I'm not sure if citations needed has ever done an episode on articles like this, but as a parent and a leftist it's hard to not start noticing that nearly all parenting "experts" or "success" stories seem to basically boil down to people 'richsplaining' how to raise your kids into successful CEOs and career paths.
I find this incredibly frustrating because this bassically accepts as a framework that your kid becoming a CEO is an inarguably laudable goal, rarely if ever asks questions about how psychologically well adjusted they are as people, and perhaps most importantly never addresses the elephant in the room of the role class plays.
I feel like my entire life, in basically every form of media I've ever seen: helicopter parenting has been assumed as being wrong and harmful. These days it's hard for me not to ask if this isn't just an extension of the culture of "personal responsibility" and "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps."
Research shows that children are in fact not clay to be shaped and molded into future senators but more like malleable plastic that spring back when you stop forcing outside pressure.
Helicopter parenting is bad when neither of you WANT to do it. Your kid hates soccer, you're tired of the obligation, there's a good chance you're both doing it for no reason and should do fun things instead.
Being anti-helicipter parenting isn't bootstrap mentality.
It's like spanking. Parents don't want to hit kids and lord knows kids hate it but there's this unscrutinized wisdom that you turned out how you did because your dad spanked you. Ok but what if you didn't and your dad was hitting you for no good reason. That's something to be heavily scrutinized.
If only that were universally true.
Yeah there’s a weird distinction between parents who view spanking as a necessary evil and those who call their uncontrolled outbursts of anger “spanking”. But the latter usually gaslights their kids into believing they’re the former and the research is pretty clear that the former are still wrong and doing damage to their children and their relationships with those children.
Some people are just cruel. And a lot of people love most of their lives not knowing how cruel some people are to children in particular.
anytime the corporal punishment of children is mentioned on :reddit-logo: you get hundreds of comments of anecdotes and stories justifying it, it is pure horror.
:reddit-logo: bazinga takes range from "my old man kicked my ass and I turned out FINE(tm)!" to "dae children are not beaten enough?" :desolate:
And the classic: "Telling people they can't beat their children is socialism!"
For real through, at least in the US there's going to have to be a lot of re-education around the idea that children have rights and they are not the personal property of their parents after the revolution.
Thinking of that American ad campaign that was just reminder boomer parents to not take out their day on their kids
:libertarian-approaching: notions of freedom are all about inflicting cruelty and suffering to subordinates. Beating kids is a part of that.
This but unironically