Here’s a post from the always provocative Peter Loffredo of Full Permission Living.
By Peter Loffredo
Somebody turned me onto this article and book, “A NATION OF WIMPS,” yesterday on a subject that I write and yell about a lot – how we’re gutting our children’s self-confidence and creating a class of whiny and seriously damaged narcissists by over-parenting. The author is Hara Estroff Marano, editor of Psychology Today.
Here are some excerpts from Marano:
“The 1990s witnessed a landmark reversal in the traditional patterns of psychopathology. While rates of depression rise with advancing age among people over 40, they’re now increasing fastest among children, striking more children at younger and younger ages.”
“The perpetual access to parents infantilizes the young, keeping them in a permanent state of dependency. Whenever the slightest difficulty arises, they’re constantly referring to their parents for guidance. They’re not learning how to manage for themselves.”
“In his now-famous studies of how children’s temperaments play out, Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan has shown unequivocally that what creates anxious children is parents hovering and protecting them from stressful experiences. Overparenting can program the nervous system to create lifelong vulnerability to anxiety and depression.”
The article and book goes on, of course, but the bottom line is this – overparenting isn’t about love; it’s about ego. EGO! If there’s even one parent reading this who can hear me, listen up: every time you hover or cover for your child, every time you pamper or prop them up, every time you “sacrifice” adult activities to feed your child’s demands, you are not coming from a place of love. You are looking to BE loved from your own place of low self-worth and damaged self-esteem. In other words, you are being selfish, not generous, needy, not giving, and you are stunting and robbing your children, not raising them. Get into therapy! Get a life! Leave your kids alone!!
“Since that “selfishness” is serious, rational, principled concern with one’s own well-being, it turns out to be a prerequisite for the attainment of the ultimate moral value and it always leads to behavior that is for the greater good of all.”
Which of course flies in the face of reason and common sense. What is good for the individual may, but in most cases, is not, good for all. Check out any number of references on the issue, starting with the tragedy of the commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons.
That’s why we have to have laws and restrictions, to attempt to achieve a balance between the individual and the common good. That’s why socialism *as a theory* is excellent (it’s good for all), but in practice is skewered on the blade of individualism (aka selfishness, aka one’s “ultimate moral being.”)
I cannot pretend to be as well-versed in individual psychology as you, Peter, but I have my modicum of common sense. And common sense tells me that while it might be “natural” to BE loving, it’s also “natural” to want to be loved. Even by one’s children.
Actually, the reason Ayn Rand didn’t use the word “ego” was because she didn’t mean ego. She made the point that the ultimate moral value, for each human individual, is his or her own well-being. Since that “selfishness” is serious, rational, principled concern with one’s own well-being, it turns out to be a prerequisite for the attainment of the ultimate moral value and it always leads to behavior that is for the greater good of all. For this reason, Rand believes that selfishness is a virtue.
Everything in nature that is left alone by the human ego, Chandru, is in fact “selfish” in a harmonious and constructive way. Only human beings have the hubris to believe that they need to supersede and “correct” nature’s “mistakes.”
Finally, “wanting to be loved” is not “natural.” It is typical. What is natural is to BE loving.
I remember reading Ayn Rand as a teenager and being appalled at her theories, especially the one about how there ain’t no such thing as altruism or doing anything un-selfishly because everything you do is ultimately selfish inasmuch as it boosts your ego (though, iirc, she didn’t use that word, being of a different generation.)
Sounds like Rand has a new disciple in Marano. What a barren existence we would be confined to if we followed his (and Peter’s) principles. Peter talks about “wanting to be loved” as if it’s a disease. It is not. It’s a natural condition of living and exists in all sentient beings.
In the meantime, can you recommend a good British boarding school for my son?