Parenting Is Now An Olympic Sport

What are the downstream consequences of this?

Came across this New York Times opinion piece by Michelle Goldberg (I think that’s her name).

She is essentially promoting Jonathan Haidt’s new book in this column. Haidt is most famous for The Coddling of the American Mind, as well as countless studies about phones in schools and anxious kids. I believe he still works at NYU, but he might be deep enough into the book-writing game that he said “peace” to higher education.

Here’s a pull quote from the column:

In “The Anxious Generation,” Haidt argues that while kids are under-protected on the internet, they’re over-protected in the real world, and that these two trends work in tandem. For a whole host of reasons — parental fear, overzealous child welfare departments, car-centric city planning — kids generally have a lot less freedom and independence than their parents did. Sitting at home in front of screens may keep them safe from certain physical harms, but it leaves them more vulnerable to psychological ones.

That’s an interesting dichotomy there, although I think most of us anecdotally know it’s true:

• Under-protected online

• Over-protected in real life

How did we get here?