by Bryan Caplan
I’m not advising people to put their kids in front of the television and forget about them. My wife and I don’t let ours watch more than an hour or two a day, because we don’t want them to miss out on the other joys of childhood. I’m merely suggesting pragmatic adjustments in the way that families spend their time. If parents feel exhausted by their kids’ busy schedule, they should trim a few hours of activities from their week—even if their kids spend most of their extra hours on TV and video games. The parents will be happier, and the kids will probably be happier, too.
The case for fewer family activities is especially strong when you’ve got teenagers. Parents and teens habitually complain about each other. Teens say parents are mean and controlling, parents say teens are hostile and ungrateful. These mutual recriminations suggest that parents and teenagers spend too much time together. When your teenager feels like a prisoner, and treats you like a jailer, less is more.
Family vacations are another nightmare for millions of parents. Why pay thousands of dollars for the worst week of your year? Children may appreciate their parents’ sacrifices of cash and sanity, but don’t count on it. The typical kid is not a fan of long car rides and museums. Most pathetic of all is when aggravated parents let down their masks and scream—giving their kids truly ugly “memories that last a lifetime.”
Fewer days and shorter distances would improve most family vacations, but my personal favorite is the parents-only getaway. If kids prevent their parents from enjoying a trip and won’t appreciate it themselves, including them is a bad idea. Getaways are mainly an option for families with helpful grandparents, but many parents stubbornly turn down their elders’ repeated offers to watch the kids for a few days. They successfully raised you to adulthood. What are you so worried about?
If you insist on family bonding, try a “staycation.” Instead of driving for hours and cramming the whole family into a tent or hotel room, stay home together. Every day, you enjoy your regional attractions—then relax in your own home while your kids relax in their own rooms. Staycations are ideal for residents in major tourist areas; I grew up in Los Angeles but never saw Hollywood’s Walk of Fame until I was in my thirties. Given the hazards of the family vacation, however, a staycation is worth a try even in the middle of nowhere.
DISCIPLINE
Parents have always made excuses for discipline: “This is for your own good.” “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.” These excuses may sound phony, but Today’s Typical Parents actually buy their own propaganda. Benefit to the child is almost the only socially acceptable justification for discipline. As a result, parents use a lot less discipline than they would if they counted their own interests.
I can’t forget the day I saw a father allow his five-year-old daughter to punch and kick him. She struck hard and often. I felt like I was watching a villain in a bad kung fu movie called Fists and Feet of Fury. The dad outweighed his daughter by over a hundred pounds, but all he did to defend himself was say, “Now, now. There, there.”
You could blame the dad for retarding his daughter’s social skills, but that’s arguable. Her social skills were very impressive for a five-year-old. She didn’t try to punch or kick anyone else at the party. She knew that different people have different rules—and only her parents would endure her abuse. What’s not arguable is that the father was hurting himself with bad parenting. He had the bruises to prove it.
Parents who want a happier life need to rethink the justification for discipline. The welfare of the child is one legitimate goal. If your toddler runs into the street, zero tolerance really is for his own good. But the child’s welfare is only the beginning. Another legitimate function of discipline is to keep the child from abusing the people around him—and no one is more susceptible to a child’s abuse than his own parents. Your kid knows where you live. You’re stuck with him, and he knows it. He also knows that you love him, so you’re inclined to forgive him his trespasses. Armed with these advantages, your child can make your life awful—unless you stand up for yourself.
The smart disciplinary adjustment to make is just the wisdom of the ages: Clarity, Consistency, and Consequences. Adopt firm rules, clearly explain the penalties for breaking the rules, and impose promised penalties to the letter. If your child punches or kicks you, you’ve got to tell your child that it’s against the rules and that the punishment for transgression is, say, one day without television. Every time your child breaks the rule, harden your heart and impose the punishment. Clear, consistent punishment isn’t foolproof, and some kids are tougher to crack than others, but it beats being a punching bag.
If you’re skeptical of the wisdom of the ages, there is solid experimental evidence in its favor. When parents ask psychologists to help control their children’s disobedience, tantrums, and aggression, psychologists often respond by training the parents. They call it “behavioral parent training,” but it’s Clarity, Consistency, and Consequences by another name. Researchers have run dozens of experiments to see whether behavioral parent training really works. It does. Suppose you have a list of parents who want help with their problem children. You randomly train some, and leave the rest on a waiting list. Experiments typically find that the average child of the trained parents behaves better than 80 percent of the children of the parents on the wait list. The main weakness of the training is parental backsliding: Once parents tire of Clarity, Consistency, and Consequences, their children go back to their old tricks. Discipline is like dieting: It works when tried.
When you’re trying to improve your kid’s behavior, other authorities—teachers, grandparents, nannies, and so on—often frustrate you by undermining your rules. What good is it to practice the Three Cs if no one else does? Selfishly speaking: Plenty of good. Kids quickly discover that different people have different rules. If the typical teenager treated his friends the way he treats his parents, he wouldn’t have any friends. A central criticism of behavioral parent training is that it “only” improves children’s behavior in the home. But an optimist would draw a different lesson: Parental discipline is enough to make children treat their parents decently. If other authorities in your child’s life have lower standards, that’s largely their problem.
