The Myth of the Spoiled Child

by Alfie Kohn

  But why do we overgeneralize from some experiences and not others? One reason is suggested by confirmation bias: the tendency to notice and remember those events that validate what we already believe. As a result, we become even more committed to those beliefs—regardless of whether they’re true. If you’re convinced that teenagers are selfish jerks, or that parents are wishy-washy, you’ll attend disproportionately to occurrences that support those beliefs while swearing that you’re just an objective observer of reality. “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest,” as Paul Simon put it.

  A different sort of delusion, one more closely related to the “Generation Me” myth, occurs when your attitudes shift as your life changes, yet you find it easier to attribute those shifts to external forces: Hey, don’t look at me; it’s the world that’s going to hell. “The belief that society is changing for the worse . . . has been evident in every generation of the United States since the late 18th century,” one group of researchers wrote. What’s interesting is that this belief actually reveals more about “unrecognized changes in the self” than it does about society. Young adults who become parents may suddenly become convinced the crime rate has increased, even when it hasn’t. Older adults whose reflexes and coordination have declined may think other drivers have become more reckless, even when there’s no evidence that’s true. And the conviction that everything’s getting worse is associated with people who, for whatever reason, have become more conservative.

  “When people fail to realize that personal changes are the source of their perceptions of decline,” the same researchers continued, “they are open to conservative movements that treat these perceptions as though they are real, offering their own explanations for decline and proposing reactionary solutions.” There’s no shortage of examples of this phenomenon, but the way children and parenting are viewed certainly number among the most compelling.19

  Beyond these general glitches in logic, other errors are specific to parenting. These consist of failing to make important distinctions—treating separate ideas (about how parents or children act, or about how they ought to act) as though they were interchangeable. One example we’ve already encountered is mistaking differences among developmental stages (self-absorption in young people) for differences among cohorts (self-absorption in today’s young people). Here are a few more.

  Confusing two kinds of spoiling. Some parents shower their children with possessions, buying toys and clothes and digital devices for them even when their bedrooms are already crammed to the point of bursting. But that’s entirely different from the kind of spoiling that interests us here, which is said to result from comforting babies when they cry, allowing children to challenge our requests, frequently acceding to their requests, and so on. To apply a single label (“spoiling”) to both phenomena isn’t just sloppy; it also increases the likelihood that responsiveness will be condemned along with materialism. As a matter of fact, some parents who give their children too many things also give them too little time and affection—a very different pattern from what’s usually classified as permissiveness or indulgence.

  Confusing respect with deference. Author Wendy Mogel can barely contain her indignation about parents who “actually feel guilty about demanding respect from their children”!20 Her twin assumptions, which many others hold as well, are that kids have an obligation to be respectful and that parents who fail to insist on this are permissive pushovers.

  But what is meant by respect? (1) Does it refer to treating others decently rather than rudely? In that case, sure, everyone should be respectful of everyone else—although demanding this, let alone enforcing such demands with threats, is hardly an effective strategy for making it happen. (2) Does it refer to an appreciation for the qualities of a particular person, such as courage or compassion? If so, then it’s absurd to insist that children feel this way about someone just by virtue of age or position. (3) Does it refer to showing deference and even fear? This is the only sense in which “respect” can be compelled, and on closer inspection it does seem to be what some people are looking for. “Your child has a chance to demonstrate how much she honors you by cooperating promptly and without a fuss.”21 This is a demand for mindless obedience dressed up with a word that’s more . . . respectable. (As Albert Camus put it, “Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.”)

  Now imagine a parent who tries to teach children the importance of showing respect in sense 1 (for all people), who tries to prove worthy of respect in sense 2, and who avoids demanding “respect” in sense 3. Is such a parent admirable or a shameful example of how our culture has lost its way? Those of us who vote for “admirable” may notice how rarely respect (in sense 1) is shown to children. Face it: Kids’ objections are routinely dismissed by adults; their perspectives are seldom taken seriously; they are interrupted at will and frequently addressed in a tone that parents would never permit anyone to use with them. Such treatment isn’t just common; it’s expected—to the point that it seems a little odd even to talk about “treating children (dis)respectfully.” We’re not used to applying that word to children, only to adults. By the way they treat children, many traditionally minded parents are also setting an example of disrespectful behavior for them—and are likely to be outraged if the children proceed to imitate what they’ve seen.

  Confusing working-with parenting with permissiveness. Earlier, I argued that permissiveness and authoritarian parenting don’t exhaust the possibilities. Just because we’re strongly opposed to the first doesn’t commit us to accepting the second. Similarly, just because a parent isn’t at all authoritarian doesn’t necessarily mean he or she is permissive. Yet many people make precisely these assumptions.

