Flinging Apples Far from the Tree

“With the exception of the imperial offspring of the Ming dynasty and the dauphins of pre-Revolutionary France, contemporary American kids may represent the most indulged young people in the history of the world.” 

Elizabeth Kolbert

I have to point you to this article Spoiled Rotten by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker. When I first moved to New York, I heard a mom on the subway begging her young daughter to make a decision about what they were going to have for dinner. 

"Should we eat at home?"

Grunt.

"What about McDonalds?" 

"Rosa took me yesterday."

"Do you want Chinese?" 

(Sticks tongue out.)

"Should I make mac n' cheese? You love mac n' cheese."

(Kid looks away, shoving Annie's organic homegrown wheat bunnies with real-aged cheddar down her throat.)

"We could go to that cute Mexican place with the big mirror...Let me see if Daddy can meet us down there."
No response.

And I thought to myself - What the h*ll is going on?

It was my stop at that point, so I never heard whether the mom (in my memory, she was literally crouched on the floor, pleading to her daughter) ever managed to sell her daughter on the idea of eating dinner that night or whether the girl just kept munching on those real-aged cheddar bunnies and then moved on to Annie's organic fruit snacks*, then Pirate Booty (formerly known as cheese curls) and finally to dessert. 

And it wasn't an isolated incident. It was everywhere. Kids were bratty and pouted and ran off when their parents said it was time to leave the playground and hid in their rooms when their parents asked them to come say hello to the company and refused to refill the dog's water dish so the parents did it grudgingly saying "She wanted a dog..." meaning it really was up to the kid to at the very least refill the water dish because it was her idea to get the dog but the kid didn't want to so...it defaulted to the parent/servant.

(Actually -- Disclaimer: This happened in my house growing up! Dara and I wanted a cat and my parents did all the caretaking. They spoiled us. We helped so very little -- a few chores on weekends and setting the table. That's about it. Why did they do this? Topic for another post...yet I'm going to claim that it wasn't nearly as bad as what's going on now because isn't that always the point of these sorts of arguments...)

In my head I called it "peer parenting" -- where the parent seemed more intent on being liked by their child than in being a good parent. Like those pushover teachers who pretend they don't see you throwing paper airplanes when they turn their back or ignore it when you swear so they can be cool or easy or whatever but the end result is you don't respect them and in most cases you don't learn as much from them.

Back in those early days in New YOrk I babysat a little but didn't pay all that much attention to parents or kids in those days. From the little bit I saw, it became clear that parents not only conferred with their young kids about every decision, but often deferred to them. The kids were in charge. And when I had a kid and did start paying more attention, I saw that in most cases, the more power the kids had--the closer they were to being the center of the universe-- the unhappier they seemed to be. Just like the old fairy-tales about the miserable spoiled princess and the happy scrappy little son or daughter of the gardener. (Not to idealize actual poor people -- the 80 million who do not go to school, 220 million who work full time jobs, or 100 million homeless-- really just talking about trends in affluent families here, like Anne-Marie Slaughterhouse talking about the work/life balance in her recent Atlantic article "I am writing for my demographic—highly educated, well-off women who are privileged enough to have choices in the first place.") 

And now I wish I had started a list of preposterous peer-parenting statements I've heard like defending the possession of a violent video game "He wanted it", or driving rather than taking the subway "They [the kids] didn't want to have to walk". Or saying, with a shrug of the shoulders and a defeated look, “She had ice cream for dinner, can you believe it?” Or watching a toddler wear a nice hat into the sprinkler and saying, "He wasn't supposed to wear that in there". It's like - then why did he? Why didn't you take it off of him? Or better yet, tell him to take it off and have him do it?

My parents recently pointed out to me that we still (Alex and I) feed Wally on occasion. As in, he just sits there like a little king while one of us takes his fork and stabs a green bean with it and brings it up to his mouth. Even though he's perfectly capable of doing it himself, and has been for years. I really don't know why we do it, except that he's tired, and would otherwise stop eating. So, the obvious answer is, let him stop eating. Maybe he's not hungry. Or maybe he just likes to be spoiled. It's fun to be king for a day. Kids don't--should not be expected to--always know what's good for them. Sure he may have "wanted" us to feed him, just like the little girl across the street "wanted" to take gymnastics AND dance AND swim class AND art. But that doesn't mean it's what's best for either one, does it? Father Knows Best is outdated and sexist, but Child Knows Best is a ludicrous surrender, a renunciation of our responsibility as parents. We're making their ladybugs for them, and letting them make major life decisions. Something is clearly not right.

Though my parents spoiled us in some ways, the boundaries around what we were allowed to do were still clear. And they decided what was for dinner (except on our birthdays). If they told us to do something (until our defiant teenager years, worse for me than Dara), we did it. And it would NEVER have crossed our minds not to do something another adult asked of us. And yet I see the erosion of that practice -- that kids listen to adults -- everywhere, even with my young cousins, my nieces, and Wally.

I was so surprised about 10 years ago when my three cousins (ranging from 4 to 9) flagrantly disobeyed me. They were on their bikes, and were supposed to stay near me as they rode around in front of The Casino by our cottage near the beach. Within seconds they all three scattered off into the distance while I stood by myself yelling at them to come back, a defeated substitute teacher with absolutely no control. I met up with them later at the cottage where there was little discussion about what had happened. I wasn’t the only one without authority in that situation. Their parents, after all, had told them to listen to me.

Kids don't feel they need to listen to adults. We’re not really authorities anymore. Something has radically changed.

And there are just so many pieces to it. One hypothesis presented in this article has to do with the achievement-mania I've discussed other places. That parents are so intent on getting their kids into good schools they'll do anything for them, including following them around, picking up the dirty clothes they carelessly fling off. Elizabeth Kolbert talks about A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting by Hara Estroff Marano here:

“High-powered parents worry that the economic opportunities for their children are shrinking. They see a degree from a top-tier school as one of the few ways to give their kids a jump on the competition. In order to secure this advantage, they will do pretty much anything, which means not just taking care of all the cooking and cleaning but also helping their children with math homework, hiring them S.A.T. tutors, and, if necessary, suing their high school.”

The review begins with a look at an anthropological study comparing tribes in the Peruvian amazon to upper-middle class kids in Los Angeles and ends brilliantly, pulling back to provide a framework for our own behavior in anthropological terms:

“Letting things slide is always the easiest thing to do, in parenting no less than in banking, public education, and environmental protection. A lack of discipline is apparent these days in just about every aspect of American society. Why this should be is a much larger question, one to ponder as we take out the garbage and tie our kids’ shoes.”

It really is pretty complex and there are surely many variables that have conspired to get us to this point. Perhaps each generation considers the following one spoiled. My mom always mentions how her mom woke them up at 6 am on Saturdays to start helping around the house. Probably her mom got woken up even earlier. But I don't think what we're seeing now is part of the continuum. I think there has been a radical shift. And it's the parents--at least right now--who can do something to reverse it, while we still have a tiny bit of power, if only to stop tying shoes of people shorter than us. It's not even peer parenting; that would imply some kind of equality. The apples aren't falling far from the trees...we're hurling them out there. 

Lots to think about (or chew on), as we feed “fruit”** that doesn't spoil to children that clearly do.

***Annie’s Homegrown Organic Bunny Fruit Snacks
Organic Tapioca Syrup, Organic Cane Sugar, Organic Tapioca Syrup Solids, Organic White Grape Juice Concentrate, Pectin,Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid, Color (Black Carrot Juice Concentrate), Natural Flavors, Sodium Citrate, Organic Sunflower Oil, Carnauba Wax (From Palm Leaves).