The Collapse of Parenting

A New York Times bestseller!

Over the past 30 years, a major shift has occurred in American culture: there has been a transfer of authority from parents to children. Nowadays it’s common for kids to prefer to hang with their own same-age friends rather than spend time with family. Children today often choose what’s for supper; they may choose which social media they will engage; they often choose their bedtime and sometimes even their school. In the book, I show how these factors and related influences have led to children and teenagers being less resilient, less physically fit, and more likely to become anxious or depressed – and far more fragile – compared with kids from the same demographic 30 years ago.

Some aspects of this collapse of parenting are just as problematic in England and Australia as they are here. In every country I have visited, I have found parents who are unsure about their role. They ask: “Should I be my child’s most trusted confidante? My child’s best friend? But if I am my son’s best friend, how can I tell him that he is not allowed to play violent video games?”

But some challenges are uniquely, or primarily, American. They are:

• The culture of disrespect / the culture of “Live for Now”: Throughout the United States, it has become cool for children and teens to disrespect parents and adults generally. Every generation challenges the authority of the elders, but in American culture today this disrespect has become pervasive and destructive. It is now common, even cool, for kids to say “shut up” to their parents. Similar behavior is modeled on television programs targeting children and teens, even on the Disney Channel. In the United States, the culture of disrespect mingles with the culture of “Live for Now” (the slogan of the Pepsi/Beyoncé campaign). If it feels good, do it. Whatever floats your boat. When one sees the Pepsi “Live For Now” billboard in Scotland or in New Zealand, it’s easy to recognize the message of “live for now” as an American import which anyone can freely accept or reject. But here in the United States, the culture of “live for now” has become our native culture. It is the default culture which American kids encounter if we set them loose to navigate without adult direction. Without authoritative guidance, it is the culture which they will adopt as their own.

• Medication: In the United States, it has become common to medicate children with powerful psychiatric drugs as a first resort rather than a last resort. That’s a big reason why American kids are now factors-of-ten more likely to be on medication compared with kids outside North America. We are experimenting on children in a way which has no precedent, with medications whose long-term risks are largely unknown. I show how the collapse of parenting has led many American parents to use medication as a first resort in ways which are unthinkable outside of North America.

• Overscheduling: We Americans like to boast about how busy we are. And we are telling the truth: we are all crazy busy. But only in America do parents routinely boast and brag about how busy and overscheduled they are. That’s not healthy. I show how overscheduling makes it harder for parents to do their job.

What happened? Why did it happen? And what do you need to know, if you are raising a girl or boy in the United States or Canada today? Those are the questions I answer in this book.

In the book I tie all these issues together: the declining physical fitness of American kids; the explosion in the prescribing of psychiatric medications for children and teenagers in this country; the rapid decline in academic achievement of American students relative to students in other countries; and the growing fragility of American youth. A completely revised, expanded, and updated second edition has just been published, with new stories, new evidence, and new recommendations.