Full text and summary of author Jennifer Senior’s talk titled “For Parents, Happiness Is A Very High Bar”. In this TED talk, Jennifer reflects on the anxiety and confusion associated with raising children in modern times. She discusses the multitude of parenting guides available today and question why parenting has become a crisis for many individuals.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
When I was born, there was really only one book about how to raise your children, and it was written by Dr. Spock. Thank you for indulging me. I’ve always wanted to do that. It was Benjamin Spock, and his book was called The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. It sold almost 50 million copies by the time he died.
Today, I, as the mother of a six-year-old, walk into Barnes & Noble and see this. And it is amazing, the variety that one finds on their shelves. There are guides to raising an eco-friendly kid, a gluten-free kid, a disease-proof kid, which, if you ask me, is a little bit creepy. There are guides to raising a bilingual kid, even if you only speak one language at home.
There are guides to raising a financially savvy kid and a science-minded kid and a kid who is a whiz at yoga. Short of teaching your toddler how to defuse a nuclear bomb, there is pretty much a guide to everything. All of these books are well-intentioned. I am sure that many of them are great, but taken together, I am sorry. I do not see help when I look at that shelf. I see anxiety.
I see a giant candy-colored monument to our collective panic. And it makes me want to know, why is it that raising our children is associated with so much anguish and so much confusion? Why is it that we are at sixes and sevens about the one thing human beings have been doing successfully for millennia, long before parenting message boards and peer-reviewed studies came along? Why is it that so many mothers and fathers experience parenthood as a kind of crisis?
Crisis might seem like a strong word, but there is data suggesting it probably is not. There was, in fact, a paper of just this very name, Parenthood as Crisis, published in 1957. And in the 50-plus years since, there has been plenty of scholarship documenting a pretty clear pattern of parental anguish.
Parents experience more stress than non-parents. Their marital satisfaction is lower. There have been a number of studies looking at how parents feel when they are spending time with their kids. And the answer, often, is not so great. Last year, I spoke with a researcher named Matthew Killingsworth, who is doing a very, very imaginative project that tracks people’s happiness.
And here is what he told me he found. Interacting with your friends is better than interacting with your spouse, which is better than interacting with other relatives, which is better than interacting with acquaintances, which is better than interacting with parents, which is better than interacting with children, who are on par with strangers.
But here’s the thing. I have been looking at what underlies these data for three years. And children are not the problem. Something about parenting, right now, at this moment, is the problem. Specifically, I don’t think we know what parenting is supposed to be. Parent, as a verb, only entered common usage in 1970.
Our roles as mothers and fathers have changed. The roles of our children have changed. We are all now furiously improvising our way through a situation for which there is no script. And if you’re an amazing jazz musician, then improv is great. But for the rest of us, it can kind of feel like a crisis.
So how did we get here? How is it that we are all now navigating a child-wearing universe without any norms to guide us? Well, for starters, there’s been a major historical change.
Until fairly recently, kids worked on our farms primarily, but also in factories, mills, mines. Kids were considered economic assets. Sometime during the Progressive Era, we put an end to this arrangement. We recognized kids had rights. We banned child labor. We focused on education instead. And school became a child’s new work. And thank God it did.
But that only made a parent’s role more confusing, in a way. The old arrangement might not have been particularly ethical, but it was reciprocal. We provided food, clothing, shelter, and moral instruction to our kids. And they, in return, provided income.
Once kids stopped working, the economics of parenting changed. Kids became, in the words of one brilliant, if totally ruthless sociologist, economically worthless but emotionally priceless. Rather than them working for us, we began to work for them. Because within only a matter of decades, it became clear: If we wanted our kids to succeed, school was not enough.
Today, extracurricular activities are a kid’s new work. But that’s work for us, too, because we are the ones driving them to soccer practice. Massive piles of homework are a kid’s new work. But that’s also work for us, because we have to check it.
About three years ago, a Texas woman told something to me that totally broke my heart. She said, almost casually, homework is the new dinner. The middle class now pours all of its time and energy and resources into its kids, even though the middle class has less and less of those things to give.
Mothers spend more time with their children than they did in 1965, when most women were not even in the workforce. It would probably be easier for parents to do their new roles if they knew what they were preparing their kids for. This is yet another thing that makes modern parenting so very confounding. We have no clue what portion of our wisdom, if any, is of use to our kids.
The world is changing so rapidly, it’s impossible to say. This was true even when I was young.
