The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

The New York Times
Dustin Franz for The New York Times James Alexander Michie

Renée Sentilles and her son Isaac eating dinner at their home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. She is raising him in a much more hands-on way than she was raised. Credit Dustin Franz for The New York Times

Undoubtedly, modern parenting has reached certain levels that determine it as implacable. In fact, it is necessary to mention that the separation of children has become much more expensive and expensive, in the sense that the opportunity has become more difficult to reach. In this way, paternity in the United States has become much more demanding than it used to be.

Just a couple of generations, parents have significantly increased both the amount of time and the care and money they provide in raising children. In fact, there is no doubt that today mothers juggle work outside the home and still spend as much time tending to their children as mothers who stay at home in the seventies.

Meanwhile, the amount of money that parents spend on children, which used to peak when they were in high school, is now higher when they are under 6 and over 18 and up until mid-20.

The studios speak for themselves

In modern upbringing, a type of intensive parenting (constantly teaching and monitoring children) is predominant. This has been the norm for upper middle class parents since the 1990s. In fact, according to new research, people of different classes now consider it the best way to raise children, even if they do not.

In such a way, there are signs of a violent reaction, led by the so-called free-field parents, but social scientists say that the relentlessness of modern fatherhood has a powerful motivation, economic anxiety. For the first time, American children are likely to be less prosperous than their parents. For parents, giving children the best start in life has come to mean doing everything possible to make sure that their children can climb to a higher class, or at least not fall out of what they were born.

On the one hand, the sociologist at the University of Maryland who studies families and inequality, Philip Cohen, has expressed, “As the gap between rich and poor increases, the cost of ruining increases,” he added, “Fear is that they end up on the other side of the division“.

While on the other hand, the sociologist of the University of Indiana and author of “Opportunities for negotiation: how the middle class gets advantages in school”, Jessica Calarco, has emphasized, “Intensive parenting is a way in which white mothers especially well-off they ensure that their children maintain their privileged position in society“.

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Source: Claire Cain Miller | The New York Times

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