My granddaughter, Lyra, had her 4th birthday party on the 17th. It’s always a delight to watch the little ones engage with each. Predictably, there was the presentation of the cake, along with 4 candles, which necessarily included the birthday song. Once the candles were successfully blown out, a 4 year old girlfriend came outside and was crying hysterically. When I inquired to her mom what seemed to be wrong, she explained that she and her daughter had gone to the bathroom and as they left the bathroom, they heard the last few words of the song. Apparently her daughter “loves singing the birthday song” and had missed this happy celebratory event. The level of upset was a bit surprising, as her crying continued loudly for quite some time. Feeling concern for her, I approached Lyra’s mom and explained the problem, suggesting that perhaps Lyra could get a candle in her slice of cake and we could repeat the singing so that her friend could participate. Fortunately that’s exactly what we did, which of course allowed the crying to end.
Lyra is our adopted granddaughter, as my adult, only child, never wanted to have children. So much for putting all my grandmother eggs in her basket. Our young friends don’t have their families nearby so it works out well for all of us. One set of biological grandparents live in New Jersey while the other set hails from Canada. As our friends were contemplating the decision whether to have a child or not, and noting concerns about not having family nearby to provide much needed support, my husband and I were delighted to step in and assume the role of Abu and Popi, as her Oregon grandparents.
It has been nothing short of a joy spending our Saturdays with Lyra. It’s been interesting to witness this new crop of young parents and how they behave with their children. I was, however, surprised to see that parenting hasn’t evolved as much as I had hoped, perhaps providing some explanation as to why the Millennials seem to be excessively sensitive souls.
I suspect most of you have witnessed the recent warnings on many films, T.V. shows and public events. Words of caution appear in many places, alerting the viewer or listeners to a potentially upsetting topic. Anything that can cause one to be upset or emotional in any way is now prefaced with a warning. I feel quite disturbed by that reality. Life is a messy and challenging experience. Kids can be very cruel, friendships and rejections, which we’ve all lived through, can cause considerable emotional pain and suffering. Jobs can be emotionally challenging for sure. There are so many emotional events that we have to learn to navigate as we approach adulthood. Why is an entire generation, the Millennials, having such a hard time adjusting to unpleasant yet typical and anticipated emotional challenges in their lives? I believe we have to look to the parents.
Every healthy parent that I’ve ever known wants to protect their child from harm. I remember when my daughter was little and we’d bring her to the jungle gym in our neighborhood. Every time she went on a high bar, curling her little legs around the bar and hanging down while swinging her arms, I envisioned her losing her grip, falling on her head/neck and becoming paralyzed. I was in graduate school at the time, completing my Ph.D. and realized that it was literally impossible to protect our daughter every minute of the day and that most likely, she would be fine on the jungle gym. Despite this intellectual awareness, my mother instincts would always kick in, making me frightened and anxious when ever she approached the jungle gym. I knew in my heart that I didn’t want to frighten her or discourage her physical development so the only reasonable solution was to have her dad take her to the jungle gym, as he had no discomfort at all watching her doing things that I felt put her at risk. I believe we made a reasonable compromised. Our daughter learned to challenge herself physically without my fears getting in the way of crippling her adventurous nature and self confidence.
Over the years, I tried very hard to put this lesson into action. My job as a parent was to encourage our daughter to spread her wings, often necessitating her to take some reasonable chances. It certainly wasn’t easy but I understood that these were critical lessons my daughter needed to learn. Had I not been well on my way to becoming a psychologist, I likely would have reacted more emotionally and prevented her from enjoying many childhood activities.
