I raised 2 successful CEOs and a doctor—here’s the parenting style I never used on my kids
www.cnbc.com
Bestselling author and parenting expert Esther Wojcicki raised three highly successful kids. She, along with other parents like Elon Musk's mom, agree that the key to raising smart, confident kids is to avoid one common parenting style: "helicopter parenting." Here's why.

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."

  • UlyssesT [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Parents don’t want to hit kids

    If only that were universally true.

    • ALiteralWrecker [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      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.

      • anaesidemus [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        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.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          :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:

          • SoyViking [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            And the classic: "Telling people they can't beat their children is socialism!"

            • star_wraith [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              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.

              • ALiteralWrecker [they/them]
                ·
                2 years ago

                Thinking of that American ad campaign that was just reminder boomer parents to not take out their day on their kids

            • UlyssesT [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              :libertarian-approaching: notions of freedom are all about inflicting cruelty and suffering to subordinates. Beating kids is a part of that.