  It takes talent and time, care and courage to raise one’s children in the way that I’ve described as “working with,” but I regularly receive mail from parents who strive to do so and are dismayed to find themselves accused of negligence. In a doing-to culture, such parenting is confused with letting kids do whatever they want. Likewise, those who endorse a respectful approach to parenting are tagged as apologists for permissiveness, even though that is not at all their position.22

  This confusion might also be described as the product of a false dichotomy, one in which a complete absence of limits is assumed to be the only alternative to traditional parenting: If we’re not dictating and punishing, then we must be saying toddlers are free to choose not to use a car seat. And presumably a child can—and, it’s assumed, in the absence of tight regulation and threats, will—lie, steal, hit, treat everyone maliciously, eat nothing but ice cream, and never go to bed. As one writer warns, “When we don’t train our children to behave, they train us to be their servants.”23 If you stretch the definition of “permissive” until it includes everyone who avoids spanking, or everyone who tries to talk with children when things go wrong, then you end up concluding, with Mark Penn, that permissive parenting is the norm in our society. It’s not unlike the way a dictator sees the world: Without martial law we have lawlessness; what you foreigners insist on calling “democracy” obviously isn’t the former, so it must be just a fancy term for the latter.

  By the same token, if there’s no room on your mental map of parenting possibilities for treating kids with respect and trying to minimize the assertion of power, then you might be inclined to accuse parents who do so of “thinking that children and parents are equals” or “trying to be their children’s friends.” (This is a variation of the idea that to “be the parent” is to be authoritarian. If you’re not authoritarian, you must be something other than a parent.) A child who wants to have some control over her life, meanwhile, may hear herself described as “manipulative,” and a mom or dad who supports her desire becomes “indulgent.”

  Ironically, it’s not only working-with parenting, but also the subtler methods of control I mentioned earlier, that are incorrectly characterized as permissive. Whatever one thinks of using guilt, or praise and other rewards, to con
trol children, such techniques are a far cry from a working-with approach—and they are worlds apart from coddling. But that may not be clear to someone who equates discipline with yelling, hitting, or coercion.

  UNCOVERING VALUES

  The optimistic implication of the preceding section is that a fear of spoiling, or an accusation of permissiveness, may be based on a simple misunderstanding—a misconceived definition, the conflation of two distinct ideas, the reduction of a rainbow of possibilities to black and white. Thus, all we’d need to do is sort out the differences between working-with and laissez-faire, or between disparate meanings of “spoiling” or “respect,” and the result will be fewer unfounded fears and accusations. Break out the champagne!

  But of course there’s more to it than that. In many instances what we’re faced with are not just errors but strong ideological convictions—about how kids ought to act or the proper role of a parent. Those convictions, in turn, are rooted in basic assumptions about human nature that are not so easily dislodged.

  Such values and assumptions express themselves in a variety of ways, beginning with deep-seated nostalgia—for a time when people sent handwritten thank-you notes and dressed up for airplane flights, when the kid next door offered to mow your lawn, when a roomful of students rose as one to greet their teacher with a chorus of “Good morning,

  Miss _____!” Indeed, most books that are filled with bitter complaints

  about spoiled, lazy, and materialistic kids consist of extended comparisons with the old days, when kids knew their place and worked hard.24 But of course, as we’ve seen, people have always pined for the good old days. “Did our cave-dwelling forbears feel nostalgia for the days before they were bipedal?” one biologist asks wryly. “Were hunter-gatherers convinced that swiping a gazelle from a lion was superior to that newfangled business of running it down yourself? And why stop there? Why not long to be aquatic, since life arose in the sea?”25

  Whence the perpetual appeal of yearning for an earlier time? One psychologist puts it down to the disorientation caused by rapid changes. An essayist, himself seventy-seven years old, observes that “grumpy old geezers have been complaining about the world going to hell in a hand-basket . . . since time-keeping began.” He speculates that they’re attempting to “soothe their regret at leaving” that world.26 But when children’s behavior and parenting are singled out for critical attention, something else may be going on. We need to look carefully at the way things ostensibly used to be and ask why they are regarded as more desirable.

  One feature commonly attributed to parents in the olden days is an insistence that children be “well behaved.” An emphasis on this characteristic suggests that behaviors—outward appearance and conformity with established rules of conduct—count for more than a person’s inner state. Kids are supposed to be polite, deferential, pleasant, self-controlled. They should avoid making a scene or developing a reputation as a troublemaker. Calls for a return to old-fashioned strictness are largely demands to create and enforce these qualities.

  Put it this way: If you were to make an argument against doing-to parenting, it’s unlikely that someone would challenge you by asking, “But if we stopped using rewards and punishments, how could we make sure that our kids will be happy, psychologically healthy, genuinely concerned about others, critical thinkers who will fight against injustice and work for social change?” Instead, you would probably hear, “No rewards and punishments?? Then how will we get our kids to do what they’re told, follow the rules, and take their place in a society where certain things will be expected of them whether they like it or not?” Indeed, there is evidence that greater concern about social conformity translates into more punitive and restrictive parenting.27 Conversely, as I’ll argue in chapter 8, those who want to raise kids who are willing to be nonconformists when the occasion calls for it have yet another reason to reject a “doing to” parenting style.