My growing up years had been heavily influenced by my mother’s fears. My parents started our family soon after my dad’s tour during World War II ended. He had joined the Air Force soon after war was declared. This had significant effects on my mom, whose fear was heightened each and every day given the real uncertainties of war. I believe those years of fear contributed to her excessive fears as a parent. Let me paint a picture of the restrictions that my mom placed on me. I was not allowed to walk in the rain…..because I might get sick. I wasn’t allowed to participate in the local neighborhood 4th of July relay races because my mom believed it wasn’t good to stress out your body through exertion. I remember one year we joined a swim club to deal with the unpleasant heat and humidity of New Jersey summers. My mom had rules there as well. Immediately after getting out of the pool, I was required to change into a dry bathing suit. Keep in mind the sun was shining and it was 90+ degrees out. It likely would have taken minutes for my swim suit to dry but no, I had to be the only girl who had to put on a dry swimsuit. It was embarrassing to say the least. Another event was during my 6th grade year in elementary school. The students with the best academic performance were offered the chance to join the Safety Patrol. This allowed those on the patrol to leave class 15 minutes early in order to prepare for and arrive at their location for their safety patrol responsibilities. The icing on the cake was that those on the Safety Patrol were treated to a Yankees game in New York City at the end of the year. I was beyond excited when I was asked to join but my mom prohibited it. The reason was because I would have had to perform my duties in inclement weather. You can’t not show up because of rain or snow. Perhaps the final example of my childhood restrictions was when I was a Twirler during my high school years. Imagine this. It was the final Thanksgiving football game, a home game, of my senior year, and my mom wouldn’t allow me to twirl because….. it was raining. My coach said not to worry, that she would call my mom to get her to change her mind, explaining how important this final game was to me and my team. She had no more luck than I had. I do understand that my mom’s motivation was only to protect me from any potential harm, but in the long run it wasn’t in my best interest.
My mom was a victim of her time, when the roles for males and females were very different and clearly defined. Two of the most popular television shows at the time were Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best. I remember my mom encouraging me to “let the boys win” when you’re playing ping pong, tetherball or competing academically. The message was that boys don’t like girls who beat them in sports or academics. My mom was the furthest thing from a feminist that you could imagine yet she managed to somehow raise one. The idea of Women’s Liberation wasn’t even a twinkle in her eye. Perhaps it’s the pendulum swinging from one extreme to the next. My mom had been physically neglected when she was growing up. Her older brother and sister were 13 and 15 years older than she. She related a story to me about what she was told about her conception. Her mother told her that she suffered from a “female” medical issue which would either require surgery or another pregnancy. I’ve never been able to imagine what condition she might have suffered from but the message was clear. She was conceived to avoid surgery and her mother’s neglect was the consequence that she had to endure. When she became a parent, the pendulum had swung to the other extreme, of overprotection.
We take our granddaughter to the park most Saturdays where I’ve witnessed countless kids falling while trying to master a new skill. The little boys seem to pick themselves up and shrug it off, running to the next fun activity. The little girls, on the other hand, often end up crying and needing support from their parent. Although my first instinct when I see Lyra hurt and crying is to scoop her up in my arms and comfort her, but I don’t stop there. Once the tears abate, I talk to her about the reality that sometimes, when we try something new or even when we do something we’ve mastered before, we end up hurting ourselves. I try to instill the concept that discomfort is a normal and inevitable part of life. I also explain that we get to choose how we want to react when we get hurt. Yes, we can cry and focus in on the pain or we can pick ourselves up and move on, even when it still hurts a little bit. I’ll reinforce this when she’s sitting on my lap and we both witness a child who has fallen down and simply rubbed their “Owwee” and then moves on. She’s finally starting to get it. It’s been gratifying to witness her learning these important lessons.
We often talk about sharing and how that’s sometimes hard when we really would prefer not to share. We talk about friendship and what it really means to consider the needs of our friends, even when we have to choose to put our needs and feelings aside sometimes. So many life lessons to be learned but Lyra is an eager student. What concerns me is this difference that I’ve been observing in how little boys experience the world vs little girls. I had expected that post Women’s Liberation, we would have successfully raised children with an optimal blend of the best of masculine and feminine gender characteristics. Imagine little girls who were also encouraged to be tenacious, assertive, comfortable taking risks, tough minded and confident while little boys were encouraged to also be sensitive, emotionally available, nurturing and caretaking.
Getting back to the Millenials, I have grown increasingly concerned about their excessive sensitivities and our culture which appears to be rewriting the rules and expectations for this peer group and, subsequently for the population at large. In trying to understand the dynamics of how this has occurred, I’m reminded of the stories of “Helicopter parents” who felt compelled to monitor every aspect of their kids lives. Children were no longer allowed to walk to school, because it was perceived to be too dangerous for them to be unsupervised for any length of time. I’m not talking about inner city parents feeling the need to protect their children from potential dangers in their communities, which were very real. I’m talking about suburban parents preventing their children, in safe communities, from walking to school.
I’ve recently come across a new term that describes an even greater level of parental interference toward their children’s development:
A new term has recently appeared which is called lawnmower parenting. Named after the machine used for cutting grass, a lawnmower parent will “mow down” any obstacle their child might experience. According to a professor who coined the term in a blog post, lawnmower parents “rush ahead to intervene, saving the child from any potential inconvenience, problem, or discomfort"
It would appear that excessive parental concern has only escalated. This is clearly moving in the wrong direction if we’re to encourage the development of healthy, independent, high self-esteem young adults.
