Are today's parents overparenting or lazy parenting? Are they too involved and overprotective of their kids or are they too lax and permissive that many children develop behavioral problems early on?
Social expert Dr. Rebecca Huntley points out today's parents face both dilemmas. They get the blame for their kids' highly competitive behavior and social anxieties due to overparenting. They also get the blame for their kids' unruly and disrespectful behavior due to lazy parenting.
Huntley further cites today's moms and dads are "either too hands-off or too hands-on." No expert nor "authoritative data," however, qualifies what approach is better over the other, as per ABC News Australia.
Huntley believes the real problem in today's parenting styles isn't in overparenting or lazy parenting. The expert opines the actual problem is in moms or dads spending too much time discussing their parenting style among other parents, friends, families or discussion groups and yet these very same people proceed with approaches they know might affect their kids negatively.
The expert also points out parents make their lives and their kids' lives more complicated from following what they think parents must do. The end result is they become more anxious. They forget where the real focus should lie: in raising kids and preparing them for adulthood or for jobs in the future.
The fact is parenting approaches differ across families, communities, countries and cultures. Two things, however, remain universal in that first, all parents fail, and second, all parents struggle.
Parents comparing their handle on their kids versus other parents reiterates the idea that moms and dads are more focused on their approach rather than the effect. Once again, this dilemma points to anxious parenting more than anything else.
"We should not be anxious around our children, because that would make them, in turn, anxious," author Emma Beddington writes on The Guardian. She says parents must forget about following experts who have written parenting books and instead learn to trust their instincts.
