The Power of Parenting Norms

We must fight unrealistic expectations together — not just as individuals.

As you know if you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, I often raise questions about the value of “intensive parenting.” Intensive parenting, or child-centered parenting, involves parents pouring as many resources into their childrearing as possible to ensure that their kids will do well in the world. Intensive parents spend lots of one-on-one time with their kids, sign them up for enriching extracurricular activities, and focus on developing their talents and intelligence (including by putting lots of pressure on them). It’s long been popular among middle- and upper-class families, but it’s becoming more and more popular among lower class parents, too.

Among other things, I have written here about the downsides of putting kids in tons of extracurriculars, the risks of putting unending pressure on kids to achieve, the fallacy that maternal self-sacrifice helps kids, and the benefits of giving kids more freedom and autonomy. My hope in writing these newsletters is to give parents (especially mothers) permission to ease up — to help them feel better and more secure in pushing against these unfair expectations. After all, the research suggests that intensive parenting isn’t always great for kids, and that it certainly isn’t good for parents.

So I have to say, I was crushed when, the other day, I stumbled across a study titled
”The Price Mothers Pay, Even When They Are Not Buying It: Mental Health Consequences of Idealized Motherhood,” which suggests that intensive parenting harms mothers even when they don’t believe in it. But on the bright side, it made me recognize the value of our community, because in banding together we not only change individual minds, but collective norms — and that is far more powerful.