When I was a kid, high school specifically, I was told that I would be at sea in the new global economy if I did not know Japanese. And with all due respect to the Japanese, it didn’t turn out that way.
Now there is a certain kind of middle class parent that is obsessed with teaching their kids Mandarin. And maybe they’re onto something. But we cannot know for sure. So absent being able to anticipate the future, what we all do as good parents is try and prepare our kids for every possible kind of future, hoping that just one of our efforts will pay off.
We teach our kids chess, thinking maybe they will need analytical skills. We sign them up for team sports, thinking maybe they will need collaborative skills, you know, for when they go to Harvard Business School. We try and teach them to be financially savvy and science-minded and eco-friendly and gluten-free. Though now is probably a good time to tell you that I was not eco-friendly and gluten-free as a child.
I ate jars of pureed macaroni and beef. And you know what, I’m doing okay. I pay my taxes. I hold down a steady job. I was even invited to speak at TED. But the presumption now is that what was good enough for me or for my folks for that matter isn’t good enough anymore. So we all make a mad dash to that bookshelf because we feel like if we aren’t trying everything, it’s as if we’re doing nothing and we’re defaulting on our obligations to our kids.
So it’s hard enough to navigate our new roles as mothers and fathers. And I’ll add to this problem something else. We are also navigating new roles as husbands and wives because most women today are in the workforce. This is another reason I think that parenthood feels like a crisis. We have no rules, no scripts, no norms for what to do when a child comes along now that both mom and dad are breadwinners.
The writer Michael Lewis once put this very, very well. He said that the surest way for a couple to start fighting is for them to go out to dinner with another couple whose division of labor is ever so slightly different from theirs because the conversation in the car on the way home goes something like this: So did you catch that Dave is the one who walks from the school every morning? Without scripts telling us who does what in this brave new world, couples fight.
And both mothers and fathers each have their legitimate gripes. Mothers are much more likely to be multitasking when they are at home. And fathers, when they are at home, are much more likely to be monotasking. Find a guy at home and odds are he is doing just one thing at a time.
In fact, UCLA recently did a study looking at the most common configuration of family members in middle class homes. Guess what it was? Dad in a room by himself. According to the American Time News Survey, mothers still do twice as much childcare as fathers, which is better than it was in Irma Bombeck’s day. But I still think that something she wrote is highly relevant: I have not been alone in the bathroom since October.
But here’s the thing. Men are doing plenty. They spend more time with their kids than their fathers ever spent with them. They work more paid hours, on average, than their wives. And they genuinely want to be good, involved dads. Today it is fathers, not mothers, who report the most work-life conflict.
Either way, by the way, if you think it’s hard for traditional families to sort out these new roles, just imagine what it’s like now for non-traditional families. Families with two dads, families with two moms, single-parent households. They are truly improvising as they go.
Now in a more progressive country, and forgive me here for capitulating to cliché and invoking yes, Sweden, parents could rely on the state for support. There are countries that acknowledge the anxieties and the changing roles of mothers and fathers. Unfortunately, the United States is not one of them.
So in case you were wondering what the U.S. has in common with Papua New Guinea and Liberia, it’s this: We too have no paid maternity leave policy. We are one of eight known countries that does not. In this age of intense confusion, there is just one goal upon which all parents can agree, and that is whether they are tiger moms or hippie moms, helicopters or drones. Our kids’ happiness is paramount.
That is what it means to raise kids in an age when they are economically worthless but emotionally priceless. We are all the custodians of their self-esteem. The one mantra no parent ever questions is, all I want is for my children to be happy. And don’t get me wrong, I think happiness is a wonderful goal for a child, but it is a very elusive one.
Happiness and self-confidence. Teaching children that is not like teaching them how to plow a field. It’s not like teaching them how to ride a bike. There’s no curriculum for it. Happiness and self-confidence can be the byproducts of other things, but they cannot really be goals unto themselves.
A child’s happiness is a very unfair burden to place on a parent, and happiness is an even more unfair burden to place on a kid. And I have to tell you, I think it leads to some very strange excesses. We are now so anxious to protect our kids from the world’s ugliness that we shield them from Sesame Street.
I wish I could say I was kidding about this, but if you go out and you buy the first few episodes of Sesame Street on DVD, as I did, out of nostalgia, you will find a warning at the beginning saying that the content is not suitable for children. Can I just repeat that? The content of the original Sesame Street is not suitable for children.
