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From what I've seen, parents aren't parenting like they used to. Mom and dad, if they're even in the same household, often both work full-time jobs. These fun

From what I've seen, parents aren't parenting like they used to. Mom and dad, if they're even in the same household, often both work full-time jobs. These fundamental changes in the average family have consequences.

sudouser 8y ago
interesting viewpoint, hadn’t thought much about it but hits a big issue. So, now instead of mom or grandma watching and teaching the kid(s), it’s youtube and its infinite content
- sudouser 8y ago
  more thoughts: tv is pretty different from youtube-instagram-facebook-etc in the sense that tv (for our generation) we could only watch was on on one tv, or find something else to do. now kids can watch anything anywhere! tvs, tablets and phones make it possible to visit youtube and facebook for hours and hours with no end...
DoreenMichele 8y ago
I was a full-time mom for a lot of years. I say such things to my adult sons. Trying to say it on HN tends to go bad places. It isn't politically correct to observe that the lack of time to parent could negatively impact parenting. No matter how neutrally I say it or how carefully I word it, I am inevitably accused of sexism, as if my position is "Women should all be barefoot and pregnant." Oy.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
astura 8y ago
Except parents actually spend MORE time parenting now then they ever did in the past. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/09/30/parents-spend-more-time-children-now-than-they-did-50-years-ago/91263880/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/09/30/pa... I hardly ever spent any time with my parents growing up, I spent the vast majority of the time playing either alone or with friends or siblings either outside or in another room. Same with my peers, I never even met half my friend's parents, ever. Parents today seem absolutely obsessed with spending massive amounts of time with their children, something I simply cannot understand. Just doesn't seem healthy to me.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  Even if as a child, neither of your parents are actively engaged with you throughout the day - if they have created a healthy and controlled, calm and constructive environment with positive influences in the parts of the home accessible to you, and leave you to explore that environment, they are performing an important parental duty. What your article focuses on is time actively spent engaged with the child. I would argue that there is a pressure for today's working parents to concentrate their parental influence in what little window of time their conscious children are actually in their vicinity. This results in what ostensibly appears to be more time spent parenting, viewed through the lens of the article. Active engagement with children is a small fraction of the role a parent plays. If you focus on measuring this as some kind of metric representing quantity of parenting, you're missing the majority of what actually matters. What I often see is parents these days trying to be pals with their kids. That's not parenting, and frequently they are at a total loss of how to actually discipline their children when things go awry because they've positioned themselves so poorly as some kind of peer. When your kids spend most of their time in environments outside of your control, then the little time you all share together is spent with a strong bias towards being fun and happy together like buddies because the window of opportunity to actively maintain that relationship is so abbreviated, you're not doing much parenting.
  - astura 8y ago
    >What I often see is parents these days trying to be pals with their kids. That's not parenting, and frequently they are at a total loss of how to actually discipline their children when things go awry because they've positioned themselves so poorly as some kind of peer. I agree, and I agree that's a huge issue, but it has absolutely ZERO to do with "mom and dad, if they're even in the same household, often both work full-time jobs." Trying to be buddies/peers with your kids is a generational thing, not a working parent thing. The rate of stay at home mothers has been on the rise since the 90s anyway. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/04/08/after-decades-of-decline-a-rise-in-stay-at-home-mothers/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/04/08/after-decades-of-d... >When your kids spend most of their time in environments outside of your control, then the little time you all share together is spent with a strong bias towards being fun and happy together like buddies because the window of opportunity to actively maintain that relationship is so abbreviated, you're not doing much parenting. Oh, come on, that's total and complete nonsense. The people I know who try to be buddies with their kids the most are stay at home parents. Most of the stay at home parents I know become obsessed with pleasing their children. Then the working parent comes home to bratty children and it destroys the marriage. That's just my experience, but its true that parents whose household duties are performed by only one person are much more likely to divorce. Of course, it should be no surprise that the sheer quantity of time you spend with your children doesn't matter, quality trumps quantity: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/making-time-for-kids-study-says-quality-trumps-quantity/2015/03/28/10813192-d378-11e4-8fce-3941fc548f1c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/making-time-for-kids-st... https://qz.com/717960/the-toxic-myth-that-working-moms-fail-their-kids-is-fueled-by-decades-old-bad-science/ https://qz.com/717960/the-toxic-myth-that-working-moms-fail-... Lets not forget that children do better as adults when their moms work https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/kids-benefit-from-having-a-working-mom https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/kids-benefit-from-having-a-workin... http://www.businessinsider.com/benefits-working-moms-2011-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/benefits-working-moms-2011-7 Not only that, but its extremely disingenuous to say that environments that are physically away from you "out of your control." Of course that isn't true, you have a huge amount of control over the places you bring your children. You can't control 100% of what happens when you are physically present with your children anyways. If you're going around trying to micromanage your kids lives you've already failed.

sudouser 8y ago

interesting viewpoint, hadn’t thought much about it but hits a big issue. So, now instead of mom or grandma watching and teaching the kid(s), it’s youtube and its infinite content

sudouser 8y ago
more thoughts: tv is pretty different from youtube-instagram-facebook-etc in the sense that tv (for our generation) we could only watch was on on one tv, or find something else to do. now kids can watch anything anywhere! tvs, tablets and phones make it possible to visit youtube and facebook for hours and hours with no end...

