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Honestly, in my country (the Netherlands) this whole attitude changed within 1 generation. My parents left met largely alone with my school stuff. Now I hear al

Honestly, in my country (the Netherlands) this whole attitude changed within 1 generation. My parents left met largely alone with my school stuff. Now I hear all my friends complaining that their kid's school "is so much work" for them. Crazy right? When I ask them: Why help them at all (my kids are younger btw), they tell me that "sure we can just not help them, they won't make it into university (but something "lower"), whereas other kids that get help/coaching will." It's a super bad trend because the parent won't be around after school (during their adult life I mean) and in a way these parents are also taking something away from their kids, namely the feeling that they made it on their own merit. My generation is also known as "helicopter parents" and this is just another expression of it. Maybe because we have less kids later and those we have (often after fertility treatments) are our princesses and princes? Maybe because we have more time?

throwawaysleep 2y ago
> It's a super bad trend because the parent won't be around after school (during their adult life I mean) At least in North America, this has massively changed within a generation. By a lot. Virtually all of my social circle got help at a young age to buy big houses from their parents. Parents support kids for much longer. Kids live with their parents much longer. So yeah, the parents are now always there for people my age (mid 20s).
- wholinator2 2y ago
  Damn, none of my friends can even afford a house now, and there's definitely no parental help with _purchasing a home_. That's such an insanely large amount of money. Parents might help with kids from time to time but monetary assistance ended the moment we first graduated.
belter 2y ago
Your attitude will change as soon as you have an obviously smart pre-adolescent or adolescent kid, going through puberty and other hard times that come before and after, and deciding to viscerally reject school and study, as proxy for other hard upsetting things they have to deal with as you become an adult. You ready to let them mess up their future, in the name of not being called an helicopter parent?
fransje26 2y ago
Unless something drastically changed in the education system the last ten years, I wonder where all that perceived workload is coming from. Because 10 years back, the homework load, as expressed by the post high-school students I was hanging around with, was significantly lower than in some other European countries.
- teekert 2y ago
  Dutch youth is spending an average (!) of 5 hours and 45 minutes per day on digital media. That's some serious amount of time, putting pressure on everything else. I was always told: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of leisure. Sure, you have eating and commuting etc. But people nowadays have to take those 5+ hours attention they're giving away from somewhere.
  - fransje26 2y ago
    > Dutch youth is spending an average (!) of 5 hours and 45 minutes per day on digital media. I was wondering if something like that was at play. Well, here are some hard statistics. Thank you for that. > That's some serious amount of time It's a worrying and disturbing amount of time. Now, the question is: is more time wasted on digital media than was wasted on TV in the past? And secondly: does the current TV time come on top of that, or has TV simply been displaced to other media, and is therefore fully included in the 5 hours and 45 minutes?
    - rerdavies 2y ago
      And thirdly: would anyone complain if children were spending 5 hours and 45 minutes a day reading books? Watching television was much more toxic than digital media. Network television spoon fed content targeted at a lowest common denominator to everyone, that content was consumed passively. It was horrible. Digital media allows active selection of content, and provides access to much higher quality information, if you want it. Back in the day, you were lucky if your public library had even one book on a subject you were interested in, and if it did, it was probably mediocre at best. And highschool libaries? Pfft. Brittanica? Pathetic compared to Wikipedia. Today, kids have instant access to all of human knowledge as digital media. It's a false equivalency to compare TV time to digital media time.

throwawaysleep 2y ago

> It's a super bad trend because the parent won't be around after school (during their adult life I mean) At least in North America, this has massively changed within a generation. By a lot. Virtually all of my social circle got help at a young age to buy big houses from their parents. Parents support kids for much longer. Kids live with their parents much longer. So yeah, the parents are now always there for people my age (mid 20s).

wholinator2 2y ago
Damn, none of my friends can even afford a house now, and there's definitely no parental help with _purchasing a home_. That's such an insanely large amount of money. Parents might help with kids from time to time but monetary assistance ended the moment we first graduated.

belter 2y ago

Your attitude will change as soon as you have an obviously smart pre-adolescent or adolescent kid, going through puberty and other hard times that come before and after, and deciding to viscerally reject school and study, as proxy for other hard upsetting things they have to deal with as you become an adult. You ready to let them mess up their future, in the name of not being called an helicopter parent?

fransje26 2y ago

Unless something drastically changed in the education system the last ten years, I wonder where all that perceived workload is coming from. Because 10 years back, the homework load, as expressed by the post high-school students I was hanging around with, was significantly lower than in some other European countries.

teekert 2y ago
Dutch youth is spending an average (!) of 5 hours and 45 minutes per day on digital media. That's some serious amount of time, putting pressure on everything else. I was always told: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of leisure. Sure, you have eating and commuting etc. But people nowadays have to take those 5+ hours attention they're giving away from somewhere.
- fransje26 2y ago
  > Dutch youth is spending an average (!) of 5 hours and 45 minutes per day on digital media. I was wondering if something like that was at play. Well, here are some hard statistics. Thank you for that. > That's some serious amount of time It's a worrying and disturbing amount of time. Now, the question is: is more time wasted on digital media than was wasted on TV in the past? And secondly: does the current TV time come on top of that, or has TV simply been displaced to other media, and is therefore fully included in the 5 hours and 45 minutes?
  - rerdavies 2y ago
    And thirdly: would anyone complain if children were spending 5 hours and 45 minutes a day reading books? Watching television was much more toxic than digital media. Network television spoon fed content targeted at a lowest common denominator to everyone, that content was consumed passively. It was horrible. Digital media allows active selection of content, and provides access to much higher quality information, if you want it. Back in the day, you were lucky if your public library had even one book on a subject you were interested in, and if it did, it was probably mediocre at best. And highschool libaries? Pfft. Brittanica? Pathetic compared to Wikipedia. Today, kids have instant access to all of human knowledge as digital media. It's a false equivalency to compare TV time to digital media time.