apt than their working-class counterparts to see their children as projects to be perfected. (Children of women with bachelor degrees spend almost five hours on “organized activities” per week, as opposed to children of high-school dropouts, who spend two.) Annette Lareau, the sociologist who coined the term “concerted cultivation” to describe the aggressive nurturing of economically advantaged children, puts it this way: “Middle-class parents spend much more time talking to children ...and treating each child’s thought as a special contribution. And this is very tiring work.” Yet it’s work few parents feel that they can in good conscience neglect, says Lareau, “lest they put their children at risk by not giving them every advantage.” [me: isn't that a sad reflection of our competitive, me-first, never-enough society?]

Even more surprisingly, they found that parents’ dissatisfaction only grew the more money they had, even though they had the purchasing power to buy more child care. “And my hypothesis about why this is, in both cases, is the same,” says Twenge. “They become parents later in life. There’s a loss of freedom, a loss of autonomy. It’s totally different from going from your parents’ house to immediately having a baby. Now you know what you’re giving up.” (Or, as a fellow psychologist told Gilbert when he finally got around to having a child: “They’re a huge source of joy, but they turn every other source of joy to shit.”) [me: if only it wasn't so true]
It wouldn’t be a particularly bold inference to say that the longer we put off having kids, the greater our expectations. When people wait to have children, they’re also bringing different sensibilities to the enterprise. They’ve spent their adult lives as professionals, believing there’s a right way and a wrong way of doing things; now they’re applying the same logic to the family-expansion business, and they’re surrounded by a marketplace that only affirms and reinforces this idea. “And what’s confusing about that,” says Alex Barzvi, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU medical school, “is that there are a lot of things that parents can do to nurture social and cognitive development. There are right and wrong ways to discipline a child. But you can’t fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others and constantly concluding you’re doing the wrong thing.” 

The only peer-reviewed study that uncontroversially concluded that kids improve parents' happiness was conducted in - you guessed it - Northern Europe.

The researcher, Hans-Peter Kohler, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says he originally studied this question because he was intrigued by the declining fertility rates in Europe. One of the things he noticed is that countries with stronger welfare systems produce more children—and happier parents.

Of course, this should not be a surprise. If you are no longer fretting about spending too little time with your children after they’re born (because you have a year of paid maternity leave), if you’re no longer anxious about finding affordable child care once you go back to work (because the state subsidizes it), if you’re no longer wondering how to pay for your children’s education and health care (because they’re free)—well, it stands to reason that your own mental health would improve. When Kahneman and his colleagues did another version of his survey of working women, this time comparing those in Columbus, Ohio, to those in Rennes, France, the French sample enjoyed child care a good deal more than its American counterpart. “We’ve put all this energy into being perfect parents,” says Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, “instead of political change that would make family life better.”

I'm not so sure about the strong welfare-more children link, because some data suggest the reverse. Birth rates are still quite low in strong social welfare states like Japan and Germany, but also low in poor welfare nations like Russia and Bulgaria. Sometimes people in rich nations decline to have kids not for the stress reasons, but because they're interested in other stuff, especially in their "prime years". They go to graduate school, have busy jobs, travel, buy things, volunteer, and maintain hobbies/friendships/online life. And before they know it, they're 40 and can't conceive even if they wanted to (except for Palin). When teens basically "need" smartphones and laptops to manage their relatively simple lives, us adults have even more chores/distractions, so there's no void/need to fill with a baby. So I suppose the self-centered Western lifestyle can motivate some couples to have kids and others to not. Third World families are bigger partially due to lack of education and access to family planning tools. But they also willingly birth a lot of kids as insurance against infant mortality, but also as a labor source and for material support in old age. A strong pension system precludes the need for many kids to support you.

But it's very true that strong social support makes parenting so much easier, as a previous email described (http://worldaffairs-manwnoname.blogspot.com/2010/01/american-work-family-conflict.html). When European parents don't have to fret about affordable childcare, accessible medical care, maternity leave, and even getting enough time off for a summer vacation, family life is better. Much has been said about the anachronistic US summer vacation for school kids. This was originally meant to free up kids to help their farming and ranching parents with the busy summer season. But of course less than 10% of Yanks currently live on farms, so there is no reason for our summer break to be the longest in the G20, apart from giving underpaid and overstressed public school teachers a break so they don't blow their brains out (but we just end up transferring the stress to parents and day care). So our kids learn less, and are a bigger time burden on their parents, who also work longer hours, spend more time in commute, and have less vacation days than others in the G20. Recipe for problems.

What about a couple's romantic life? You guessed it.

This is another brutal reality about children: They expose the gulf between our fantasies about family and its spikier realities. They also mean parting with an old way of life, one with more freewheeling rhythms and richer opportunities for romance... Healthy relationships definitely make people happier. But children adversely affect relationships. ...Psychologists Lauren Papp and E. Mark Cummings asked 100 long-married couples to spend two weeks meticulously documenting their disagreements. Nearly 40 percent of them were about their kids. “And that 40 percent is merely the number that was explicitly about kids, I’m guessing, right?” This is a former patient of Nachamie’s, an entrepreneur and father of two. “How many other arguments were those couples having because everyone was on a short fuse, or tired, or stressed out?” This man is very frank about the strain his children put on his marriage, especially his firstborn. “I already felt neglected,” he says. “In my mind, anyway. And once we had the kid, it became so pronounced; it went from zero to negative 50. And I was like, I can deal with zero. But not negative 50.”
... The amount of time married parents spend alone together each week: Nine hours today versus twelve in 1975. Bradbury, who was involved in the UCLA study of those 32 families, says the husbands and wives spent less than 10 percent of their home time alone together. “And do you think they were saying, ‘Gee honey, you look lovely. I just wanted to pick up on that fascinating conversation we were having earlier about the Obama administration’? ” he asks. “Nope. They were exhausted and staring at the television.”