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I was a full-time mom for a lot of years. I say such things to my adult sons. Trying to say it on HN tends to go bad places. It isn't politically correct to observe that the lack of time to parent could negatively impact parenting. No matter how neutrally I say it or how carefully I word it, I am inevitably accused of sexism, as if my position is "Women should all be barefoot and pregnant." Oy.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

astura 8y ago

Except parents actually spend MORE time parenting now then they ever did in the past. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/09/30/parents-spend-more-time-children-now-than-they-did-50-years-ago/91263880/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/09/30/pa... I hardly ever spent any time with my parents growing up, I spent the vast majority of the time playing either alone or with friends or siblings either outside or in another room. Same with my peers, I never even met half my friend's parents, ever. Parents today seem absolutely obsessed with spending massive amounts of time with their children, something I simply cannot understand. Just doesn't seem healthy to me.

newnewpdro 8y ago
Even if as a child, neither of your parents are actively engaged with you throughout the day - if they have created a healthy and controlled, calm and constructive environment with positive influences in the parts of the home accessible to you, and leave you to explore that environment, they are performing an important parental duty. What your article focuses on is time actively spent engaged with the child. I would argue that there is a pressure for today's working parents to concentrate their parental influence in what little window of time their conscious children are actually in their vicinity. This results in what ostensibly appears to be more time spent parenting, viewed through the lens of the article. Active engagement with children is a small fraction of the role a parent plays. If you focus on measuring this as some kind of metric representing quantity of parenting, you're missing the majority of what actually matters. What I often see is parents these days trying to be pals with their kids. That's not parenting, and frequently they are at a total loss of how to actually discipline their children when things go awry because they've positioned themselves so poorly as some kind of peer. When your kids spend most of their time in environments outside of your control, then the little time you all share together is spent with a strong bias towards being fun and happy together like buddies because the window of opportunity to actively maintain that relationship is so abbreviated, you're not doing much parenting.
- astura 8y ago
  >What I often see is parents these days trying to be pals with their kids. That's not parenting, and frequently they are at a total loss of how to actually discipline their children when things go awry because they've positioned themselves so poorly as some kind of peer. I agree, and I agree that's a huge issue, but it has absolutely ZERO to do with "mom and dad, if they're even in the same household, often both work full-time jobs." Trying to be buddies/peers with your kids is a generational thing, not a working parent thing. The rate of stay at home mothers has been on the rise since the 90s anyway. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/04/08/after-decades-of-decline-a-rise-in-stay-at-home-mothers/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/04/08/after-decades-of-d... >When your kids spend most of their time in environments outside of your control, then the little time you all share together is spent with a strong bias towards being fun and happy together like buddies because the window of opportunity to actively maintain that relationship is so abbreviated, you're not doing much parenting. Oh, come on, that's total and complete nonsense. The people I know who try to be buddies with their kids the most are stay at home parents. Most of the stay at home parents I know become obsessed with pleasing their children. Then the working parent comes home to bratty children and it destroys the marriage. That's just my experience, but its true that parents whose household duties are performed by only one person are much more likely to divorce. Of course, it should be no surprise that the sheer quantity of time you spend with your children doesn't matter, quality trumps quantity: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/making-time-for-kids-study-says-quality-trumps-quantity/2015/03/28/10813192-d378-11e4-8fce-3941fc548f1c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/making-time-for-kids-st... https://qz.com/717960/the-toxic-myth-that-working-moms-fail-their-kids-is-fueled-by-decades-old-bad-science/ https://qz.com/717960/the-toxic-myth-that-working-moms-fail-... Lets not forget that children do better as adults when their moms work https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/kids-benefit-from-having-a-working-mom https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/kids-benefit-from-having-a-workin... http://www.businessinsider.com/benefits-working-moms-2011-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/benefits-working-moms-2011-7 Not only that, but its extremely disingenuous to say that environments that are physically away from you "out of your control." Of course that isn't true, you have a huge amount of control over the places you bring your children. You can't control 100% of what happens when you are physically present with your children anyways. If you're going around trying to micromanage your kids lives you've already failed.