I remember having a conversation with my niece who wouldn’t allow her children to play outdoors in front of her house, or in the backyard, without her being outside. Needless to say, walking to school, a few blocks away, was out of the question. I shared my concern with her, of not allowing her boys to develop some modicum of independence, which I believed would strengthen their self esteem. I asked if any child in her neighborhood had ever been abducted. She replied “No”, but of course one can never guarantee that something like could never happen. Instead I recommended that perhaps she could suggest to a few of the neighborhood parents to have the kids walk as a group to school. Initially one parent could stay well behind the group of kids, to insure that all was well, with the hope that over time, parents would learn to be comfortable with the group walking without any supervision until they reached the school, where an adult crossing guard would assist with crossing the one busy road in front of the school. I reminded my niece that this was the very same elementary school that she attended and was allowed to ride her bike to school every day. Her answer was that the world isn’t the same as it was 30 years ago. What was the same, however, was that no child had ever been abducted in their community while outside alone. Needless to say, she wouldn’t really consider my advice. The end result was that when my great nephew was eligible to get his driver’s license, which finally would have allowed him some independence and space from his mom, he chose not to get his license. He was too afraid to have to learn to drive on the highway, which is a necessary part of the drivers test.
Is the answer to this conundrum that the “Helicopter” parents of the millenials have interfered with necessary lessons which their children failed to have the opportunity to master? How else can we explain the heightened and unreasonable sensitivity of this entire cohort of young adults? There is considerable evidence that all of this has led college administrators to make adjustments to learning in their institutions, clearly reinforcing in their students the message that getting emotionally upset is something they need to be warned about in order to help them avoid discomfort, rather than educating their students to the reality that life can be emotionally challenging and sometimes painful. Perhaps providing some tools to help them learn to cope with their heightened feelings and thoughts would be a helpful option.
Since I’ve moved onto the college years, I’ve grown increasingly concerned about the incidence of rape on college campuses. Brown University, a prestigious academic institution, ranks 2nd in the number of cases of rape each year. The cost of a year’s tuition is $62,680.00, which does not include student fees, housing and food. Other than those students who are on an academic scholarship, we’re talking about wealthy families who have the funds to invest in their child’s private school education. Help me understand why some of these boys feel a sense of entitlement to violate a female student. They have been given so many advantages growing up and yet once they leave home and begin their college years, they act out in violent ways against women. Help me to understand why the administration at Brown hasn’t aggressively worked to solve this unacceptable incidence of rape. They’ve decided to modify their messaging when it comes to the emotional sensitivity of their students, but the violent act of rape appears to go unpunished for the most part.
I can only conclude that the incidence of rape on college campuses is not being dealt with appropriately. College administrators have failed miserably in protecting the young women on their campuses from the harm of rape. A number of studies have identified multiple reasons why this may be happening.
From the perspective of campus administrators, some policies may discourage victims from reporting, such as campus policies on drug and alcohol use (victims who had been drinking may be concerned about reprisal for violating such policies) and policies requiring victims to participate in adjudication (Karjane, Fisher, & Cullen, 2005). Factors that encourage reporting (according to administrators) include victim services, written law enforcement response protocols, coordination between campus and community, new student orientations, campus-wide publicity about past crimes, having sexual assault peer educators, and policies allowing confidential and anonymous reporting (Karjane, Fisher, & Cullen, 2005). Although 84% of the institutions studied offered confidential reporting, less than half (46%) offered anonymous reporting (Karjane, Fisher, & Cullen, 2005).
The administration resorts to silencing these women, and their unwillingness to prosecute the offenders has caused women to remain silent when this occurs, providing false statistics about the incident of rape on college campuses. It has been reported that “Among undergraduate students, 26.4% of females… experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation”. I believe that rate is grossly inaccurate as Brown University reports that 95% of rapes are not even reported. It’s curious to me that colleges go overboard in protecting the fragile, emotional lives of their students, preventing them from actually growing up and learning to deal effectively with their emotional upset, but when it comes to protecting their students from real dangers, such as rape, they seemingly prefer to protect the perpetrator and the subsequent reflection on their esteemed university.
