Interesting points here:
Are Working Parents Wusses?
Now I'm not a parent. I grew up in a house where after school care was normal (my Mom was a teacher but we went to daycare while were kids. And preschool). When we were older we would entertain ourselves after school (by watching 'Duck Tales' and 'Adams Family' repeats or we would play outside until dinner).
Recently at work we were pondering how we survived cribs that are now considered 'unsafe'. And not wearing helmets while riding our bikes around the neighborhood. Not all of us wore seat belts. Many of us got lung-fulls of second hand smoke (not me, but I'm thinking about other kids I grew up with). We played lots of video games and did not get morbidly obese doing so.
Did our parents really have it easier? There were no cell phones or e-mail. No one used Nanny cams or webcams to watch their kids. No one used apps to 'track' where there kids were after school (I know some parents that do this...they lowjack their children). Maybe in the 1980s we had all of the technology we needed. Certainly parents in the 1980s were less neurotic. In the 1980s no one I knew brought their work on vacation.
Although I don't think working parents are wusses I think a lot of the stress is self-created. It's easy to work yourself into a tizzy with all of the negative media out there about everything from kid's toys to childhood obesity.
I'm not really seeing how any of this is specific to 'working' parents. But parents in general are in fact a bunch of whiners. Seriously. They get worked up over the slightest little thing. What hurts about it is that I'm going to be forced to succumb to some of it. When I was a youngin I got on my bike and rode and rode (helmetless) and would be gone for most of the day with my parents knowing little to nothing about where I was.. Give my little man another 10 years even and if I let him do that I'd have other parents (and possibly the cops) on me for neglect.
ReplyDeleteVery well put. Is it a cultural or location thing as well? I'm wondering if parents in more rural areas can let their helmetless child have the 'as long as you're home for dinner' rule. I guess my point about my own working parents was that I was unsupervised a lot (and that I also had structured after school care). My parents did not have to lowjack us. They just trusted we'd be home for dinner.
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