There was a time when raising the next generation was a “seat of the pants” operation—literally and figuratively. Intuition was the basis for most parental moves, with someone’s mother or a trusted neighbor the closest child-rearing expert. Parents wanted the best for their children, but understood the best was by no means a given; the future was, after all, not entirely in their own hands.
These days, however, a mother or father can hardly make a move without running headlong into a talk show, lecture series, or shelf of books brimming with advice on how to ensure a child’s place in the up-and-coming generation. Says Barbara Katz, writing in Parents magazine, “professional parents” are downright driven to cultivate their children’s abilities and college-bound resumes—superparents raising superkids. Armed with expert advice, they view parenting less as an instinctive process than a quantifiable set of do’s and don’ts, which, if applied properly, can transform any child into a runner by three, a reader by four, a writer by five.
To be sure, the findings of child psychologists over the past century have proved a blessing in helping frustrated parents better understand their particular “kid under construction.” And yet a question harried parents should be asking themselves is what this infatuation with the “quantification of child-rearing” might be saying about our relationship to the growing next generation—not to mention our relationship to God.
Assembly-Line Kids
Parenting has never been easy. But according to David Elkind, author of the ground-breaking book The Hurried Child, not since the Great Depression have American moms and dads experienced greater stress in or out of the home. The reasons for this are painfully obvious: divorce, changing technologies, a changing marketplace, inflation, drugs, and AIDS, to name a few. The subsequent “hydra-headed anxieties,” says Elkind, have prompted a subtle, steady shifting away from any outward concern over the needs of others to an inward concern with self. “Adults under stress become self-centered,” says Elkind, “and therefore have considerably more trouble seeing other people in all the complexity of their individual personalities.” Unfortunately, we have trouble seeing our children properly as well. As we race headlong into the twenty-first century, we are confronted with the irony of a society idealizing offspring as “prized possessions,” yet perplexed by how to rear these little ones without adding to our already pressured lives. Further complicating matters (and adding to the stress) is the ever-present specter of failure—a dark reality intolerable in today’s competitive world and increasingly feared at home. Any setback, no matter how inconsequential, is perceived as a major hurdle to the ultimate success of a son or daughter. There is gnashing of teeth if Junior can’t read by three—especially if his friends can.
“How to” resources alleviate some of the stress and paranoia by neatly structuring child rearing “by the book.” Taming the two-year-old can be accomplished by following an expert-tested set of rules. But rather than viewing children as complex and uniquely individual personalities to be molded over time, we are increasingly, to use Dr. Bruno Bettelheim’s words, “equating child-rearing to mass-producing machinery”; and we are basing the “quality of production” on standardized criteria—all to the exclusion of the child’s own emotional and spiritual dynamics.
Nowhere is this trend more pronounced than in the area of cognitive performance. Such abstractions as a child’s inquisitiveness, his wonder at nature, his excitement with learning, and his personality become secondary considerations to the more quantifiable abilities of reading, writing, and arithmetic. These and other measurable criteria have become the parental gold standard, and not surprisingly the books and theories illuminating the end of the rainbow fill cupboards and shelves across America. Says Harvard pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton: “Cognitive performance is easy to measure and to demonstrate to your friends. It becomes a way for young parents to feel successful in their parenting. Those of us who are more interested in social and emotional development for children haven’t made the guideposts in these areas explicit enough for parents so they can see when they have done a good job” (Working and Caring).
Parents under stress are eager for an encouraging word from the experts, even if that word spells the standardization of the next generation into what Brazelton calls “cognitive monsters,” devoid of sound interpersonal skills and a strong moral identity.
The Longhand Of Personhood
Needless to say, the establishment of these skills and values takes time, and their impact on the child may not be known for years. The question of “success” remains a question throughout the child-rearing experience, with only periodic glimpses of whether or not we’re “getting through.” Such uncertainty weighs heavily on today’s stressed-out “professional,” demanding a patience that is perceived intolerable, indeed weak. (After all, while I’m waiting, that other parent’s child is getting ahead.) Yet it is a burden Christians need not bear alone.
As the family of God, the church not only offers a foundation for values lost in today’s parenting style but a context for implanting those values in the growing generations to come. Practically speaking, it provides a community that can actively support individual parents as they tackle what Elkind describes as the “hard-to-decipher longhand of personhood.” Setting up such nonthreatening programs as support groups where parents can honestly share their concerns and not worry about having their child compared to another, or “adopting” older, experienced parents whose children have grown, can be a place to start.
Moreover, the church has the unique vantage point of acknowledging the whole personhood of children. Made in the image of God, they are people in process (as indeed we all are), individually different, and not simply “gifted,” “strong-willed,” or “hurried.” Writes Bettelheim: “Since the future is always uncertain, we cannot know what particular problems our child will encounter in life; therefore the best we can give him on his way into life is our trust in him and a sense of his own great worth” (A Good Enough Parent).
Whether we want to admit it or not, parents are themselves the real experts when it comes to knowing their children. Yet fear of failure, a sense of inadequacy, and concern about the future increasingly pressure these in-house experts to put that knowledge (and their own creativity) on hold and seek help elsewhere. But in the context of the church, where we can suffer and rejoice together (1 Cor. 12:26), fear of failure need not be insurmountable but a cause for improvement and eventual growth. Inadequacy can open up creative opportunities for the body to offer Bible-and time-tested parental insights and input. And concern for the future can provide daily lessons of what it means to have faith in Christ and live by his abundant grace—a grace all parents need in abundance every minute of every day.
By Harold B. Smith.
