American Childhood

One the best long form articles of the year. Almost too much to excerpt. But some good bits:

Therapists who treat anxiety like to talk about how short-term pain leads to long-term gain—how enduring discomfort now can make you more resilient later. In recent decades, however, the opposite principle has guided many American parents, and not only when it comes to the parenting of anxious children: On everything from toilet training to eating and sleeping habits, many of our parenting strategies trade short-term gain (a few minutes saved here, a conflict averted there) for long-term pain.

Consider this:

The split screen between the two things—learning to read and write, still in diapers—foreshadows the situation later on, when high-school kids shoulder intense academic pressure even as many are behind in developing life skills.)

All this seems particularly present amongst what one might call the meritocracy. Much of it, I believe can be traced back to what the meritocrats over value and that is achievement. They seek the same for their children (this is unhealthy in and of itself), but even a more perverse outcome is that their children become tokens of their own achievement (someone else should write an essay on this).

Anyhow, perhaps the lesson is: do less?