The Parental Guilt Hypothesis

A friend wrote to me recently and asked when I was going to write something about the overscheduling of American children these days. "The cul-de-sac is empty because literally every single child is at hockey, ballet, swim-team, tennis, violin, art camp, piano. You name it, they're gone." This hyper-management of a child's time is closely related to a broader parenting trend that some call "overparenting." One gets the sense, from the busy schedules, the antiseptic gels, the obsessing over college admissions, that parents maybe love their children too much, if such a thing were possible.

I've begun to suspect it's the opposite, that too many of us parents love ourselves too much. The average American adult watches hours of television per day. If he is a professional then his cell phone and Blackberry have turned his home into an office away from the office. If he lives in a large city he has a significant commute. And it is increasingly likely, since the 1960's (with a small dip in recent years) that his wife works as well.

So I'm considering an alternative to the we-are-so-into-our-kids-that-we-do-anything-for-them theory. I call it the Parental Guilt Hypothesis. Why does little Jimmy have baseball camp and rock-climbing lessons and his own personal tutor? Because Jimmy's mom and dad feel, deep down, guilty for not giving him enough of themselves. Overparenting, in my theory, is frequently an outward manifestation of selfish parenting. Too many parents have grown used to comfort, and to entertainment of their own. So they work hard to pay for their ability to play hard, and as a side deal, little Jimmy gets his own computer and an Xbox and enrollment in the fanciest private school his parents can afford.

Still worse, children have become extensions of our egos, which might just explain a wee bit of the sports craze. If you doubt that, check out a Pee Wee game or two and see who looks more fanatical about winning -- the children, or their parents.

Perhaps I'm wrong, and this overparenting trend is just coincidental with rising rates of teen and twenty-something sexually-transmitted disease incidence, drug use, alcoholism, and psychological problems. Some people think overparenting is actually causing those pathologies. But my suspicion is that these children in their teens and twenties are self-destructing not because they've had too much attention from mom and dad, but because they haven't received nearly enough of the right kind of attention, the kind that comes when the television is off and the heart is open.

Imagine that there was a national one-year moratorium on child sports, television, and anything beyond fifty hours of work. Imagine that instead parents had to spend those liberated hours with their children and no buffer -- no score, no coach, no laugh track, no Blackberry. Heavenly idea, yes? And a little scary too, for some of us. And perhaps that is why, ultimately, so many parents choose to fill their children's schedules -- and their own as well -- rather than build close personal relationships with them. Because signing up for hockey classes and gunning for that next promotion is easy, compared to the messiness of communion with a child.

As I drove by a major corporation's office building Sunday afternoon, and saw the rows of cars in the executives' spots, I thought back to a conversation I once had with a retired executive from that very company. He had achieved amazing success, and earned a fortune. But he wasn't there for his children. Hearing him explain that, the pain and regret in his voice like a knife, I knew he would, in that moment, give all his money if he could go back and reclaim that time with them. Here's hoping that the current generation of young fathers will turn their hearts back to their children, while they still can.