The Overprotected American Child
wsj.com
wsj.com
https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/B3-AQ358_INDEPE_M...
^This here.
Except the Concerned Adults will never get a chance to read it because they'll call the police to rescue the 12-year-old dropped off at the mall by her mom.
“Hey! What should we do about those stray kids over there! Call the police??”
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They might be able to stop the infant from killing themselves, it depends a lot on the 3 yo. In our case the eldest is over-protective mostly, except when bored or distracted ...
I think you've overstretched with that claim.
"Children under four years of age may only use public transport if they are accompanied by a person who is at least six years of age."
https://www.bvg.de/en/Tickets/fare-overview/conditions-of-ca...
I mean, they make a nice narrative to shame people for overprotecting their kids. But this basically culminates in three of the major things that give me pause. a) Nice narrative, b) appealing argument without presented evidence, and c) shaming. Combine those and you typically have someone pushing or falling for an argument that has not been proven.
And yes, we all fall for those. All the time. I am not exempt.
No, but it lets mediocre people feel good about themselves.
I don't think this is at all a good thing.
But I don't know how much that mitigates the damage. If good leaders spend all their time cleaning up the mess left behind, it goes pretty far in preventing anything really good from happening.
People who don't follow advice and insist on going out of box all the time tend to generate even more mess behind. And are not great leaders either.
Absolutely. These people make fantastic employees. But the world needs more than just employees.
As young millennials and gen z (or whatever the fuck we end up calling them) start to occupy management roles we'll be able to make a better call in this regard.
Reality is most people rely on others for help. And there isn't a damned thing wrong with that. Indeed, the implication of the problem there is that it is not right to help and guide others. How is that ok?
Would it be great if we were all more self sufficient? I think so, but I don't have anything to back that belief. Especially knowing we are social creatures. And, all evidence is we have succeeded in large because we are social creatures. Even the giants among us relied heavily on social influence.
Reality nowadays when a piece of lab equipment breaks down is that the kids call tech support, i.e. The Professor. You wish they'd consult documentation or their own brain, more experienced students in the lab, the tech support number on the business card that's stuck to the instrument &c p.p., but instead they immediately kick the matter upstairs instead of consulting peers or using the means at their disposal. Their childlike trust in authorities is too great.
I still can't weld like some of my friends. They're so brilliant, it'd take me years to catch up.
Anyway: if you really want to sell students on becoming the complete Scientific Humanist Who Delicately Breaks Rules AND Can Fix Anything, which you seem to fancy, start off the laboratories with "LSD Synthesis: from Ergot to Your Homemade Blotter Art" and then break the thermal cycler before the next lab, with the phosphorescence plasmids.
And, yes, in the U.S. and elsewhere, I would expect some (perhaps milder than I imagine) difficulties with that; and, no, I don't really condone drug use but I think you can see where I'm coming from with this reasoning.
Most parents aren't trying to raise the next brilliant artist, entrepreneur, or intellectual[1]. They just want their kids to have a stable, safe, happy life.
[1] And those that try often don't know what they're doing and end up inflicting emotional damage, so the best case: A successful but absolutely miserable adult.
For someone who had a long linear career progression a lay-off or temporary underemployment sucks and could cause a lifestyle downsizing but is manageable. For the person who’s entire existence expects xxx,xxx income that’s where foreclosures on very nice homes and bankruptcy happen.
I would be careful there it can happen by other means too. I suffer from a fair bit of anxiety, so I show similar symptoms for different reasons; instead of not knowing how to act outside the box or being unable to not rely on others, I'm merely afraid of doing those things, although capable of them.
I think if you want to separate the two cases the easiest way is to give them alone time and a high level task to fulfill that requires initiative to solve. Those who have grown up overprotected will continue to seek guidance while those who are simply afraid of social missteps will be happily on their way the moment they are alone with a clear goal.
What if you are left alone with an unclear goal?
I’m interested to hear what you think helps?
