THEY DON’T COME WITH TWENTY-ONE YEAR WARRANTIES

How we all became Jewish mothers (Steven Mintz, National Post, February 17th, 2006)

Anxiety is the hallmark of contemporary parenting. Today's parents agonize incessantly about their children's physical health, personality development, psychological well-being, and academic performance. From birth, parenthood is coloured by apprehension. Contemporary parents worry about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and physical and sexual abuse, as well as more mundane problems, such as sleep disorders and hyperactivity.[...]

Contributing to parental anxiety are three decades of panics over children's well-being. Since the early 1970s, there has been recurrent alarm over stranger abductions, poisoned Halloween candies, childhood obesity, and pedophiles luring children over the Internet.

An information revolution has played a crucial role in transforming childhood. Today, over a quarter of two-year-olds have a TV set in their bedroom and half of all kids between seven and 16 have a cellphone. We're a long way from a world where a child had to climb on a bookcase to sneak a peek at Fannie Hill or a father's collection of Playboy magazines. Now, pornography can be found with a click of a mouse.

One of the most striking developments is a phenomon known as "age compression." Fashion, movies, TV shows, and videogames originally targeted at teenage audiences are now consumed by tweens or even younger children. Barbie no longer appeals to 10- or 12-year olds. Instead, she is coveted by three- and four-year-olds.

Have these changes enhanced or harmed children's well-being? By many measures, today's kids are doing much better than their parents. Despite high rates of divorce, single parenthood, and out-of-wedlock births, children, with the notable exception of those in poverty, are healthier, safer, and better off financially. Kids miss fewer days of school than in 1960 and youth crime has fallen to levels not seen since the early 1960s. Teenage smoking, drug abuse, pregnancy, and suicide have shrunk. Girls and children of colour have more role models and opportunities than ever before. Test scores are as high as ever.

Yet all is not well. More children suffer from disabilities and chronic diseases than ever before. These include autism, asthma, and Attention Deficit Disorders. The onset of clinical depression occurs earlier.

Other problems are more difficult to quantify. The historian Daniel Kline has identified three forms of psychological violence directed at contemporary children:

- the "violence of expectations," parents' tendency to push kids beyond their capabilities;
- the "violence of labeling," the tendency to call normal childish behaviour pathological; and
- the "violence of representation," the exploitation of children by opportunistic marketers, politicians, and well-meaning advocacy groups.

Today's society is child-obsessed. But whether contemporary society is child-friendly is another matter. We now have a private obsession with perfecting our own children. And this obsession has come at a cost. It has restricted children's geography and play and has transformed childhood from a time of risk, experimentation, and freedom into a rigorously monitored and structured stage of life.

Our challenge is to allow childhood to be an odyssey of self-discovery, not merely preparation for a premature adulthood.

Apart from slandering Jewish mothers, Mr. Mintz misses the whole point. It isn’t just that we are overly-protective of our children. It is that the collapse of the spiritual and moral in modern life has left many of us unable to see any difference between raising our children and taking care of our cars.