A possible silver lining and what it all means for your decision for children:

We know that having kids increases stress/fatigue and reduces happiness/freedom. On the other hand, the married women were less depressed after they’d had kids than their childless peers. And perhaps this is because the study sought to understand not just the moment-to-moment moods of its participants, but more existential matters, like how connected they felt, and how motivated, and how much despair they were in. ...Parents, who live in a clamorous, perpetual-forward-motion machine almost all of the time, seemed to have different answers than their childless cohorts. ...Technically, if parenting makes you unhappy, you should feel better if you’re spared the task of doing it. But if happiness is measured by our own sense of agency and meaning, then noncustodial parents lose. They’re robbed of something that gives purpose and reward.
“When you pause to think what children mean to you, of course they make you feel good,” [Gilbert] says. “The problem is, 95 percent of the time, you’re not thinking about what they mean to you. You’re thinking that you have to take them to piano lessons. So you have to think about which kind of happiness you’ll be consuming most often. Do you want to maximize the one you experience almost all the time”—moment-to-moment happiness—“or the one you experience rarely?”
“I think this boils down to a philosophical question, rather than a psychological one,” says [Cornell psychologist] Gilovich. “Should you value moment-to-moment happiness more than retrospective evaluations of your life?” He says he has no answer for this, but the example he offers suggests a bias. He recalls watching TV with his children at three in the morning when they were sick. “I wouldn’t have said it was too fun at the time,” he says. “But now I look back on it and say, ‘Ah, remember the time we used to wake up and watch cartoons?’ ” The very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification, nostalgia, delight. 

Dan Ariely, who wrote those behavioral economics books on irrationality, studied how people tend to value the exact same item more if they possess it than if they don't and others do. Part of that is egotism, and no one wants to regret what we've already committed to as a good idea at the time. We're so glad that we didn't buy that blue house that turned out to have termites, but we love our beige house even though it has wiring problems. No one wants to admit that having their kid was a mistake, especially to his/her face. But humans err. Maybe having kids was a mistake for many couples out there (post-children divorce rates may suggest that, even though the couples may cite other excuses for their split). But they're trying to make the best of it and derive as much purpose as they can (forget pleasure). They may know deep down it was a mistake, and maybe wish for another crack at life, but in the meantime they want to make something good out of their "mistake", so the sacrifice was not in vain. Like how some families of soldiers needlessly killed in wars of choice still force themselves to believe that their child died a hero to "protect freedom".

No one is saying that people should only engage in activities that are guaranteed to produce 100% satisfaction and zero regret. That's impossible, and makes life boring frankly. But at least for kids, we have to be realistic. For many middle-class Americans, having a kid means decades of stress, fatigue, zero to uninspiring sex, unhappiness, and maybe divorce/poverty. But is that "sacrifice" worth it to gain the special pride, "joy", and nostalgia at the beginning and in the end - if you survive it - that child-less people can never know? For some people, it's a resounding "yes". For others, they have kids without contemplating it, or have kids unplanned. Though to be fair, it's not like we get to have a preview of what our future parental life will be when we're deciding. At best, we can just examine the case studies of our friends and relatives, and see if that type of life would be appealing.

But we also need to temper expectations. We can get some of the benefits of parenthood for a smaller blood sacrifice. So what if we don't dote on our kid 24-7, and he/she doesn't go to Space Camp and Harvard? Even if everyone on our block is doing it, and looks down on us as "bad parents", who cares? The kid probably won't become homeless or Charlie Manson if you skip ballet lessons. As long as there's love, morals, and common sense, no one else needs to "approve" of your parenting methods and limitations. And there's no need to kill yourselves trying to give your kid stuff that he/she may not even need or want. You have a life to live too, and a worn-out parent may be worse for kids than a "less committed" one. Forget about the Joneses, do less, buy less, don't take the promotion if you can't handle the extra workload, and maybe you'll have time to actually enjoy family life. Quality, not quantity. On the other hand, people with kids should realize that they can't perfectly maintain the single or couple life anymore. There's another term in the equation, and each spouse will get less attention now. Yes couples can and should spend time and money on themselves, but obviously if the choice is piano recital or poker game, you have to do the grown-up thing. And loving spouses can't be so demanding and expect their partners to keep off the love handles and do all the little romantic things they did during dating, while also performing well on the job and as a parent. It doesn't mean he loves you less, but now the relationship is different. We give up some stuff to get other stuff. Flexible, realistic, and understanding spouses and parents have a better chance in the minefield of child rearing. Those who "want it all" and won't take no for an answer are setting themselves up for a life of misery and disappointment, which will reflect on their kids as well.