For me, maybe I know what the procedure is because I've done it a thousand times but it's still not written down step by step so what I know in my head is worthless once I leave the job for whatever reason [death, better deal, retirement, &c].
On the other hand, the person doing the job could just be sub-par. I'm not sure what there can be done about that.
That study also suggests more vehicle-related accidents but it's hard to know what to make of that without knowing more about the type of accidents, population patterns, etc.
Maybe some people think that way. Colloquially, I've heard about a million times Europeans laugh at how ridiculous they think some laws are in that regard, such as Kinder eggs being banned in America.
The egg has been redesigned some years ago. The two parts now stay attached together.
All that said, I think there are ways to get exceptions, but they are shy to give them away. And it really is a shame in this case: though there have been perhaps a handful of suspected choking cases in children, overall they have been quite reasonably safe (based on years and years of them being sold to children elsewhere). It simply winds up being a silly ban done for a good overall reason.
At this point I guess it would be helpful to know the letter of the law/regulation, but it's also probably not important enough to bother.
Do big American Easter eggs sometimes come with plastic bags of smaller candies inside? Those seem less likely to be a choking hazard, but similar enough that they could fall afoul of the law that hits the Kinder eggs.
Perhaps there's a size limit on embedded non-edible components.
King cakes are another example — commonly enjoyed despite how many baby Jesuses have been swallowed or choked on.
(1) has partially or completely imbedded therein any nonnutritive object, except that this subparagraph shall not apply in the case of any nonnutritive object if, in the judgment of the Secretary as provided by regulations, such object is of practical functional value to the confectionery product and would not render the product injurious or hazardous to health
Since hidden pillars are neither hazardous to anyone's health and also provide functional value, seems like they'd be just fine.
Thanks for the research.
Extreme "get the government off our back" people are definitely arguing for that.
It is hard to weight those against each other.
And I'd also wager that the number of kids negatively impacted by poor mental health today is a lot more than the number of kids negatively impacted by violent youth crime and teenage pregnancies in past years not so far removed from our own.
Furthermore we've got a baby/bathwater situation going on here specifically with respect to teenage pregnancy as it relates to minor autonomy. Teaching kids to use condoms and birth control needn't be thrown out with the bathwater that is overprotected children. In fact, I think you could argue that sex education for minors is an exception to the rule, where minors are being given more autonomy today than in the past.
And beyond that, I'd wager caffeine consumption is also through the roof. When I was a kid it was virtually unheard of for minors to drink coffee, and I never saw colas let alone energy drinks sold in vending machines in schools.
But are they getting pregnant less often per instance of intercourse?
There were a lot of articles lately that teenagers and young adults are having less sex now than ever before which IMHO would be a failure rather than a success of overparenting.
I knew a guy some years older than me who had been a bonafide hippie. He told me "TV cut off at 9pm. Not really anything to do after that but sex and drugs."
With the internet providing 24/7 entertainment, that particular issue -- "I'm bored. I think I shall get high and/or laid." -- is mostly a solved problem.
2.) Statistically, kids who are well informed about sex and have factual information tend to both start later and use protection. So no, later sex is not failure of parenting. It is result of kids making rational well informed choices. (Meaning them skipping sex with partner they don't trust, them being less likely to be manipulated or shamed into it, less likely do it just to acquired social status or for fear they will look gay.)
3.) There is nothing inherently good about soon sex. Self control is good thing and will be correlated with later sex (cause you skip some chances by choice). The idea that there is something wrong with you if you are not having sex at 17 is ridiculous anyway.
Is that you think it is lack of sex that makes people have less children (meaning that they would have them had they not be too lazy to have sex)? Or that there are less relationships or that people keep solely their own gender peer group? Mark of people caring about work more then humans? Or something else?
He grew up on a farm and one of his siblings was scaled to death and later when he had made money a tractor he had brought for his father overturned killing him.
