Bad Parents
By Tom McGrath
Page 3 of 9
No less important, though, is that a generation of kids who’ve been overindulged, overprotected and generally over-parented seems to be overwhelmingly underprepared to live in the real world. “They’ve been exposed to so much more, and on one level, they’re so much more sophisticated than we were,” says Janet Walkow, a business consultant in Wayne and the mother of three college-age girls. “But they’re less sophisticated when it comes to street smarts. They’re not as mature.”
Not that you can tell them. A study released earlier this year found that the current generation of college students is the most narcissistic ever. In the study, psychologists asked students to respond to statements like, “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place,” “I think I am a special person” and “I can live my life any way I want to.” Two-thirds of the kids showed elevated levels of narcissism — 30 percent more than when the study was first done in 1982.
How did this happen? How is it that a group of moms and dads who love their kids so much, and who were so intent on being great at raising them, has turned out to be, arguably, the worst parents ever? The short answer might be expressed like this: We’ve been too uptight about things — achievement, success, appearances — we should have been relaxed about, and too relaxed about things — values, integrity — that we should have been more uptight about.
To put it another way: We have cared way too much about whether our kids were getting the right answer, and not nearly enough about whether they actually know anything.
IN THE SUMMER OF 1975, when I was 11 years old, I played baseball practically every day. It was in an organized league — though not a “travel team,” nor even a league that had been organized by adults. It was put together by my friends and me. Every day that summer began the same way: with a phone call from me to a friend or a friend to me, asking, “Wanna play baseball?” From there we started our little phone tree, and eventually we’d all end up on the dirt-covered field behind our grade school. It remains the most enjoyable athletic experience of my life (maybe owing to the fact that I was in a season-long battle for the RBI title). Of course, what strikes me as most remarkable was how little my parents had to do with it. The only time I remember either of them getting involved was the day my mother casually suggested that rather than making 67 phone calls, we simply agree to meet every morning at a particular time. It was a great idea that I completely ignored, but to my mother’s unending credit, she never mentioned it again. Perhaps because she had a life.
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