By Paul Bonicelli
Saturday, November 14, 2015
I suppose it’s something of a contradiction that
microaggressions would lead to mass hysteria, but with the student protests
currently engulfing campuses across the country, it’s hard to deny the current
generation is infected with host of troubling ideas about who they are and
their place in society.
Against this backdrop, the prospect of reading a book
entitled How to Raise an Adult and
written by a college administrator seems risible. But as a professor with years
of experience as a college administrator myself, it’s only fair to point out
the politically charged atmosphere at colleges is only part of the problem. A
great many kids are dysfunctional before they even set foot on campus. Stanford
Dean Julie Lythcott-Haims has ample reason to suggest that parents are part of
the problem—in fact, the full title of her book is How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare
Your Kid for Success.
So then, this is book for successful middle-class parents
who use their children to bolster their own self-esteem. Sound too harsh? Yeah,
the author would likely not want that as a blurb on the dust jacket. Okay, how
about this: This book reveals that many of today’s wealthier parents have a
difficult time separating their lives from their children’s lives, so much so
that by trying to help their kids succeed in life they actually stunt their
emotional and intellectual growth with grave consequences for the kids, the
country, and even the parents. Sound better? Well, both versions are true, and
however the thesis is worded, I hope a lot of the target audience will read
this book.
Lythcott-Haims is well suited to comment and advise,
having been dean of freshman at Stanford University and a parent of this generation
herself. She is also a Harvard-trained lawyer, but I don’t hold that against
her as I might normally be inclined to, because she knows well the world of
high-stakes college admissions to the elite universities. That admissions
process is a focal point of the book because it is “success” in that effort
that drives so much of the bad parenting and ensuing harm for children trying
to become adults.
Lythcott-Haims does a good job of reviewing the problems
of millennials at the university and beyond. We all know how so many kids come
to college and into the workplace needing their hands held, being sensitive to
criticism, and being unable to simply function as mature and independent adults.
But she does more than offer a litany of problems. She examines the roots of
the problem—namely, pressure from parents and brand-plumping elite
universities—and tells parents forthrightly they are hurting their own kids.
Finally, she offers suggestions for how everyone can fix themselves.
Though the bulk of her advice is directed at parents, it
also deserves to be read by university administrators and faculty. It’s not a
perfect book. The author does fail to note a couple of major causes of the
problems she’s identified and has missed some problems with the educational
system altogether. And, like most in academia, her critique of our moral
culture is tepid—but more on that later.
Overparenting
Preempts Adulthood
The book rightly notes that overparenting is a newer
phenomenon, ties it to the creation of millennials, and demonstrates its
considerable harm to kids. Parents are making success at getting their kids
into elite universities the entire focus of the family’s efforts. Think “tiger
moms” like Amy Chua, or at least the caricature of her parenting style that has
been much talked about.
We all want to assume that parents do this believing it
will ensure the kids’ lifelong success, but Lythcott-Haims reveals something
more. That is, some parents are sacrificing their children’s emotional and
mental health as well as their happiness in order to make sure they grow up to
demonstrate the parent’s success at raising them. What else can we conclude
when parents are so ignorant of their children’s mental and emotional
well-being? Parents are even doing a disservice to their kids’ physical health,
given the astonishing number of children on anxiety medications. Who else but a
narcissist is so unaware of the toll his or her actions are taking on others?
The book is replete with often heart-rending examples of
unhappy, depressed, unnecessarily medicated kids and young adults whose entire
lives have been micromanaged and dominated by parents oblivious to what their
kids want or need.
High-school guidance counselors, college admissions
counselors, mental health therapists, and the author herself report these
stories. Andover’s college counselor captures well what is going on in this
drive for parent-defined success:
When we first
meet our eleventh-grade students we ask them several things: ‘Write down on an
index card the first word that comes to mind when you think about college.’ The
most common responses were ‘SAT, stress, freedom, independence, applications.’
Then we ask, ‘If you could say one thing to your parents, what would it be?’
The kids scrawl messages on index cards, things like, ‘I know you love me and
you’re trying to do the best, but can you just back off?’ Next Anne meets with
the parents of these eleventh graders and has them take an index card and write
a note to their child. If she hasn’t shared the student cards with the parents
first, the parents write things like, ‘Strive for the best,’ ‘I know you think
you can’t get into Harvard but try.’ However, if she has shared the student cards,
the parents write things like, ‘You are completely in charge.’ ‘I’ll be totally
supportive of you.’
When Anne shares the students’ messages with parents,
they squirm. They then write their more encouraging message to their kid, and
‘it gets very warm and fuzzy and parents say ‘that’s not what we’re doing,’ and
everyone commits to doing the right thing.’ But when the application process
starts to heat up, ‘the magic of that parent session wears off. A lot of
parents go back to being their neurotic selves.’
Other stories reveal depressed, angry, and sometimes
suicidal kids who, if they actually make it into the school of their parents’
choice, are either studying in majors that don’t interest them or are failing
out. Many professors and college counselors can tell stories of having to be
there for these kids and how the anger these kids feel at their parents is most
to blame for creating this problem.
I found myself being thankful all over again for my
parents (I’m a late Boomer). They didn’t try to chart my path; they left that
to me while requiring me to be self-sufficient, to work hard, and to be a good
person as I fulfilled my calling in life. In my family’s case—Southern,
middle-class, evangelical Protestant—that meant loving God, family, and country
and using my gifts and talents to be self-sufficient. In short, be a good man.
No one had to give me any particular lesson on what that meant: I’d been
learning that my whole life in church, at school, and at home. When I’ve
failed, it has been wholly my fault. But knowing whom to blame is, of course,
another lesson I learned from how my parents and grandparents raised me and my
brother.
