We should all clean our desk now and then; I just stumbled across a fine article I tucked away when it first appeared, in the September / October, 2003, issue of Psychotherapy Networker. “When did childhood turn into a rat race?” asks William Doherty, of the University of Minnesota, in his passionate article: See How They Run.

His theme: “… for many kids, childhood is becoming a rat race of hyperscheduling, overbusyness, and loss of family time. …. Parents have become recreation directors on the family cruise ship.”

He documents critical changes of the last two decades: less playtime, more homework, less unstructured outdoor time, more structured sports, and much more time spent watching others play sports. The end result? families spend a lot less time interacting. One national survey “plotted a one-third decrease in the number of families even claiming to have family dinners regularly.”

Professor Doherty and I agree that a primary cause is parental fear. I want to return in another post to one image he uses: Parents fear that their children will “be left behind when the achievement train leaves the station.” A related fear is that if kids don’t get started early in structured programs (music, athletics) they won’t be able to play competitively – or even get past try-outs. There are also a great many more activity choices for children than there used to be. Good-hearted efforts to provide opportunities have resulted in more attractive possibilities than any one family can pursue.

But beyond these, Professor Doherty points to a number of distressing cultural pressures on parents. He gives the language an important phrase: “parental peer pressure.” Parenting, he accuses, “has become a competitive sport, with the trophies going to the busiest …. We’re facing a new threat to childhood and family life, one disguised in the costumes of fun, achievement, healthy competition, and keeping busy.”

If his argument rings true for you, you may want to look at his companion article,
Creating Community Solutions
or at the web site of a group he helped found:
Putting Family First.

For my part, I hope to return to consider these issues from the cognitive point of view that is the focus of Grow With the Flow.