Parenting Trends, Microtrends
Book Tracks Evolution of Permissive Parents and Future Implications
Jan 14, 2008
Parents are far more permissive now than just a generation ago, but their self image is that they’re strict.
In 1968, about 94 percent of Americans said it was okay to spank your kids. Today that percentage has dropped to 65 percent, and corporal punishment as a practice has drastically fallen out of favor.
The rise of pampering parents is one movement identified in Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes (The Twelve, 2007), a book by pollster, analyst and political adviser Mark J. Penn.
Parenting trends make up a fraction of Microtrends, which identifies some 70 microtrends in religion, leisure, politics, health, business, sex, technology and education. But the changes in parenting norms are some of the more identifiable for people with kids, Penn says.
“In the old days, kids just got the rod, or at least the riot act. Now they get picked up, timed-out, and negotiated with at great length. The jury is out on whether we’ll get a more nonviolent society, or more people unwilling to listen to authority.”
More than Microtrends
Penn and co-author E. Kinney Zalesne stop short of condemning the new permissive parent, but they acknowledge the consequences: “Pampering Parents may be more than a microtrend – this trend affects millions of parents, and has enormous societal implications,” Penn says.
Citing data from a variety of polls, studies and sources, Microtrends concludes:
- More permissive parents still believe they're strict with their children, and that other parents are too permissive.
- Few parents use new technology like V-chips and Internet blocking software.
- More parents are likely to "sit down and ask him why he feels that way" when faced with a situation such as a 9-year-old child screaming a curse word and saying he hates you, or a teen experimenting with illegal drugs.
Babies Sleep Schedules: Cry vs Comfort
In addition to the issues of disciplining children, Penn also polled parents on how they deal with their babies’ sleep issues. Since the early 1900s, parents were urged to set strict sleep schedules for their babies, even if it meant letting them “cry it out” during the night if they woke up. Dr. Spock’s more permissive movement in the 1950s said it was okay for parents to comfort their children at night, and then the pendulum swung back with Dr. Richard Ferber’s advice in the 1980s to let children cry at night through “progressive waiting.”
Today, according to Penn’s poll, a majority of parents think babies need to be comforted whenever they cry.
Parenting in the Spotlight
Penn’s book calls parenting one of the more controversial subjects these days.
“There you are, thinking you are joining the ranks of the blessed . . . and boom, where you really are is in the cross hairs of the parent experts and their disciples. Not planning to breastfeed? How selfish. Breastfeeding in public? How barbaric. Your child sleeps with you in bed? How co-dependent. You banished your baby to a crib? How unenlightened, how pathetically American.”
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