The Failure of High-intensity Parenting with One Exception
Reflecting on a demographer's thoughts about the state of raising children today
One of the fascinating discoveries sociologist Lyman Stone brings up in this podcast interview is that when a coworker has a baby, there's a high chance someone else in the office will have a baby soon after. I've seen that in our small church with twelve babies born over 18 months. We think our desires function independently but getting a COVID puppy, running a marathon, purchasing Vuori apparel, and publishing on Substack are all decisions made in a social context. We naturally imitate one another.
Not surprisingly, social comparison is the engine of today's high-intensity parenting, a topic that Stone addresses in the bulk of his interview. This drive towards parenting investment is known by several terms: helicopter parenting and more recently, snowplow parenting. Helicopter parents hover over their children - conducting overt and covert surveillance. Drones, wifi-connected cameras, and smart devices enable parents to monitor children 24/7. Snowplow parents behave even more aggressively. They bulldoze anything that might pose an obstacle in their child's path - coaches, teachers, retail employees, waiters, and college admissions personnel. High-intensity parenting maximizes time, attention, and resources to raise the optimal child.
But is high-intensity parenting good for kids?
Stone vehemently says no and dispels a couple of parenting myths. He cites data that most of the value (in terms of positive outcomes) in raising children comes from moving from the bottom percentile of parenting to the middle as opposed to going from the 80th percentile to the 95th. He favors the middling parent. He permits an occasional McDonald's run and canned peaches versus demanding organic, locally sourced, DEI /ESG, fair wage, non-GMO, raw blueberries.
Stone goes further. He advocates stigmatizing certain parenting behaviors. He wants to shame the super high-intensity parent who spends 36 hours folding paper cranes and jumping frogs for their 2-year-old's birthday party. That seems harsh to me but I get it. Cultures express their values by celebrating good behavior and shaming the bad. Stone advocates for a more realistic and sober picture of parenting than what's curated for viewers on social media.
The kicker of the interview arrives in the last eight minutes when the show host asks Stone about the secularization of children. All the data point to much earlier secularization of youth than fifteen years ago. In years past, youth might lose their faith in twelfth grade but today secularization starts and is often finished by eighth grade. Once again, smartphones and social media are huge factors. In an increasingly secular world, it turns out that having instant access to gamified social media apps is not good for young people's religiosity.
And the part that rocked me is this: the backlash effect is a myth. The backlash effect is the belief that discussing and modeling faith too much can trigger a negative response that will cause a child to walk away from God.
This flies in the face of the stories I've heard. I have borne witness to pastors' kids who have experienced hurt from their Christian upbringing. I have talked with congregants who resent their parents' narrow faith. The result is I have spent a good amount of the past two-plus decades second-guessing whether I'm too aggressive in the way I talk about God with my kids. I'm afraid of the backlash effect.
But based on the evidence, Stone concludes the backlash effect is false. The data show it does not exist. Rather, the greater the investment you make in your children's faith, the more positive the effect on their spirituality.
After listening to the episode, I realized I had fallen prey to survivorship bias. I hear many stories of those hurt by their religious upbringing. But those are survival stories - stories told by those in the church who still have their faith intact. I don't get to hear as many stories of those whose faith didn't make it. If I did, it might lead me to a different conclusion.
At the end of the interview, Stone says the only high-intensity parenting one should practice is spiritual. Never let a day go by when you're not practicing, modeling, or discussing faith with your kids. I have two takeaways from the podcast: 1) Spend time with outlier parents 2) Practice high-intensity spiritual parenting
Spend time with outlier parents: You imitate who you spend time with. Stop spending on social media following either influencers or your peers. Your peers are likely influenced by the same sources as everyone else - the high-intensity parent. Instead, I encourage you to find a different kind of outlier and spend time with the person IN REAL LIFE. We need three-dimensional models that we can observe in the context of real life.
I know an older couple living almost off-the-grid on the outskirts of Silicon Valley. They have six children - all fully grown, three adopted, and three biological. They homeschooled their children and now raise chickens and ducks. Decades ago, the mom talked my wife into natural childbirth. This mom is, in the world of high-intensity parenting, an outlier. She has no social media following that I'm aware of. We have other models from our home-schooling community. You can stereotype them as outdated, fanatical, and at times, right-wing crazy, but make no mistake: These families love Jesus, are thoughtful about how to raise children, and by and large, limit their time on social media. This brings me to the last point.
Practice high-intensity spiritual parenting: Make a consistent spiritual investment in your children corresponding to your maturity in faith. Like the oxygen mask on the airplane, it starts with you. The first step is to go to church and bring your children with you. If you're not going to church, pick one near you or where your friend attends and make a commitment to become a regular. Nothing good happens without repetition. If you live in Silicon Valley, you will find outliers at church because anyone who attends church here is an outlier. Find models who are more spiritually mature than you and at a later stage of parenting. You may argue parenting has changed drastically in the past ten years. Sure, technology has accelerated aspects of development but focus on what has not changed.
My wife, Judy, began reading to our children at a young age. This is both an educational and spiritual habit that continues to this day. We just finished an Advent devotional a couple of days ago. We each took turns reading it aloud. I try to support this tradition as I was inspired years ago when I found out a peer read from the Lord of the Rings trilogy for an hour every evening to his three boys. Since our two oldest left for college, we haven't had as many family devotions but we still pray together as a family every night.
There are many great examples of faith out in the world - I hope this year you discover those models and write new stories of faith that endure to the next generation.