One of the human child’s charming traits, by the way, is responsiveness to token punishments. You can scare kids straight by credibly threatening to take away one night’s TV or one dinner’s dessert. In fact, these wrist slaps often turn out to be overkill. When our twins were infants, I watched Supernanny in disbelief. The Supernanny, Jo Frost, punished monstrous children merely by putting them in the naughty corner—and their behavior sharply improved. Once my boys got a little older, I was shocked to discover that the naughty corner works. At least in my family, two minutes of mild humiliation was enough to deter nine out of ten toddler tantrums.
When I praise discipline, then, don’t imagine that I’m Captain von Trapp from The Sound of Music. I never spank my kids. I don’t even raise my voice to them. If I did, their behavior would probably be better still. But as I’ve said, “Parents count, too” doesn’t mean “Kids don’t count at all.” If I can sharply improve my quality of life by mildly punishing my kids, I’ll do so without apology. If cruelty is the price of slightly better behavior, I’m not buying.
SUPERVISION
When you google “Worst Mom in America,” journalist Lenore Skenazy is the first hit. Her offense: Letting her nine-year-old son ride the New York City subway by himself. The boy had a safe trip, enjoyed a taste of independence, and made it home in about an hour. Yet when Skenazy bragged about his odyssey on television, viewers were horrified—and she soon won her infamous title. Needless to say, Skenazy wears it as a joke. She wants to keep her progeny safe, too. She let her son ride the subway alone because he had years of practice and she knew the safety statistics. The point of her book, Free-Range Kids, is that children can handle—and would enjoy—a lot more independence than modern parents allow.
All this suggests an
other judicious way for parents to give themselves a break. More independent kids equal less parental supervision. If your kids want to stretch their wings, you don’t feel like supervising them, and everyone stays safe, go for it. Even if your kids lobby against more independence for themselves, there’s nothing wrong with balancing their mild separation anxiety against your desire for a little more space.
There are many thoughtful ways to safely cut back on parental supervision. No one raises “free-range babies,” but you don’t have to play with them during every waking moment. They often cry for attention because it works. If you have toddlers, gate off a small danger zone, then child-proof the rest of your home until you’re comfortable letting them play on their own for an hour.
Once you have school-age kids, chances to safely cut supervision are all around. Let them use public restrooms on their own, stay home alone while you go to the store, or watch the Chipmunks movie in Theater 3 while you enjoy a real movie in Theater 6. Letting your eight-year-old out of your sight may feel dangerous, but as we’ll see later on, popular fears of abduction are almost pure fantasy. Driving your third-grader to the store is vastly more dangerous than leaving him home without a bodyguard.
If you’re looking for more creative ways to supervise less, Skenazy’s Free-Range Kids is a gold mine. A few favorites:Volunteer to watch the kids who are waiting with your own kid for soccer to start or school to open—whatever. Explain to the other parents that you’re offering them a little free time. If they say no, ask them to watch your kid.
Think of one activity you did as a child that you are unwilling to let your own sweetheart do at the same age (baby-sitting, biking to a friend’s), and make a list of twenty things that could conceivably go wrong. If there are any worries that strike you as realistic, help your child prepare for them.
Have your middle schooler start doing a task that you would normally do, like taking the dog to the vet or buying the groceries for dinner.
Policing kids’ books, shows, movies, and games for “inappropriate content” is also usually a waste of time. Scariness is one thing. If your kid won’t be able to sleep after he watches Paranormal Activity, don’t let him. (But remember: Action is not horror. Violent movies rarely scare kids if the good guys win.) If your children imitate bad behavior they see on TV, denying access is poetic justice. Otherwise, relax. Whatever you do, your kids will see and hear it all long before it’s “age appropriate.”
IN PRAISE OF THROWING MONEY AT YOUR PROBLEMS
The day after my wife and I got married, we prepared for a crosscountry drive from Los Angeles to our new home in Princeton, New Jersey. Though we were eager for the honeymoon to begin, I spent four hours at my in-laws’ house struggling to change our Volkswagen’s oil. Meanwhile, my wife inventoried the wedding presents, including thousands of dollars in cash and checks. Yet it never crossed my mind to take $20 out of the gift box and drive to Jiffy-Lube. By the time the oil was changed and the car was packed, it was midnight—and I was ready to bang my head against the windshield.
The oil-change incident wasn’t merely a failure of common sense. We were moving to Princeton so I could finish my PhD in economics, yet the well-known fact that money can be exchanged for goods and services slipped my mind. My only excuse has to be some kind of post-wedding dementia. But at least I learned a lifelong lesson: Money can buy happiness if you spend it the right way.
