One afternoon last year, a woman and her 10-year-old son sat down next to me while I was writing in a quiet Upper West Side coffee shop in New York City. She anxiously quizzed him on math and language questions, noticed me looking at them, apologized for being loud, and explained they were hours away from an admissions interview for an elite junior high school.
I decided to give her some unsolicited parenting advice, “You know, he’ll be OK no matter what. Studies show being an engaged parent is the most you can do, and you clearly are.” She looked at me like I was nuts and told her son to ignore me.
The stakes of child-rearing in the US seem higher than ever in the winner-take-all economy. Why would anyone risk not giving their child every advantage?
That often means parents spend hours volunteering at their child’s school, doing their homework with them, providing constant supervision, and driving them to enrichment and sports activities.
A new paper (pdf) estimates that having a baby puts time pressure and financial stress on new moms, which is not that shocking, but it continues until their children leave home. (The study did not measure if the stress lessens when the children start school.) It’s no wonder parents are feeling so worn thin. Despite the fact that more moms in the US today work, they somehow manage to also spend more time with their children than previous generations.
by MindMake via MindMake Blog
No comments:
Post a Comment