One of the tricks of parenting, which is on its way to being forgotten, is to let kids grow up by facing challenges on their own. From Alex Berenson at alexberenson.substack.com:
One of the great social science paradoxes of the last decade is that young adults are objectively doing better than they ever have – but subjectively are less happy.
What I mean is this: Teenagers are less likely to get pregnant later than they were a generation ago. They drink less. They smoke less. Until about 2020, they were using far fewer drugs and committing less crime, and while drug use and crime has risen since then, it remains well below the previous peaks. The overdose crisis is awful, but it is driven mainly by fentanyl’s dangers, not a huge increase in opioid use overall.
Yet teenagers report being far more depressed than they previously were. And girls – who objectively are doing better than boys – report feeling even worse.
Researchers have offered lots of explanations for what’s happening – the rise of social media and online bullying, endless gloom about climate change, competitive pressure to get into a relative handful of top colleges.
But one theory gaining traction is that overparenting is a huge part of the problem. Many middle- and upper-class parents are no longer merely “helicopter” parents, hovering constantly. They’re “snowplow” parents, clearing obstacles before their kids even have to face them.
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If parents of today were to see how I was raised (along with two older brothers and a younger sister), they would be terrified. The liberties I was allowed, the freedom of movement, the challenges I overcame – physical, intellectual, relational – all of these served to foster independence, excellent problem solving skills, the capacity to learn, to remember and to inculcate a complete trust in my abilities and competence.
And I had Fun!