Parenting has changed, huh?
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Let’s see . . . take me back . . . when was parenting “great”? Was it in the early 1900s when kids were working, earning? Was it before child labor laws and child welfare laws? Was it when many kids didn’t persist past 8th grade? When teachers were simply high school graduates themselves with no specialized training? Was that the time we should aspire to return to?
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Or was it post-WWII when families were adjusting to the industrialization of America and women in the workforce? Or was parenting great when moms stayed at home in “traditional” gender roles with men coming home to dinner on the table and quiet children? Is that your image of when parenting was great? When we didn’t have compulsory education for all kids so many simply did not attend and no one cared?
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Was parenting great in the 60s, 70s, 80s when kids like me were raised on TV, parents who smoked in the house and in the car, and largely ignored us? We didn’t wear seat belts, no one read to us or played with us? Yes, we left our house from sun up to sun down but do you have any idea what was happening to us when we were banned from our houses for that idyllic childhood you so romanticize? Was that when parenting was great?
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Remind me how parenting has changed for the worse? Remind me when it was so great? Families have ALWAYS struggled in this country. Kids have long been neglected and abused. Generational poverty and making ends meet is a struggle for far too many.
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Now parents are TOO involved or not involved enough. Very rarely just the right amount of involvement, apparently? What motorized device are parents today? Are they helicopters or lawnmowers? Oh wait is it tiger? It’s hard to keep all the categorizations of ways in which parents aren’t doing it right straight. Maybe . . . just maybe . . . we could stop creating these flawed and insulting categories and start partnering with the families we have.
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Don’t tell me parenting has changed. It is incredibly hard to make it in this world and teachers, who are also working side hustles and second jobs to make ends meet, must be partners with families and communities. We don’t make progress when we demonize each other. Fight the systems. Fight the policies. Not each other.