If you keep an eye on the social media of working adults, you’ll undoubtably find many an article that relates to how parents are letting their kids down by not preparing them enough for the real world. These articles might be about the decline in quality of academic institutions as students are treated more like fragile puppies than adults or the article might be about how parents are attending their children’s job interviews, but these articles are all pointing to the same general issue. The issue is parents are giving their kids Peter Pan Syndrome and thus the parents are failing both their children as well as society. So we are to point the finger of shame at them and reprimand them for their selfish failure. But we never stop to ask if there is a good reason for why they’re doing this.
There are some hard truths here that seems to be either lost in translation or simply overlooked. But after spending time with these parents who are deemed social failures and responsible for so many future societal woes, I’d like to offer some tea and sympathy. Here’s what I mean:
Parents are not doing this because they’re disconnected from the real world; parents are doing this because they’ve seen their son/daughter taken advantage of.
Parents have seen their child overlooked, beat up, picked on, treated less than, or hurt and justice was not served. Parents have seen their children miss out on opportunities because of things like cronyism or systemic disadvantage - problems no fault of their child. The parent knows the feeling of powerlessness and unfairness that both they and their children have faced. If they have the power to make things right or to call out unprompted favoritism, why shouldn’t they do what is in their power to help?
Parents know that the pressure for their child to succeed has never been so heavy.
This idea is nothing new but the degree and strength of it is socially unfamiliar. The expectations on a human being to have their personal, academic, relational, financial, social, occupational, romantic, and psychological life on point is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. And let us not forget that not only do these have to be achieved but we also must maintain all these things constantly. The level of difficulty is so absurdly challenging that it should leave us as a society speechless. No mere human being could be expected to hold all this - only a machine could do that.
Parents know that adulthood turns people into powerplants
Most people remember their childhood fondly. It was filled with a mysterious beauty and adoration that becomes difficult to find once in adulthood. Childhood is the hot bed of beautiful memories and joy at the simplest things. Adulthood is often filled with business, busyness, hustle, bustle, anguish, frustration, powerlessness, depression, and slow decay. Adulthood is smothering and our socio-political system has reinforced that adulthood is little more than a production-assembly line. For many adults it feels like their worth/value is tied directly to their production and this should be viewed with a great sadness and despair.
There is little room for enjoyment for adults; there is only room for productivity. We work, we fight, we work, we fight, we work, we fight we work…… And what parent would want their child to have to face this sooner than they have to? What parent would want their child to lose their love of life so swiftly and cruelly?
I can cast no stones at these parents who seem to over-protect. They want their child to live a life of joy and happiness and security because they know that adulthood values so little of this for them.