The Culture of Parenting

The author, September, 1964

Perhaps every generation looks at its childhood as idyllic. I have idolized my pre-adolecent summers from 1964 to 1974 as a 9AM to 9PM adventure in the Northern California suburban outdoors, mostly playing pickup games of baseball but also hanging out with other boys and hiking in the hills, fighting crayfish and attempting to catch bullfrogs, riding our bikes around town, creating small explosives with match heads, and releasing paper gliders off of kites. I had to conform to two rules: report back for meals and be home before it got dark. My parents did not set up play dates, nor did they supervise any of the activities. No parents on my block did. My father's summers in the 1930s and 1940s were similar, though growing up on the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco he witnessed considerably more violence and cruelty than I. Skipping forward to the 1990s and beyond, however, my children experienced a quite different style of parenting during their summer break. They participated in organized sports and the games were closely observed by their parents. They were driven to play dates. They never simply left the house without telling me where they were going. They never went out and came back in twelve hours with bruises and bee stings.

Historian Jon Grinspan traces a short history of parenting from the late 19th century to today in the May 31, 2014 New York Times article The Wild Children of Yesteryear (link here). Boys were expected to spend "their childhoods in a rowdy outdoor subculture" to foster a young republican outlook: self-reliant, democratic, striving and entrepreneurial. Late 19th and early 20th century changes, especially the progressive movement, urged laws to protect children. Additionally demographic changes (less children) created more worried parents. The movement to becoming helicopter parents, Grinspan argues, began not in the 1970s but before the McKinley administration.

Parents have becoming more involved in education as well, and what parents think is good for educating kids may not be. Sociologists Keith Robinson and Angel Harris argue that parental involvement in children's education is unnecessary. In the April 12, 2014 NYT article Parental Involvement is Overrated (link here)and in their book, The Broken Compass: Parental Involvement with Children's Education, Robinson and Harris argue that "most forms of parental involvement yielded no benefit to children's test scores or grades, regardless of racial or ethnic background or socioeconomic standing." Occasionally parental involvement did matter, but the research showed it depended on which behavior and which ethnic group. For example, regularly reading to elementary school children benefited white and Hispanic children but not black children. The researchers argue that policy makers need to take into account the factors of behavior, academic outcome, grade level, racial and ethnic background, and socioeconomic standing when advocating for the very few parental involvements that help kids. More simply, though, "parents should set the stage and then leave it." This adage may apply to kids' play lives as well.

Franklin and Winston

Journalist Jon Meacham has written a fascinating memoir in Franklin [Roosevelt]) and Winston [Churchill]: an Intimate Portrait of  an Epic Friendship (2003, Random House, New York). The book should be read by every president that manufactures alliances and manages international conflicts. That would be every one! If our current president had read this book he may not have as quickly characterized Churchill as a reactionary colonialist and removed the Churchill bust from the White House. Churchill was a defender of the British Empire and unwilling to let colonial people have self-determination, but he was also the last European hope against Hitler. His success in lining up American help against the Nazi's, not an easy task in isolationist America, not only saved Britain. Churchill was instrumental in getting the U.S. in the war before it was too late for the free world.

Meacham analyzes the contrasting management styles of Roosevelt and Churchill. Roosevelt was practical, devious, always withholding a part of himself. He controlled his emotions completely, met women he wasn't supposed to see, and could completely compartmentalize his personal and private life from his public duties. He was a fair weather friend--publicly embarrassing and ignoring Churchill when, acting in matters of state as he saw them, he cozied up to Stalin. Roosevelt had utmost faith in his ability to charm anyone, even the Soviet dictator, and had he lived until the end of 1945, he may have been able to convince Stalin to act less aggressively in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. Roosevelt may have reacted less vociferously than Truman to Soviet provocations, keeping tensions between America and the Russians below the boiling point. Right before his death, Roosevelt avoided confrontation and suggested a middle course with Stalin (P.341).

In contrast to FDR, Churchill was a straight shooter, courageous, honest, devoted, warmhearted, magnanimous, and an ornate, brilliant orator. He saw black and white, good and evil, when battling Naziism, and history shows his was the correct attitude, when many in his government wanted to make a negotiated peace with Hitler. He was also prescient in predicting and exposing the nefarious intentions of the Soviet empire after the war was over. Roosevelt was starting to come around to Churchill's view of Stalin when Roosevelt suffered the cerebral hemorrhage that ended his life.

Two themes run through the book that also resonate throughout the history of 20th and 21st century presidents. Should a president campaign as though he is healthy even though he is gravely ill, and how much time does a president need in order to recuperate from the weighty pressures of the office?
Roosevelt had congestive heart failure and  hypertension, which eventually killed him. At some level he knew he was dying but felt he had to lead the war to a successful conclusion, and no one else could have done it as well. The last point is debatable, but it was obvious to all who met him that FDR looked terrible by mid 1944. He looked haggard, had lost weight, and had energy for only four hours of hard work each day, when the war demanded much more time from the leader of the western world. Roosevelt campaigned like a champion in the 1944 election for a fourth term, slogging through a nasty storm in New York City in an open car. The press put the photographs in all the newspapers. He was fine the voters thought or, wanted to think.

John F. Kennedy was also much sicker than voters knew. Despite his chronic ill health he looked like Adonis (according to journalist and newscaster Walter Cronkite) in his critical televised debate with Nixon and governed with youthful vigor. (See my review of Kennedy here.) If voters knew the truth about Kennedy's health would they have voted for him over Nixon? Woodrow Wilson was cursed with chronic ill health before his debilitating stroke near the end of his second term. Running against the athletic and larger-than-life Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Wilson could not afford to let the American people know he was a frail academic.

Do presidents need to be flying to Camp David, playing golf, attending lavish banquets, and just plain enjoying themselves as much as they do? Presidents are always "on" and Meacham's book gives the reader more respect for the formidable pressures of the office, especially in war time. Older, sicker men need time to recharge, whether it's collecting stamps (FDR) or collecting conquests  vacationing at Hyannis Point (JFK). The American people can rightly ask if a president is vacationing in order to work better or, like a Roman emperor, taking the job for what it's worth in order to enjoy frequent, free and lavish vacations.