When asked about this by the New York Times, a producer for the show gave a variety of explanations. One was that Cookie Monster smoked a pipe in one skit and then swallowed it. Bad modeling, I don’t know. But the thing that stuck with me is she said that she didn’t know whether Oscar the Grouch could be invented today because he was too depressive. I cannot tell you how much this distresses me.
You are looking at a woman who has a periodic table of the Muppets hanging from her cubicle wall. The offending Muppet, right there.
That’s my son, the day he was born. I was high as a kite on morphine. I had had an unexpected C-section. But, even in my opiate haze, I managed to have one very clear thought the first time I held him. I whispered it into his ear. I said, I will try so hard not to hurt you. It was the Hippocratic Oath and I didn’t even know I was saying it.
But it occurs to me now that the Hippocratic Oath is a much more realistic aim than happiness. In fact, as any parent will tell you, it’s awfully hard. All of us have said or done hurtful things that we wish to God we could take back.
I think in another era, we did not expect quite so much from ourselves. And it is important that we all remember that the next time we are staring with our hearts racing at those bookshelves. I’m not really sure how to create new norms for this world. But I do think that in our desperate quest to create happy kids, we may be assuming the wrong moral burden.
It strikes me as a better goal and dare I say a more virtuous one to focus on making productive kids and moral kids and to simply hope that happiness will come to them by virtue of the good that they do and their accomplishments and the love that they feel from us. That, anyway, is one response to having no script. Absence having new scripts? We just follow the oldest ones in the book.
Decency, a work ethic, love, and let happiness and self-esteem take care of themselves. I think if we all did that, the kids would still be all right and so would their parents. Possibly, in both cases, even better. Thank you.
SUMMARY OF THIS TALK:
Jennifer Senior’s talk, titled “For Parents, Happiness Is A Very High Bar,” delves into the challenges and anxieties that modern parents face while raising their children. Here are the key takeaway points from her talk:
Evolving Parenting Guides: Senior highlights the contrast between the single parenting book by Dr. Spock in the past and the overwhelming variety of parenting guides available today, covering everything from eco-friendly parenting to raising financially savvy kids. She sees this abundance as a source of anxiety.
Parenthood as a Crisis: Senior argues that many parents experience parenthood as a crisis, backed by historical evidence and research that suggests parents face more stress and lower marital satisfaction compared to non-parents.
Changing Roles of Parents and Children: She emphasizes that the roles of parents and children have evolved significantly in recent decades. With the end of child labor and the focus on education, parents now find themselves navigating a child-centric world with no clear script.
Lack of Clarity in Parenting: Senior asserts that the term “parent” as a verb only gained common usage in 1970, and the lack of clear norms and roles in modern parenting contributes to the feeling of crisis.
Economic Shift in Parenting: With children no longer considered economic assets but rather emotionally priceless, parents invest enormous time, energy, and resources into their kids’ activities and education.
Overemphasis on Preparation: Parents today strive to prepare their children for every possible future, resulting in a frantic dash for parenting books and resources to ensure they are not neglecting any aspect of their child’s development.
Changing Roles of Husbands and Wives: The shift of women into the workforce has further complicated parenting dynamics, as couples grapple with new roles and expectations, often leading to conflicts.
Challenges for Non-Traditional Families: Non-traditional families, such as those with two dads, two moms, or single parents, face even more challenges in improvising their way through parenthood without established norms.
Lack of Government Support: Senior notes that unlike some other countries, the United States lacks paid maternity leave policies, adding to the stress and confusion faced by parents.
The Pursuit of Child Happiness: Senior highlights that regardless of parenting style, all parents share a common goal: their children’s happiness. However, she questions whether happiness is a realistic goal for children and parents alike.
Protecting Children from the World: The modern obsession with shielding children from adversity, even to the extent of deeming shows like Sesame Street unsuitable, is noted as a concerning trend.
The Hippocratic Oath of Parenthood: Senior suggests that a more realistic aim for parents is to follow the Hippocratic Oath and try not to hurt their children, as the pursuit of happiness is a complex and elusive goal.
Focusing on Productive and Moral Kids: Instead of fixating on happiness, Senior proposes that parents should focus on raising productive and moral children, hoping that happiness will naturally follow through their achievements and the love they receive.
In her thought-provoking talk, Jennifer Senior challenges the prevailing notion of parenting and suggests that prioritizing decency, a strong work ethic, and love may lead to happier and more well-rounded children and parents alike.
