I’m sitting here, reflecting on the piece that Claire Cain Miller prepared for The Washington Post, entitled, “The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting” (Miller, 2018). Claire, you couldn’t be more on, and I don’t mean that strictly from a psychological/parenting perspective, but also from a personal perspective. I have written several blogs on parenting and how our parenting style is extremely different than our parents’ which is resulting in a generation of children with a whole lot less resilience and a great deal more anxiety. We have a generation of young adults deemed “failure to launch” because they don’t have the skills to fly out of the nest, or better yet, launch out into adulthood.
Even though we have the best of intentions in giving our children attention, listening to their thoughts and opinions, and validating their experiences – all things that our parents did little of for us – the pendulum of parenting has swung in the opposite extreme. Unfortunately, this parenting approach has contributed to a generation of children who have a strong sense of entitlement, a low sense of motivation or internal drive, a high sense of anxiety, and a low sense of self efficacy.
Our modern-day parenting styles have become less focused on the adults being the center of the family to now, our children and their needs are the center of our universe…
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