  Permissiveness is seen as objectionable because it’s believed that kids left to their own devices won’t turn out the way we’d like. It’s a particular set of goals, in other words, that animates traditional discipline. These goals require that children be monitored carefully, told exactly what to do, rewarded when they comply and punished when they don’t. This agenda suggests a fundamental distrust of children (and perhaps of people in general), which indeed seems to waft off the pages of many parenting resources as well as writings about character education and discipline at school.28 The author of a book called The Pampered Child Syndrome, for example, describes kids as “experts” at exploiting us and twisting our good intentions to their own selfish purposes. We may “want our children to express their feelings and be heard,” but that sentiment will just be interpreted by them to mean “I should never do anything unless I feel like doing it.”29

  If you believe that we need to crack down on young reprobates—and keep a close watch on all children since any of them will likely turn into a reprobate given half a chance—then you will be appalled by parents who allow children too much freedom. In fact, a child’s demand for freedom strikes some people as disturbing in itself, which is why so many seem determined to take kids down a peg, rein them in, teach them their place. This impulse is sometimes rationalized as being for the benefit of the child (“Better to learn now that the real world isn’t going to coddle you!”), but people who talk this way seem to harbor a resentment of children and a resistance to allowing them to make their own decisions that has very little to do with what’s in the best interests of the children themselves.

  To lay the groundwork for recommendations rooted more in “doing to” than “working with,” it’s necessary to convince oneself and others that children at present are not controlled enough. “Description is prescription,” the conservative columnist David Brooks observed. “If you can get people to see the world as you do, you have unwittingly framed every subsequent choice.”30 If we can keep up the pretense that adults are too permissive with children, then we’re more likely to accept the recommendation that what children really need is . . . more control.

  Perhaps we can make sense of such attitudes by understanding them in a wider social context. Could it be that it’s not only kids who are seen as too big for their britches, that they represent one of several constituencies that wants more than they’ve traditionally been permitted? Privileges have been reserved for some and not others, of course, so maybe parenting is just another stage on which the slow, fitful struggle to make our society more egalitarian and inclusive is played out. Time was when African Americans paid a steep price for being uppity and not knowing their place. Women were expected to be satisfied with second-class jobs and smaller paychecks; those who spoke out about lack of opportunities, or the assumption that they had to play a caretaker role even at work, were described as shrill and pushy—or worse. Gays had to keep their identity a secret, and their desire to marry their life partners prompted an outpouring of rage as if the institution of marriage itself would somehow be imperiled.

  Alongside race, gender, and sexual orientation, there is age—with discrimination not only of seniors but of, well, juniors. Of course some limits, based on lack of maturity, are reasonable, but one of the most entrenched norms in our society is that kids should shut up and do what they’re told; whether what they’ve been told is reasonable doesn’t even figure into it. Thus, what is portrayed as narcissism or entitlement—and blamed on the reliable bogeyman of permissive parenting—may really constitute something as simple as a demand on the part of young people to have some say about their lives and to be treated with respect.

  To identify the primary problem with parenting as overindulgence—which traditionalists have done for centuries—is not only to distort reality but to change things for the worse by encouraging an acceleration of harmful practices and discouraging parents from doing what makes sense. We’re left wondering how many children have failed to get what they need because their parents were terrified of being regarded as insufficiently
firm.

  CHAPTER 3

  Overstating Overparenting

  Contemporary parents, we’re told, are screwing up their kids in two distinct ways. First, they give in too readily, let children get away with too much, and fail to set limits. Those, of course, are the charges that have occupied us up to this point in the book. The second complaint, to which we now turn our attention, is that parents are overly solicitous: They do too much for their kids, shielding them from the hard knocks of life. From this perspective, a wide-angle view of our society reveals a landscape dotted with millions of well-meaning but misguided moms and dads who are—pick your metaphor—hovering over their children, raising them in a bubble, or cushioning them from unpleasant circumstances. Again and again we’re warned that kids are being “overparented” and therefore that they aren’t prepared for the harsh realities of adulthood.

  These two narratives are very different from one another. To say that parents are permissive with their kids (“Do whatever you want”) is obviously not the same as saying that they’re too involved in their kids’ lives (“Here, let me do that for you”). Indeed, it takes some mental gymnastics to explain how they could be guilty of both, particularly if permissiveness is understood as a kind of “underparenting.”

  Viewed from another perspective, though, the two accusations may be related. What matters is the reason parents are thought to be too protective and involved. If it’s because they want to indulge or coddle their kids, then that begins to look like a form of permissiveness. Whether that really is the best way of understanding what’s going on is a question to which we’ll return. But regardless of whether the two narratives can be reconciled, one feature they clearly share is popularity. Both have been repeated so frequently that their accuracy has come to be taken for granted.