Bad Parents

The high-priced SAT tutor is just one of the things a well-­meaning parent will provide for his or her offspring these days. In fact, through the years there may be an army of people and services to help your child reach full potential: a tai chi or yoga instructor to strengthen the mind-body connection; a therapist to help sort through any emotional issues; a shrink to prescribe meds. And this doesn’t even touch the stuff that, well, isn’t really important but that you throw in just for fun: a trip abroad to expand his cultural horizons; the occasional spa weekend to help her relax; frequent manicures and pedicures.

Absurd? Maybe. But as one Main Line father joked to me recently, “All we want is for everything to be perfect.”

At least, I think he was joking.



THERE WAS A TIME WHEN PARENTING was a simple job. Not easy, but fairly straightforward: You had kids, you provided them with food, clothes, shelter, an education, and a decent sense of right and wrong, then you pushed them out into the world, hoping that at the very least they wouldn’t be a burden on society. If they turned out better than that — became someone important or influential, like, I don’t know, Nina Totenberg or Charlie Sheen — you might allow yourself a moment of parental pride before going back to watching Jeopardy! and drinking your nightly manhattan. Glad to hear you’re doing well, honey. But I got a life here.

Today, in contrast, parenting in many parts of Philadelphia has become not only vastly more complicated, but seemingly more important than ever before. Listen closely and you’ll hear people utter earnest things like, “It’s the most important job I’ll ever have,” or, “Yes, I may be a world-class surgeon, but my real life’s work is raising little Heather.” Well, I guess. But let’s not botch my appendectomy, okay, Doc?

Unfortunately, evidence is steadily mounting that The Way We Parent Now — roughly defined as giving your child as much opportunity and attention as possible, while requiring little from him or her in return — is turning out to be something of a disaster, at least in terms of producing, you know, well-adjusted, contributing human beings. For starters, a good chunk of kids in suburban Philly today seems to be wilting under pressure from parents to achieve. In the past year, two of the region’s best, most monied public high schools, Radnor and Cherry Hill East, suffered through major cheating scandals. Meanwhile, the need to succeed has other kids so stressed that they’re literally getting sick. “I’m finding a lot of kids from elite schools who feel an enormous amount of pressure to succeed, and whose parents are really frightened that their kids aren’t going to succeed if they don’t get into a certain college,” says Ken Ginsburg, a pediatrician at CHOP and author of three books on parenting. Among the health problems Ginsburg has been seeing: stomach aches, headaches, eating disorders, self-mutilation.

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