Member-only story
Where Did We F*ck Up On Kids And Autonomy?
I am not a parent, so feel free to toss out any of my thoughts below. However, I have spent over $32,000 unsuccessfully trying to be a parent in my life, so maybe that means I think about this stuff a little bit more? Do with it what you will.
Guys like Jonathan Haidt have been banging the drum on “kids need more autonomy” for years, in addition to “ban phones in schools,” and it’s hard for me to see how any reasonable person would be against either. I understand each family is nuanced in their own way, though.
On the kids need more autonomy front, which is where I want to take this article, I’ve kinda sorta maybe addressed it before, but here I think are your big buckets:
Exhaustion
Easy to blame this on the increasing necessity of two incomes, meaning two working parents provided the parents are even together, and maybe that’s trite. But I do think when you combine economic realities with lack of job stability with political chaos with power grabs, people feel exhausted. And if they have kids, instead of really doubling down on those kids, they are content to throw them in front of a tablet for three hours to catch a break themselves. Now, does a tablet mean no autonomy? Not necessarily. But in this specific…
