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| It's never going to get better. |
By SHIRLEY S. WANG
from the Wall Street Journal
Anthropologist Elinor Ochs and her colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles have studied family life as far away as Samoa and the Peruvian Amazon region, but for the last decade they have focused on a society closer to home: the American middle class.
Why do American children depend on their parents to do things for them that they are capable of doing for themselves? How do U.S. working parents' views of "family time" affect their stress levels? These are just two of the questions that researchers at UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families, or CELF, are trying to answer in their work.
Among the findings: The families had very a child-centered focus, which may help explain the "dependency dilemma" seen among American middle-class families, says Dr. Ochs. Parents intend to develop their children's independence, yet raise them to be relatively dependent, even when the kids have the skills to act on their own, she says.
How kids develop moral responsibility is an area of focus for the researchers. Dr. Ochs, who began her career in far-off regions of the world studying the concept of "baby talk," noticed that American children seemed relatively helpless compared with those in other cultures she and colleagues had observed.
In those cultures, young children were expected to contribute substantially to the community, says Dr. Ochs. Children in Samoa serve food to their elders, waiting patiently in front of them before they eat, as shown in one video snippet. Another video clip shows a girl around 5 years of age in Peru's Amazon region climbing a tall tree to harvest papaya, and helping haul logs thicker than her leg to stoke a fire.
By contrast, the U.S. videos showed Los Angeles parents focusing more on the children, using simplified talk with them, doing most of the housework and intervening quickly when the kids had trouble completing a task.
FULL ARTICLE
An entire culture fine-tuned to create the Arrogant American. Truly, a wonder of the modern world.
ReplyDeleteWell, we do have these little things called child labor laws, and in Western culture children are not supposed to be personal servants to their parents. Seems to me that there is a happy medium between kids expecting kids to be direct contributors to a family economy (which we no longer have in any but farming families), and treating your children like the Baby Jesus.
ReplyDeleteI thought the same thing. I don't do a hell of a lot of physical labor either so I don't expect that from my kid.
DeleteThe Baby Jesus was expected to pull His weight around the house; at least all the artwork depicting His childhood says so. On the other hand, He had a rather snowflakey streak as well.
Deletebut He had some rather unfair advantages when it came to chores...
DeleteAnd ultimately, asking WWJD probably put a lot of pressure on him.
DeleteI love that the ad next to this post is for something called "Baby U" sponsored by Bellin Health. Jeebus.
ReplyDeleteReading this article made me realize that though I am hanging on to the bottom rung of the middle class by main force of will, my children may have a chance to become Overlord (and -lady) of their generation of pampered, spoiled, incompetent child-people because I expect them to actually do stuff around the house without constant expectation of reward.
And does anyone else see the connection between "child-centered" and "student-centered"? *Shudders*
I don't see why children doing any sort of work at all is considered oppressive. I started working when I was 11 and my brother was about the same age, too. We wanted to work; it was just a bonus that working also gave us more money to spend than our scant allowance. We also had to do chores around the house, of course - clearing the table and washing the dishes after dinner every night. I don't know how kids who never held a job manage to get by when they graduate from college and start working. It must be hard for them to adjust.
ReplyDeleteOne of my friends from an Eastern European country commented that here in this large metro area, we give up our seats on crowded trains for children and in his home country, children are expected to give up their seats for adults.
Why can't there be a balance??? I don't get why one has to think in extremes: either children work to death or are served their food on silver platters. Is there no balance anymore?
DeleteI remember being in charge of certain family meals when I was 10 years old. I had chores that included cooking dinner for our family on odd days (my sister had even days). It wasn't considered a big deal, either. It was just expected. I did not grow up emotionally traumatized for having such independence and responsibility. I had plenty of time to play and do extracurricular activities, and I felt like I contributed to the family in a valuable way by taking care of things at home.
Agreed - it's actually the law. Children are permitted to work in the US (I can't recall the exact age they are allowed to start but I have been paying taxes since before I could vote). But there is a cap to how many hours they can work in a week and in a day. The law is intended to ensure that working does not interfere with school.
DeleteI think learning to work is better preparation for life than sitting around surfing the Web for porn or downloading videos or Facebooking or whatever kids do after school nowadays. But I don't believe kids should be forced to work, of course. If they want to babysit or petsit or have a paper route or some other kid-appropriate job, I don't see how that could possibly be bad for their development. I would like to see more work-ready young people entering the work force. I haven't noticed that too many twenty-somethings understand the basic concepts of working for an organization very well but if they get their first job in the 20s, then how can they be expected to have any experience? I don't think an internship is quite the same as there is typically no compenstation but college credit.
As I mention below, my experience was similar to Cynic's (but not quite so demanding, except for the times when we were in between housekeepers, which is what we called what would probably today be called part-time nannies -- an interesting difference in itself).
DeleteI actually think there's a value to expecting a child to do housework (which isn't covered by child labor laws, I'm pretty sure, though there are some restrictions on who can operate machinery such as power lawn mowers), regardless of whether (s)he also works for pay. Both male and female children (but perhaps especially, still, male ones) need to learn that there are some kinds of household work that need to be done, for the good of the family, tend to be repetitive and frustrating (because they're constantly being undone/repeated), and do not result in being paid (unless you do them in someone else's household, in which case they're badly paid).
