In August, Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs hosted a gala to celebrate the 1,000th episode of the popular audio drama “Adventures in Odyssey.” The event sold out well in advance, with more than 6,000 people visiting the decorated “Whit” replica and attending two live recordings.
One of the reasons Adventures in Odyssey means so much to so many people is its enduring premise: a setting almost unimaginable in today’s real world. At this small-town ice cream shop/Discovery Emporium, the children receive spiritual advice from Mr. Whittaker, a wise old inventor. It’s a safe place of independence.
In contrast, American children today enjoy far less unsupervised freedom. Instead, a strict “helicopter” parenting style is adopted, often outsourced to those who can provide the ongoing supervision that we consider ideal. This may be why we often hear about how intensive, expensive, and time-consuming parenting will be in 2024.
How we got here is a complicated story, but psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt and researcher Peter Gray believe that the rise of high-intensity, high-anxiety parenting has been tough on children. It is claimed that Children who are unable to choose and organize activities that are not micromanaged by adults have poorer executive function, emotional regulation, and social skills, and are less happy as adults.
Raising children with high levels of concentration was difficult for parents as well. Recently, demographer Lyman Stone compiled research he conducted in several countries on how parents report how they spend their time. Despite the widespread belief that today’s parents are more devoted and attentive to their children, researchers found that “there has been little overall change in demands on parents’ time.” …as Stone writes, “there appears to be no close correlation” between increased “child care” time and increased time parents spend “with their children.” ”
So why is it that even though modern parenting seems to be more demanding and there are fewer children than ever before, parents are still exhausted and “overwhelmed” with childcare duties? One possibility is that much of the “parenting” in previous generations took place in the community, on the playground, in the living room, around the grill, in church fellowship halls. It means that it was. A big factor, Stone said, especially for mothers, is the loss of playdates.
The amount of time mothers spend with friends has declined by nearly 50% since the early 2000s, and the amount of time mothers spend with friends who are also mothers has declined even more rapidly. In the 2000s and 2010s, “the average mother could expect to spend about 1.2 hours a week with her children and friends (and perhaps another mother),” but “now they can only spend about 30 minutes.” I have no expectations,” Stone wrote.
Ironically, this trend may be exacerbated not only by smartphones and social media replacing real-world communities, but also by the “intensity” of modern internet parenting. Ideas like “gentle parenting,” organic and health-conscious trends, and general worries about traumatizing children lead to fears of judgment from other parents. Therefore, many people refuse to take the risk of gathering in the first place.
As a result, many parents and children are deprived of the community that previous generations enjoyed. Not only is the independence and free play celebrated in Adventures in an Odyssey becoming increasingly rare, but the normal duties and demands of parenthood feel much heavier when carried alone. No wonder so many young Americans say they don’t want children. Of course, there are many reasons for this trend: cultural, economic, political, and even spiritual. Still, it’s no wonder those who choose to raise children face such unprecedented isolation, pressure, and fear of making a mistake.
This is another area where Christians can be “weird,” as historian Tom Holland puts it. One very practical thing we can do to restore a family-oriented, prenatal culture is to stop trying to parent alone. As Tim Carney of the American Enterprise Institute jokes in his book Unkind to Families, we need more groups of parents where no one watches their children.
Of course, he means, in a sense, an assembly where everyone watches over the children. Research on child development shows that unsupervised play can be beneficial, and in the end, keeping kids away from adventures, whether it’s Odyssey or any other town, can do more harm than good. It is known to be highly sensitive. One of the easiest ways for Christians to follow the Apostle Paul’s command to “bear one another’s burdens” may be to make parenting a little less lonely.
From breakpoint on September 17, 2024. Reprinted with permission from the Colson Center, breakpoint.org.
