Iām a preschool teacher and mother to two sons, ages 26 and 24. Iāve experienced and seen changes in parenting up close in the communities I inhabit.
For the sake of context, I shall describe such communities as (a) middle-class to ultra-rich Northeast United States, and (b) middle- to upper-middle-class Hispanic immigrant families.
Iāve seen some positive trends for sure.Ā But Iām here to highlight the alarming trends with no end in sight that are making and will continue to make parenting so much harder.Ā If nothingās done about them, they will eclipse and cancel out the positive.
Iām talking about social media/screens and environmental degradation/ climate change. Hereās what to look out for and a few things we must all do to help, whether or not weāre parents.
Screens and social media: How they get in the way of parenting and will continue to make the job harder.
Nothing replaces the human connection. Nothing replaces the role of play in childhood. Good parenting requires that we provide both, and doing so is getting harder.
Iām 51. I got my first cell phone at 26 when all cell phones could do was make a call. My sons were in high school when social media and smartphones began to become a part of life.
I didnāt have to compete with the addictive power of various screens to get my children to build with real blocks or play outside with the good old sphere you can bounce, hit, throw or roll and that lends itself to so many games and sports with other humans.
An even more sinister effect of screens on parenting is how they suckĀ us parents in. We give our kids access to them at the restaurant, in the car, in the doctorās waiting room, at home, even when they have a little friend over.
Itās just so freaking easy and incredibly tempting to let them be on a device hours and hours every day when we have so much to do and the device guarantees us peace and quiet.
Itās also the case that when we intend to spend quality time with our children, we just canāt seem to help clicking on that YouTube video, looking at our Facebook, posting that picture we just took to Instagram and responding to texts.
And it gets worse as children get older and social media enters their lives. Parenting a teenager has always been difficult partly because outside influences, both wonderful and terrible, begin to play a bigger role in our childrenās lives at a time when they are also becoming more independent and hormonal changes are playing with their minds and bodies.
Current and future parents: Sorry, but you now have the huge responsibility of monitoring where your children are and who theyāre with not only in the physical world but also in the vast, ever-expanding virtual one.
The evidence is mounting on the negative effects of social media on youth mental health. According to theĀ Canadian Medical Association Journal:
“Evidence from a variety of cross-sectional, longitudinal and empirical studies implicate smartphone and social media use in the increase in mental distress, self-injurious behaviour and suicidality among youth; there is a doseāresponse relationship, and the effects appear to be greatest among girls.” (Smartphones, social media use and youth mental health, February, 2020)
How society can help:
- Support sensible regulation of social media. We canāt leave it to the tech giants to regulate themselves. It hasnāt worked. Regulation needs to cover, for example, access restrictions, some signaling of fact vs opinion, heavy fines for not removing content not protected as āfree speechā, and preventing algorithms from nudging users toward ever more divisive and extreme content.
- Schools must play an important role in teaching children to recognize and tackle the addictive power of social media, how to detect misinformation and propaganda, and how to be informed participants in the virtual world.
Climate change and environmental decline: How these trends will change parenting.
Wherever we live, the negative impact of environmental decline and climate change will just continue to grow. Family displacement will become more common; environmental degradation will lead to conflict as basic resources like water become scarce; and severe weather events that disrupt life will happen more frequently.
Parenting will be made harder both by the effects of climate change and by the changes families will need to make to adapt to and combat it. Itās already happening, so we must take action to limit the damage.
As the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) indicates:
āContinued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, including the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impact for people and ecosystems. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions which, together with adaptation, can limit climate change risks.ā
Current and future parents:Ā Because we are currently doing too little to combat climate change, you will have an even greater need to change your ways in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You will need to do this as you figure out how to parent.
You will have the essential responsibility to teach your children that protecting the environment is just as important as making money so they can have a big house and buy lots of stuff.
Iām not saying we shouldnāt be teaching this to the children of today, just that the urgency increases every day.
When I was growing up, concern for the environment didnāt figure in the worries of parenting. The wilderness and seasons were taken for granted and the sustainability of our lifestyle was not put into question.
This is not the case anymore. With every passing day, our actions place the wellbeing of all living beings ā including us humans ā at greater risk.
How society can help:
- We need to take action today, at the individual, local, national, and international levels. This is easy to say and write, but impossible to achieve if we donāt care, donāt know enough, and donāt change our mindset.
Final Thoughts
Parents of today and parents of the future: I donāt want to leave you with the impression that there are no promising changes underway. Iāve witnessed trends in parenting in my lifetime that I certainly consider positive.
When it comes to diverse family composition, things have changed for the better. For example, no teacher bats an eye anymore if a student’s family’s blended, inter-racial, or includes two moms.
I also see more equitable sharing of parental responsibilities; for instance, more fathers doing the picking up and dropping off, filling out of school forms, replying to teacher emails, and making sure their children get on their devices for remote learning.
Iāve also noticed a third positive change lately thatās directly related to the pandemic. More children are outdoors doing things that were just part of being a kid not so long ago. Yeah, Iām talking about good old activities like outdoor play, riding a bike, and going fishing.
Although this change canāt be called a trend given how recent it is, I sure hope it will become one and not end with the pandemic. The change involves no electronics and exposes children to the outdoors and the natural world a bit.
Parenting and the future are interdependent. Both will require a change of mindset in terms of our hopes and dreams for our children.
Parents have traditionally hoped that their childrenās lives will be equal to or better than theirs, but this hope has exclusively focused on economic outcome.
We need a shift to a mindset where one of our greatest hopes is that our children inherit a planet as rich (or richer) in resources and human connections as the one we had.