"Children in Samoa serve food to their elders, waiting patiently in front of them before they eat"
ReplyDeleteLet me think...when's the last time I've heard of Samoa accomplishing anything of significance?
...
Never. So let's stick to doing what we're doing because if end results is any indication then it's working well.
And what do you anticipate these children contributing to the world?
DeleteWell, they also haven't started a war lately, which has got to count for something (it's been a while since I read "Coming of Age in Samoa," but I suspect that is a very Mead-ian response).
DeleteWell, I haven't heard of Samoa's tendency to develop internet trolls so I'd say that's a plus one for them.
DeleteWell I don't know if this counts but "Samoas" were the best damn girl scout cookies I ever had.. Miss 'em!
DeleteMaybe they're serving them to their elders.
Is nobody monitoring the comments today? This kid is a fucking nuisance and I've grown tired of his baiting.
ReplyDelete(S)he needs a chore or two, I think. Have we got anything around here that needs to be swept, scrubbed, or polished?
DeleteI'm a bit reluctant to comment, since I (1) don't have children myself, (2) realize I have an odd temperament, and (3) know I grew up in an unusual, and perhaps some ways dysfunctional, family. However, leaving aside the question of how well "child-centered" parenting prepares children for life, I also have to wonder whether it deprives them of the satisfaction that people of all ages derive from taking care of themselves and contributing to a community. I was raised from late-elementary-school age by a widowed father who was very much invested in his work, and I appreciated the chance to contribute to our family's welfare by taking on increasing responsibility as I got older. Knowing that I could take care of myself, and of others, gave me a sense of security that no amount of attention from or "fun activities" with an adult could have. I realize families today are very different from families a generation or two ago (and, of course, from those in Samoa, which seems to play an odd role as an idealized opposite to the US in anthropological studies dating back to Margaret Mead), but I still wonder whether children today wouldn't be better off if they spent considerably less time participating in sports and other extracurricular activities, and more time contributing to their family's welfare by performing (age-appropriate) cooking, cleaning, laundry, and yard chores. Of course there's nothing wrong with sports or other activities, but the bottom line is that parents today (especially mothers) are incredibly stressed, children have got to perceive that on some level, but they're essentially being told they can't do anything to help, because they're children, even though they're quite capable of doing many of the things their parents are desperately trying to squeeze into the breaks between kid-centered activities. Why not schedule things so that everybody beyond toddler age contributes, and everybody gets an age-appropriate amount of sleep, and *then* decide if there's any time for activities beyond work, school, and basic household maintenance?
ReplyDeleteIt will also be interesting to see how children raised in "child-centered" households approach childraising themselves. Many will, I'm sure, follow their parents model, but others will probably rebel, either to an extreme extent (wondering why their children don't take care of them as their parents did), or by finding some sort of middle ground. At least from my perspective, the middle ground would be an improvement for all concerned.
We know how children raised in "child-centered" households turn out. They've always existed. Until about a generation ago, they were called "spoiled brats." Franciso de Goya had an etching of one, here:
Deletehttp://www.franciscodegoya.net/Nanny%27s-Boy-large.html
They become bad citizens, bad employees, bad co-workers, bad bosses, and above all, bad parents. What's new is that while they used to be a small part of mainly the upper class, now they are absolutely everywhere. This started when that all-self-important generation, the Baby Boomers, became parents. God save and watch over the future, if any.
I read the linked article (twice now), and I think we're a little too focused in on family life in Samoa or Peru. That paragraph was the only one in the whole article that references other cultures. I don't think the examples were being held up as an ideal, but rather meant as a foil to the American kid who was just to lazy to put his own shoes on. So I think it's missing the point a little to invoke child labour laws or personal servitude.
ReplyDeleteSomeone asked why there couldn't be a balance - I think the researchers are pointing out that (whatever one's views on the secret life of the Samoan teenager) North American families are far from that balance.
But something strikes me as really interesting in these responses. Something in our culture responds viscerally to the idea that kids should shoulder greater responsibilities. The article suggests that we are out of balance but here we are discussing child labour. I've noticed it in curriculum discussions too. When I suggested to our faculty that hamster husbandry majors should receive a more rigorous critique of their efforts, they reacted as if I wanted to bring back corporal punishment for spelling errors.
Now corporal punishment for math errors..[grumble rumble] .. just what this country needs... [harumph mumble]
It's also interesting to think how people would react today to a parent who put his/her child in the kind of situation that parents of young people who participated in the Civil Rights movement in general and school integration in particular (including, in some cases, elementary-school students) willingly placed their children in, or at least allowed them to enter. You can argue that those young people had more to gain and less to lose (after all, they could also die at home or in church, the victims of bombings, fires, drive-by shootings, etc.), but still, it took tremendous courage, on both their own and their parents' part, to participate, and a very different sense of young people's responsibility to the community, and to their own and others' futures. And while there may be some severely traumatized veterans of that struggle hiding out in various places (and/or long dead), there are also a good many people who lived through it, won the opportunities they fought for, and went on to productive, apparently satisfying lives.
ReplyDelete