Tea at Trianon: How Parents Are Slowly Ceding Authority to Children

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, April 29, 2024

How Parents Are Slowly Ceding Authority to Children

From Intellectual Takeout:

I was reminded of both of these episodes when I read Leonard Sax’s recent book, The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups. Sax is a family therapist who has spent a lot of time over the past few years talking to students and parents both in the United States and abroad, trying to find out what is going on with our kids. Sax uncovered some parenting behaviors that are leading to the creation of a generation of fat, entitled, fragile, and unhappy children. “We parents are spending more and more time and money on parenting,” Sax explains, “but when you look at the results, things are getting worse, not better.” Sax lists increased diagnoses of ADHD and bipolar disorder, increased obesity, and lower resilience as evidence of worse outcomes for children.

“Here’s my diagnosis,” Sax writes:

Over the past three decades, there has been a massive transfer of authority from parents to kids. Along with that transfer of authority has come a change in the valuation of kids’ opinions and preferences. . . . what kids think and what kids like and what kids want now matters as much, or more, than what their parents think and like and want. . . . These well-intentioned changes have been profoundly harmful to kids.

The first negative result of this transfer of authority is the “culture of disrespect” that Sax argues has blossomed as a result. He chronicles how and why some basic rules of behavior, such as apologizing for hurting someone else, are no longer taught to kids. Sax says kindergarten and first grade educators used to teach these basic rules—clean up your own mess, don’t take things that aren’t yours, say sorry when you hurt somebody, play fair, don’t hit—but that such behavioral instruction has been supplanted by phonics and other academic lessons. With schools no longer inculcating these important and basic rules of behavior, parents are really on the hook. Instead, he argues, parents have abdicated their authority.

Sax isn’t the only fan of parental authority. Writing in the New York Times, psychologist Lisa Damour extols the virtues of enforcing family dining, especially for teenagers. She says that demanding that children sit and eat together with their parents is not only better for the family unit as a whole, but also proves beneficial to teenagers later in life. Family mealtime ritualizes the two main components of successful authoritative parenting—structure and warmth. “Decades of research have documented that teenagers raised by authoritative parents are the ones most likely to do well at school, enjoy abundant psychological health and stay out of trouble,” writes Damour. (Read more.)