The parenting pendulum

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

A lot of Americans look back fondly on the childhood of the 1970s and ’80s, kids riding bikes until dark, solving problems on their own, and learning independence the hard way.

EICHER:But many of those same children grew up determined to give their own kids something different; more protection, more guidance, fewer risks.

WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney says that generational swing may help explain some of the parenting debates we are still having today.

JANIE B. CHEANEY, COMMENTARY » You may have noticed that fashions in child-rearing change. 

When I was growing up, few moms left home for work and “daycare” was barely a word, much less a political issue. But depending on who you talked to, mom was either a happy housewife like Laura Petrie, or a frustrated domestic prisoner like Betty Friedan. 

The truth was probably somewhere in between, but homes were generally stable, divorce rare, and kids came home to at least one parent after a long summer day figuring out what to do with themselves.

By the mid-70s there had been a mass exodus of moms from home. Divorce rates hit the ceiling, daycares bloomed like lilies, and kids old enough to make their own peanut butter sandwiches routinely came home to an empty house. It was the era of the “latchkey” child. With no dinner until Mom got home at six, what did they do in the meantime?

According to the experts, they spent tons of unsupervised time becoming “resilient.” Gen-Xers–and their parents, too–will reminisce about getting lost and finding their own way home, of building fires in a vacant lot, or spending all afternoon at the pool without sunblock, or going on road trips unrestrained in the back seat. “We’re lucky we made it out alive,” they’ll say, with an undertone of nostalgia for their free-range childhood.

So you might wonder why such resilient kids went on to raise a generation seemingly less able to handle setbacks, live with boredom, form lasting relationships, or take a risk. 

For sure, plenty of millennials have launched into adulthood successfully and have even started families of their own—determined, as all generations are, to avoid their parents’ mistakes.

Still...there has been a trend, noticed among workplace supervisors and college professors, that younger generations tend to rely on parental help to make decisions more than their elders did.

It didn’t begin with the smart phone. Twenty years ago parents were giving flip phones to their fifth-graders so they’d be only a few pushbuttons away from instant communication. By the time those kids were in college, their professors noticed they had barely left the classroom before flipping open their phones to tell mom they just got out of class and what to do with sour milk or a cancelled debit card. 

Helicopter parenting was becoming a thing.

If Gen-Xers grew up with such “resilience,” why couldn’t they raise their children in the same mold? Could some of them be overcompensating to supply what they themselves missed?

There’s no guaranteed path to raising a responsible adult. But responsible adults are not formed by benign neglect or diligent hovering. 

In the 1970s, while marriages were falling apart, we heard that kids would be abel to adapt to whatever seemed best for the grownups. God made children to be adaptable to circumstances in a fallen world, and also to be trained up in the way they should go by wise diligent counselors, who were themselves formed by the word of God. 

Our kids will answer for their own mistakes, but for best results, aim for resilience coupled with wisdom.

For WORLD, I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.