Elizabeth Kolbert has a wonderful piece summarizing a spate of recent books on one of those developments that is both profound and largely overlooked: the fact that middle-class, American parents expect very little from our children. Kolbert points out that parents in more traditional cultures rely on their children at a young age and that children seem to flourish with these sort of expectations. I certainly noticed this in Ghanaian schools, where children deemed it a privilege to do whatever they could to make me comfortable and bragged about cleaning their school and helping their parents at home.
Kolbert has some hilarious stories about how children in American society, by way of contrast, demand that their parents wait on them--bring them silverware or tie their shoes, for example. She suggests a couple of reasons for this dramatic shift. First, middle-class parents want their children to focus on getting outstanding grades so that they can get into the best colleges. Hence they shouldn't be distracted by petty chores such as weeding or doing the dishes. Second, this embrace of the coddled, immature child reflects a larger embrace of immaturity and narcissism. I'm sure there must be other, related causes. But the fact that so many adults idealize childhood certainly helps to explain why we so many of us seem to believe that our own children should be free from any sort of inconvenience, let alone suffering. But how will these children cope with the inevitable difficulties of life?
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/07/02/120702crbo_books_kolbert
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