We have always been fairly "free range" i.e. our kids have had their share of bruises from climbing and in general being allowed to do challenging things.
After a week at the daycare my wife went to pick my son up, one of the teachers pulled her aside and told her that they, unfortunately, had to report some of the bruises on his arm or shoulder (can't remember) and that they hadn't said anything about the bruises on his legs.
My wife and I freaked out worried that the social services would come and take him away.
Of course, we soon learned that it wasn't actually the bruises on our son they were worried about but whether we would report them for mistreating our son.
The primary problem in the US is the liability issue which certainly doesn't help.
People in general though are really weirdly paranoid about their kids. I always thought it would be counterproductive for them later in life. Better to fall when you are a little boy than when you are older.
Anyway who knows.
Another commenter made an observation along the lines of you see overprotected children nevertheless succeeding (or failing up, depending on your perspective) professionally as adults. That would make sense if what we are doing is slowly handing down practices from the higher classes to lower. The failing up phenomenon is clearly highly correlated with the privilege you were born into. As everyone becomes relatively more privileged, then practices would radiate out and be institutionalized amongst more of the population, i.e., everyone would start overprotecting because as long as your kid makes it, worse case, they will be able to succeed via the fail up method.
Once I visited the UK and some kids threw lit firecrackers into my scarf. Then all the adults kept drinking. I assume America is currently behind the times, Europe having since updated the myth to Atomic Motorcycle Danger King.
This failure has something to do with Americans having enjoyed Downton Abbey more than Mad Max: Fury Road. My investigation continues.
He turned out OK. Modern social workers would have taken him. Heck, they'd literally swipe baby Jesus.
https://peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/02/16/americas-bizarre...
And why wouldn't they compare the US to other countries like Canada, Germany, UK, France, etc. ? We all already know that the Nordic countries really have their act together and are effectively a cherry picked example.
Maybe I'm being paranoid but is this what fake news looks like? The whole point of the article seems to be to further the "tax the rich" argument.
Fake news is literally made up nonsense, usually that appeals to emotion or existing political bias.
I also didn’t really mean that to be attacking, I possibly attributed malice to misunderstanding so if that’s what happened I apologize
This is a bizarre metric. If richer families started having children at a higher rate, or poorer families slowed down, the problem would be fixed?
What if we simply cut the pay of the upper 50%, not even redistributing the income? That would lower median income, and therefore shrink the "less than 50% of median income" demographic, "solving" child poverty.
This does sound like a great idea.
Two major problems, though. a) By and large, rich people don't have more children and b) having a child is a good way to destroy your wealth. That is, many that are just barely in the "rich" category won't be once they have children. More, most wealth in the US does not survive generations. (And this is generally agreed to be a good thing, I believe.)
For the second, ok. Cut the pay. How? That sort of suggestion is literally "wishful thinking." If everyone could get by with less money, everyone would. Folks do grab for the advantages they can get, though, and most rise in costs and pay are ascribable to scarcity. Only wishful thinking will make housing and energy costs flat across the board. Same for social mobility. Or physical mobility.
I'd like to see a comparison between childless families and families with children, economic starting point held constant. There is the fatherhood bonus and motherhood penalty after all.
It’s great that the lowest end of the income distribution still has enough resources to have children. It would help no one to reduce productivity.
The metric is probably not the right way of thinking about this problem.
Is the metric perfect? No. But neither is attacking it in ways that it can't be attacked.
Do you have alternatives? What are they?
The upper half of a country’s income distribution can absolutely be more or less productive compared to another time or another place. How would you go about it? Defunding education and research and starting a trade war would be great first steps.
That is, wealth is a proxy for all of those measures. And every attempt at fixing those measures has ended poorly. At best.
If only 20% of children are members of age-adjusted & number of parents adjusted families with income in the bottom half then that means that the bottom half of families are being slowly genocided through the cost to have and raise a child.
But we have no way of knowing that from the national median income statistic.