I don’t know if helicoptering or overprotecting is the big factor here, but the philosophy I try to bring to parenting is this: I’m not trying to raise kids; I’m trying to raise adults. I don’t always live up to that standard, but it’s at least aspirational.
Here's my theory: 1) Republican/conservative policy makes aid, basic life stuff harder to get through legislation. Talkin' healthcare, tuition grants, all of it. Thriving becomes more difficult, requires a lot more improvisation and the ability to adapt. 2) Socially/financially successful parents of both camps, when faced with the clusterfuck created for their children, "help" them because holy shit things have gotten complicated to navigate. 3) "helped" children inherit a world where their parents do too much for them, in which the solution to any problem is "ask your parents". It's no one's fault. Theoretically you should be able to look up whatever you need on Youtube but the more you do that, the more you discover that Youtube is a place that buries the first 30 seconds in flashy graphics to make you think you're not going to waste your time so that they get credit for the pageview and beyond that, nothing fucking matters. The #1 video on Youtube when you look up how to use a Grobet casting machine is one that may kill you with an explosion of hot metal, will clog your pipes with cement and shows you how to get a ruined casting anyway but the algorithm doesn't care. We won't even talk about cooking, baking, tying your fucking shoes, you name it. But what you get is young people utterly incapable of improvising or learning and the parents trying to shelter them. We've been trying to hire for an entry-level reception position for like six weeks now. We ask for a cover letter. We've gotten two. But then Indeed gives you your own magic phone number that rings through to your cell (which you never answer because your friends know not to call you), tries to leave a voicemail in an inbox that is full (because you never answer it so it's full of spam and you don't know how to clear it anyway), sends you emails that you don't know how to respond to because you can't get gmail working on your iphone, and gives you notifications that you turn off because everything gives you notifications so you're just constantly awash in shit. Meanwhile you've learned from social media that the way you respond to something you don't like is to ignore it and because kids are used to ignoring each other you get upset when you un-ignore an adult after six weeks and somehow they don't want to hire you anymore! WTF! Most promising candidate we've interviewed lately? Yeah, abundantly clear we were talking to her mom. Right up to the job interview. Cover letter was great, email responses were great, actual human interacting with actual humans was a deer in the goddamn headlight who let the silence over "what's something you've done in your past that required multitasking" stretch for 45 seconds (we timed it). But I mean, the world is burning and adults aren't doing shit. You spend your life in halls telling you how to maybe survive an active shooter and adults aren't doing shit. You couldn't afford a car if you wanted one and none of your friends would be allowed to drive with you anyway. The news is telling you COVID is killing everyone and they get you vaccines dead last but that's okay because your parents' Facebook feeds have told them it's all useless anyway, and for the past two years of your life you've sat in your room watching everyone else sit in their room while you all pretend to learn about Vasco de Gama or some shit. One of our interview questions has long been "we understand this is an entry level position and you've got a brighter future ahead of you than this - where do you see yourself after this job and what could we do to help you get there?" Early on, that got us bright young things who could improvise and solve problems. Now? Now those bright young things are not working. They don't have to. They're side-hustling out of their parents' houses and reaping undeclared income. The ones applying for work are the ones who look at you stunned and go "uhhh, no man, this is it. This is my future. Please pay me." When we first hunkered down in 2020 I knew we were witnessing the death of the middle class. I mourned it. I actually cried. Because the future belongs to the ones who can figure out their own solutions to any problem that is thrown at them because holy shit y'all it's now easier to win Fortnite than it is to fucking vote in some places. Three of the people we hired after "what could we do to help you get there" own their own businesses now. They call to consult about hard stuff. We miss them but they're where they need to be, not answering our phones and dealing with our shitty patients. The people we're interviewing now can't even grasp a future beyond "I show up and you pay me." Can you imagine? Can you imagine going through life where "adulting" is a stretch goal? Where there is no future in which the apron strings are ever cut, because you will sink into the sea without their tether? How fucking depressed would you be? And I mean, even the ones who have it good don't have it good. My daughter's got a friend. She's nine. She just had her first friend over (my daughter) last week. She is incapable of peeling a banana, let alone cooking. She eats chicken nuggets and spends a lot of time on the toilet because all she eats is chicken nuggets. But her family owns a couple dozen IHOPs, she got a race horse for her birthday and there is definitely a future in which she can eat chicken nuggets the rest of her life and never have to peel a banana. how fucking bleak it is tho
When Michigan made weed legal they put no restrictions on billboard advertising, and hence all the billboards that weren't already taken by personal injury lawyers are now weed shops. The worst one I've seen features a woman slumped down on the floor in front of her couch, head in hands, hair draped over her face. The giant sized font simply reads: "Adulting is Hard". Goddam fucking right adulting is hard, and we shouldn't have that word in our lexicon, because its very existence is an affront to everything that has come before. I am aware of the drastic changes that have taken place in society since I was a kid, but as an undergrad I literally worked as a night janitor in my friend's restaurant, because that was the only time I had to work. It sucked. I was always fearful that someone I knew passing on the busy street outside might see me inside swabbing the floor and think that this is my life. Never even told my parents that's what I was doing for money. But I did it. Swallowed my pride hard and did it. That's how I want my kids to think, independent of how the other kids think. I want my kid at age 4 to feel confident enough to ride his bike to the neighbor's house down the street and around the corner. I want them to feel like they can solve simple problems without resorting to asking for help as a first reaction. There's nothing more liberating that making your own way in the world, and to the extent my kids don't do that, I will feel like a failure.Can you imagine going through life where "adulting" is a stretch goal?
My daughter's favorite thing about class right now is "market" whereby the teacher gave them fake money and access to the craft supplies so they could make things to sell to their classmates. The fakeness of the money is utterly not an issue to this kid as most of her allowance-bait comes from JoAnn Fabrics, where the rules are made up and the points don't matter. "It would have cost this much but you have five coupons and it's a Thursday so..." I will admit to interfering - hearkening back to my childhood I observed that "random shit" plus "googly eyes" equals "cute giveaway thing" so she went batshit making "pinecone pets" that absolutely swept the marketplace. But she's got classmates whose parents bought them stuff off Amazon. Fake money for real Chinese slime? Hells yeah. How 'bout some cute beanie baby rip-offs? And the math is the point, right? Not the crafting? I mean yeah you could go to the dollar store, buy some googly eyes and hot-melt-glue them to a bunch of crap you found at the park... or, and I'm just spitballing here, Amazon Prime. SORTED! So i mean... she's learning capitalism. So are they. We instituted a rule for my daughter when she was seven - no crossing roads with traffic lights without a parent present. We did this because one fine Saturday morning she decided to go collect flowers at 6:30AM and was back by 8. It was... disconcerting. We also emphasized that we need to know where she is. She pointed out that she'd written a (cryptic) note. She has friends that don't know their own addresses. She's in third grade. Dunno. Kid digs art. Kid digs sales. She's not quite ready for an Etsy shop but I'm waiting in the wings I tell you what. Considering how much she enjoys coloring and drawing? Yer damn skippy she's got a house in which she can do grand feu.