In 1946, Dr. Benjamin Spock, a Yale and Columbia trained pediatrician, published Baby and Child Care. Baby and Child Care was an immensely popular book, a top seller of the twentieth century. It also happened to be one of the most influential books in history with regards to child rearing. Spock challenged centuries old dogma that the lives of children should, from an early age, be routinized: sleep schedules, meals, etc. This earlier approach to parenting was based on a tough love, let them cry philosophy that emphasized parental outcomes--resilient, independent children, and viewed parents solely as care givers, role models, and disciplinarians.
Dr. Spock, keenly interested in psychoanalysis, argued for a relationship-first approach to child rearing that emphasized the importance of affection between parent and child, and encouraged the fostering of individuality in children. Parents were called to be flexible, catering to the emotional needs of their young. His views were so widely adopted within a generation that social critics of the period credited Spock with having inadvertently instigated most of the counter-cultural problems of the 1960s. At the very least, Benjamin Spock dramatically altered approaches not only to parenting, but education.
Of course, the world is full of false binaries--this or that, baby or bath water, all or nothing logic. Parenting has never been an all or nothing proposition, nor so education. Problems arise when we live at the poles, when we behave as if parenting and education have no middle ground. Dr. Spock was right. We do need to build strong attachments with our children and foster their individuality. It is also true that we should endeavor to raise resilient, independent children capable of weathering life's storms.
Somewhere along the way, in the middle of the parenting culture wars, we happened upon a species of parenting so fearful that we might irrevocably harm our children's emotional well being that we en masse wrapped childhood in bubble wrap. We are pressured on all sides from the mass media, social media, parenting groups, best selling books on child-rearing, our schools, not to raise our voice, to explain the rationale of our every decision to our children, to give them input into our parenting practices. We live in permanent anxiety about their welfare. We rush to praise their every action--a trophy for every normal, even unremarkable, developmental step along the way. All problems are handled with kid gloves; every obstacle has bumpers.
Our children are hardwired for resiliency, the legacy of countless generations of human evolution. We parent this inherent capacity to hit a curveball, to rise from every fall, right out of them when we rush to solve their problems, or harbor them from every storm, real and imagined. Even praise is a double-edged sword. Things that are praise-worthy are diminished when we lavish the same on every occurrence. We are fearful of criticism on their behalf, that tough words might fall them. We gratify them instantly rather than make them earn their wants. Just because we have the means doesn't mean we should cave to the whims of children. Consider the message that sends as they make their way towards adulthood.
As is true in nature, so it is true for us, the products of the same forces that govern the universe. We must find a balance between the poles of parenting. We must encourage both individuality and accountability in our children. We must treat them with respect and offer fair and timely critical feedback. We must let them fall down sometimes so that they learn to get back up all on their own. They'll be okay, just as we were, and those that came before us stretching back to the beginning of time. Be gone bubble wrap!
See you around campus.