Brown University reportedly is one of the top two colleges with the highest rate of rape, however they fail to provide critical data regarding frequency and subsequent prosecution. They do however, provide some information on-line about rape on campus. Here’s what they have to say about rape:
Widely held, inaccurate beliefs about the prevalence of false reporting are present in all groups, from college students to police officers. Survivors know this, and 95% of college students choose not to report their assaults so as not to face the vitriol that many survivors experience.
Something is very wrong here. Brown University calls attention to the problem but doesn’t appear to offer any solutions! I suspect this is a reflection of how the needs of women have been ignored and usurped within our culture. The recent Supreme Court ruling eliminating the protection of women’s right to body autonomy through abortion, which had been established law for 50 years, has sent a very loud message to American women and women around the world. Here in the U.S., woman are second class citizens, who now lack the fundamental right/ability to control their own bodies. It appears women must be protected from self determination. I can’t help but wonder how men would react if their desire for reproductive autonomy were to be taken away from them as well.
I am reluctant to highlight this new Supreme Court dynamic but I think it leaves us with many questions that need to be answered. Should any branch of government be able to overrule the fundamental beliefs of the majority of Americans? We see this happening in abortion rights, climate change and with gun rights. In all categories, our government has operated against the values of their citizens. The vast majority of Americans favor the rights of woman to have body autonomy regarding first trimester abortions. The vast majority of Americans favor common sense gun control measures. The vast majority of Americans believe that climate change is an existential threat that must be dealt with urgently. Unfortunately, our government has not been responsive to those needs, instead we are forced to live by the interests of the minority.
What can we do as parents to have an impact on all of this? My question to you is, how do we encourage and support the development of our children whom we want to grow up to become healthy, independent, self-sufficient and loving adults without over-protecting them from the reality of emotional discomforts, which are part of being a human being? How do we reimagine a government that is responsive to the needs of the majority of its citizens rather than the interests of corporations or those who have funded political campaigns? Until we can figure that out, I don’t believe we have a chance to change the trajectory of where we’re heading. We can no longer afford to remain silent. If we want to live in a better America, we must take action. If we want to create a better world, we must take action. If we want to have healthier children who will mature into honorable, self confident, curious, and loving adults, we must take action.
Clearly, our society has become much too sensitive. Cancel culture has taken on proportions grossly exaggerated from what we would traditionally expect from normal humans. This leaves little room for discussion or debate. We have lost sight of even the ability to forgive each other's human foibles. Somebody does something or says something decades previously and, when discovered, they become pariahs, despite having changed over the years and having become much better human beings. We are all humans. We make mistakes. We say and do stupid things. Sometimes impulsively, sometimes out of ignorance. Either way, many of us, if patiently informed of the hurt it may have caused someone, or of our ignorance about the person or their culture, will often apologize if given the chance, rather than immediately being vilified and excommunicated from society.
As you so cogently discussed Michelle, we have become a society who avoids discomfort at all costs, and when it does show up, it's easier for us to cancel out the source of that discomfort, rather than learn how to deal more effectively with it. Learning to accept discomfort and ways to address it in our own lives makes us more adaptable as human beings. It also helps us be more compassionate by trying to understand other people's behavior, rather than being immediately dismissive of them.
Interesting post! But I have to ask-- do you really think we are "post" Women's Liberation? Because men are still telling us whether or not we can have bodily autonomy, men are still running the world (and right now, literally running it to death), men are still making most of the political decisions, and taking us into war after war after war... Well, you know what I'm saying, I think.
I was also raised by a mom with some pretty sexist ideas, also a product of her time, and probably around the same time as your mom's. I remember her telling me, round about fifth grade or so, "Don't be too smart in school, or the boys won't like you." I don't know exactly what I thought at that time, but it was something very close to "Eff the boys." ;)
I think there are a lot of women who prefer the company of men, and so favor, subconsciously, their male children, and view their daughters, often enough, as a kind of competition. I find this to be the case even today, and I'm in my sixth decade. I don't doubt my mother loves me, dearly, but... I was a very "liberated" girl-child, and still am! My mother's main advice to me regarding what to be when I grew up, was educated, and to "marry a rich man." I remember thinking, "Vomit!" lol
And fyi, I say this to all the writers, not just you: I'm a very good proofreader, and if you'd ever like to try me out, the first one is free. Because I am a Substack presence, I need to work from home, because of the TERROR of hiring someone who is un-jabbed. So, think of me, should you like a Serious Grammar Dog to sniff your posts before publishing. ^_^