When you’re tired, stressed, or disgusted, outsourcing your worst hours of child care can make your whole day. This may sound like “Let them eat cake,” but parents don’t need a lot of money to escape a lot of misery. Most Americans can afford a few more hours of babysitting a week. Even if the money only purchases a little extra free time on the weekend, the benefits are large, because the last hours of child care are the hardest. And many parents can afford much more. In 2005, over 15 percent of American families earned six-figure incomes. That’s roughly 18 million households with the income to hire a lot of help—up to and including a full-time nanny. One day, this could be you, if it isn’t already.
One hundred thousand dollars a year might not seem that rich to you, but it’s a question of priorities. Families earning six figures have plenty of fat to cut. If you have two kids, a part-time nanny will probably do more for your quality of life than a new car. If you’re feeling too short on cash to hire help, there are plenty of ways to cut the cost. A nanny doesn’t need fluent English or a driver’s license to provide loving care for your children. It’s a little less convenient, but costs half as much—and before long, your kids will be fluent translators.
Now that you’ve got your wallet out, consider a few other ways to turn your money into happiness. The obvious ones: Spend freely on take-out meals, electronic babysitters, and cleaning services; they’re a tired, stressed, disgusted parent’s best friends. Less obviously, and more controversially: When you want your kids’ help, nag them less and reward them more.
When I was a boy, my mom paid me a penny for every ten weeds I pulled. When I complained, she’d object, “You’re lucky to get paid at all. You live here, and you should contribute.” Just imagine how persuasive her lecture was. Under my mom’s slave-wage regime, she had to heavily nag me to lift a finger.
Now that I’m a dad, my mom’s penny-wise labor policies still strike me as pound foolish. Why should parents drive themselves crazy squeezing free labor out of their kids? Your boss doesn’t have to nag you to do your job. Instead, he makes you an offer—and if you don’t like it, you can quit. This seemingly cold system is far more harmonious in practice than “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
Don’t pay your children for every little thing. But when you want to give your kids a major project or a recurring chore, make it worth their while. Trading favors works well, especially for younger children. “If you eat your dinner without complaining, you get dessert,” “You can watch TV after you clean up your toys,” and “I’ll give you a ride to the mall if you put the dishes away” are all good options. At the same time, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with paying cash. You’re not trying to raise a communist.
If generous terms fall on deaf ears, you’re probably giving your kids too much for free. Handing out goodies to your kids “just because” is fun, but you shouldn’t expect a child with a $40 weekly allowance to be hungry for work. Instead of redoubling your nagging, turn a portion of your welfare into workfare.
Using money to make parenting easier isn’t just doable; it’s done. High-income parents actually seem to “buy” themselves less regret and more happiness. In the Newsday survey, only 4 percent of the richest parents regretted having children—compared to 13 percent of the poorest. In the General Social Survey, richer parents have a much smaller happiness deficit. In the poorer half, otherwise identical people with one child instead of zero are 6.6 percentage points less likely to be very happy. In the richer half, parents’ happiness deficit is only 3.6 percentage points.
You might look at these results and conclude, “Don’t have kids until you are financially secure.” Not bad advice, assuming fertility problems are far in the future. However, I’m making a totally different point: Rich parents successfully use money to make parenting easier—and the rest of us can profit by their example.
PROTECTING YOUR KIDS FROM SECONDHAND STRESS
“If mamma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” On the surface, the saying reminds us to be nice to mom, but there’s a deeper meaning: Beware of sacrifices for the good of the family. If you don’t feel like taking your kids on a ski trip, your bad mood could easily ruin the outing. On balance, your kids might be happier if you said no. They’ll feel disappointed, but at least they won’t be traumatized when you scream at them for changing the radio station. By the same logic, your child might be happier if you saw more movies alone on your way home from work. While you’d spend a little less time with your family, you’d have a better attitude during your time together.
Many par
ents worry about the dangers of secondhand smoke. But few consider the dangers of secondhand stress. If you make yourself miserable to do a special favor for your child, he might enjoy it. But if he senses your negative feelings, he might come to share them.
Secondhand stress is one of kids’ leading grievances. In the Ask the Children survey, researcher Ellen Galinsky interviewed over 1,000 kids in grades three to twelve and asked parents to guess how kids would respond. One key question: “If you were granted one wish to change the way that your mother’s/father’s work affects your life, what would that wish be?” Kids’ answers were striking. They rarely wished for extra face time with their parents. They were much more likely to wish their parents would be less tired and stressed. The parents were completely out of touch. Virtually none guessed that kids would use their one wish to give their parents a better attitude.
Galinsky also asked kids to grade their parents’ performance on a dozen dimensions. Overall, parents did pretty well. Moms had an overall GPA of 3.14, versus 2.98 for dads. A majority of moms and dads got As for “appreciating me for who I am,” “making me feel important and loved,” and “being able to attend important events in my life.” Anger management was parents’ Achilles’ heel. More than 40 percent of kids gave their moms and dads a C, D, or F for “controlling his/her temper when I do something that makes him/her angry”—the very worst marks on their report card.