Parents who read this book should take the time to ask
themselves the serious questions the author has for them, and they should
consider taking the remedial and proactive steps she offers. She draws on many
good resources: things to read, groups to join, ways to think differently about
college admissions, and what might be better for a given child than to strive
for Harvard or that medical degree.
Above all—and these are my thoughts, and not necessarily
Lythcott-Haims’, but I think her work bears them out—parents should stop
seeking to affirm and augment their own status and self-esteem by forcing their
children into lifelong roles they are not meant to fill or simply do not want.
Your kid is yours to raise, but not to program. Just doing this will go a long
way to salvaging a generation of kids trying to become adults.
The Traditionalist
Critique
The title of the book is a tip-off to what’s ultimately
problematic about the book. Perhaps the publisher and not the author chose the
subtitle, but when I read “prepare your kid for success” my reaction is to say,
“wait a minute, success is not the most important goal.” Everyone wants kids to
be successful, especially one’s own, but what does “success” mean? And is it
the best goal?
Success has not always been the goal of good parenting,
nor did success used to be understood as simply achieving happiness.
Lythcott-Haims seems to emphasize happiness for kids and for adults. She
doesn’t cheerlead about that, but given the state of our “me” culture, a reader
can be forgiven for thinking that “success as contentment” or “success as
happiness” is the thrust of the book. But what I have in mind as a subtitle and
goal of the book would probably keep it from jumping off the shelves, or at
least relegate it to the “religious” area of the bookstore. What I have in mind
is “prepare your kid to be a good person.”
This brings up my other criticism of the book: the lack
of emphasis on the need for parents and our schools to raise good human beings.
The author certainly refers to it when she encourages character education, but
this is a minor part of her work.
Naturally, the book fails to point out that the state of
education at the elementary and secondary levels and the lack of moral training
in our culture is one of the greatest culprits in bringing about the millennial
generation that we all complain about. Encouraging parents to work at raising
independent and self-actualizing adults without emphasizing that the only way
to do that is to try to raise them to be good people is putting the cart before
the horse.
Yes, it’s true that today we tend to regard people as
successful when they appear to be happy by virtue of excelling professionally
and by making a comfortable living. But with record rates of divorce,
depression, suicide, and addiction, it seems obvious we have been defining
success incorrectly. We certainly haven’t been defining it humanely, in the
larger sense of that word.
When Kids Were
Taught To Be Moral
So let’s all get in the time machine and go back to
yesteryear when kids learned at home, in school, and at church or synagogue
that the highest aim was a life well-lived. Everywhere children turned they
were encouraged to be upright, kind, self-reliant, giving, and hardworking.
They were taught to abjure evil, sloth, immorality, selfishness, and idleness.
They got these lessons from their parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles.
They heard sermons and homilies and got life instructions from whatever their
religious institution taught as the moral law.
When they went to school, these lessons were reinforced
through the curriculum and the standard of behavior required of them. Kids,
understood implicitly as moral beings, had adults to rely upon to help them
navigate life’s ups and downs as they matured. For those rare kids who were
spared much adversity in their young lives, there were lessons and examples
aplenty in the things they read as a matter of course at school. No parents are
perfect, but social pressure and the way things were constantly taught and
reinforced living well.
Take one example: If one wants to know how human beings
are supposed to face trials and overcome, how to be generous and giving toward
others in need, great literature like the Bible, Dickens, Shakespeare, and
Aesop’s fables offer excellent instruction with timeless examples for all ages
and stations. For some kids in the past, that included Cicero and Aurelias, and
Augustine and Aquinas.
Morals and ethics, taught by literature and the great
philosophers; useful examples from history of famous and infamous people; the
American Founders and other great souls in Western Civilization; all of these
have been and still are instructive. Directly and indirectly, they taught
children that happiness, success—whatever you want to call it—was a product of
living a good, honorable, and productive life. Being a doctor or a lawyer has
always been a fine goal, but you should have that goal because it makes you a
benefit to society, not simply because it makes your family look good, your mom
proud, and your car a Lexus. It is a matter of emphasis and of having a goal
bigger than yourself and your own contentment.
Again, Lythcott-Haims does not ignore the need for kids
to learn to be good people and develop admirable character. It is just that she
doesn’t emphasize this as the main goal that helps to produce whatever else we
look for in life. It is an indictment that anyone even needs to point this out.
If it were not for the failure of our culture to emphasize morals and the
failure of our education system to reinforce morality, I seriously doubt that
we’d have the problems associated with the millennial generation.
I know that our parents and grandparents didn’t have
nearly the number and variety of problems we complain about today. The problem
isn’t so much that kids today are facing insurmountable or unique problems.
Like all emerging generations, they’re trying to cope with the realities of the
world, and we have simply not prepared them for the responsibilities that
entails.
Pointing out that times have changed and that we can’t go
back to yesteryear doesn’t impress me. Right reason and experience tell us the
truth about how to raise children into adults. No amount of postmodern sophistry
and relativism can overcome reality. Our efforts should be put into fixing the
problem the right way—one kid, one family, and one school at a time.
The homeschoolers, the classical schools, the charter
schools, and good college preparatory schools have great answers.
Unfortunately, few parents either grasp or are amenable to these solutions. The
only good news is that our educational system, from college on down, is
crumbling so fast that parents may soon be left with no other options but to
demand public policy changes that push education in a more moral direction.
Ultimately, I am afraid that many parents are so bound up
in their own self-esteem issues that counseling is in order for some to break
free of their desire to see their children as extensions of themselves instead
of the independent creatures they were meant to be. Still, the first step in
fixing these parents’ problem is getting them to admit they have one. How to Raise an Adult can help a lot of
parents do some self-examination, and I hope many will read it.
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