There’s something wrong with the way American kids are being raised today.
Dr. Anne Pierce in her book Ships Without a Shore: America’s Undernurtured Children challenges commonly accepted notions about parenting such as nannys and daycare workers, hyper-structuring, and how Baby Boomers have affected the way we raise our children.
Dr. Pierce gives us good insights to help us identify what makes a good parent, and how we can be more effective parents.
Listen to (or download) my interview with Dr. Pierce here:
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Pretty contraversial stuff and interesting following on from your podcast about teenage resumes.
An Australian psychologist here (Steve Biddulph) got in a lot of hot water in the 90s with women’s groups here for suggesting many of the same things as Anne.
I don’t think daycare is necessarily wrong. But I can certainly see what she is saying here. It’s an unfortunate social development. We outsource so much in our life that we need to be careful not to completely outsource our family.
Mind you this HAS happened before in history. Wealthy families over the centuries have outsourced and undernurtured their kids too. That’s had mixed results. It’d be an interesting comparison to make.
Pete: You are very perceptive. The Resume podcast and this one seems to give opposite advice. Hopefully swinging to both sides gets us balanced in the middle
Outsourcing our family is a good word of what happens when we do daycare, summer camps, sports leagues, and myriads of activities our kids get sent to. They are not “bad”, but we do have to be cognizant of the effects on our children.
Thanks for your comment.