This is an interesting article by Joseph Epstein in the Weekly Standard - The Kindergarchy: Every Child a Dauphin. I don't agree with all of his premises, but I do tend to agree that children are far too pampered, and that they lack clear and necessary boundaries. [More below.]
Here is a lengthy passage:
One of the direct results of the 1960s was that the culture put a new premium on youthfulness; adulthood, as it had hitherto been perceived, was on the way out, beginning with clothes and ending with personal conduct. Everyone, even people with children and other adult responsibilities, wanted to continue to think of himself as still young, often well into his 40s and 50s. One of the consequences of this was that one shied away from the old parental role of authority figure, dealing out rewards and punishments and passing on knowledge, somewhat distant, carefully rationing out intimacy, establishing one's solidity and strength. Suddenly parents wanted their children to think of them as, if not exactly contemporaries, then as friends, pals, fun people. Parents of my own parents' generation may have been more or less kind, generous, humorous, warm, but, however attractive, they never thought of themselves as their children's friends. When your son becomes a man (or your daughter a woman), make him (or her) your brother (or sister), an old Arab proverb has it. But it's probably a serious mistake to make a kid of 9 or 14 your brother or sister.
Childrearing became a highly self-conscious activity, in all of its facets. Husbands were now called in not merely to help out with childrearing but in actual childbirth. They went to Lamaze classes with their wives; there they were, not infrequently videocam in hand, in the delivery room cheerleading and rehearsing breathing exercises with their laboring wives. Pregnant women were advised not to smoke, not to drink, not to do a great many other things that generations of expectant mothers had always done, lest their children pay the price in ill-health, if not actual birth defects.
A child being the most dear of all possessions, instructions--maintenance manuals, really--for his or her early upbringing were everywhere. Pacific mobiles swayed gently over cribs, nursery rooms were designed with the kind of care devoted to the direct descendants of the Sun King--and why not, for every child suddenly became his or her own dauphin or dauphine. In the background the music of Mozart--so good, parents were told, for heightening the intelligence quotient--played on at just the right volume. Impossible to be too careful about these matters, when so much was at stake.
"Children are best seen not heard," was a maxim once in frequent use. "Speak only when spoken to," was another piece of advice regularly issued to children. Now kids are encouraged to come forth, as soon and as frequently as they wish, to demonstrate their brightness, cuteness, creativity. A few years ago, I found it noteworthy (and still memorable) that when on the phone with an editor I was dealing with--he was working at home at the time--he said to his daughter, "Faith, don't disturb Daddy right now. He's working." Most people today would have put one on hold or offered to call back later. Kids, after all, come first.
On visits to the homes of friends with small children, one finds their toys strewn everywhere, their drawings on the refrigerator, television sets turned to their shows. Parents in this context seem less than secondary, little more than indentured servants. Under the Kindergarchy, all arrangements are centered on children: their schooling, their lessons, their predilections, their care and feeding and general high maintenance--children are the name of the game.
No other generations of kids have been so curried and cultivated, so pampered and primed, though primed for what exactly is a bit unclear. Children are given a voice in lots of decisions formerly not up for their consideration. "If it's your child, not you, who gets to choose your weekend brunch spot," writes David Hochman in the magazine Details, "or if he's the one asking how the branzino is prepared, it's probably time to take a hard look at your own behavior."
I'm not a parent and I have never really had any desire to have children, so a lot of this is foreign to me. On the other hand, I have a lot of opinions of what good parenting might look like as a result of having grown up with, at best, mediocre parents. They did the best they could, but both of them came from messed up backgrounds and had lots of "issues," as we now say.
What I see among some of my [former] clients who have kids, however, is a near-total lack of boundaries. Many of these kids eat whatever they want, and they dictate the meal choices. That never happened in my house, and any attempt to do so would have resulted in missing that meal while I sat in my room thinking about what I had done.
There's lots of love and every desire to see their kids succeed, but there is also a near complete unwillingness to allow them to learn through failing. They are sheltered from doing anything that might damage their self-esteem. That might sound good on paper, but if they don't learn how to weather mistakes and deal with failure, the "real world" is going to be a damn harsh awakening, for which they will be ill-prepared.
I'm a huge fan of parents spending time with their kids, especially fathers (since I never had that), and I like that they are so concerned about their kids' success in life. But I also think kids need to be able to make some decisions on their own (including bad decisions that they can learn from), and to have clear (and clearly enforced) boundaries.
What I am seeing, however, is a new generation that will make the narcissism of the Boomers seem like child's play.
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