everything

Parenting today seems to be undergoing a significant shift, as highlighted by a recent Twitter post. It spoke about how modern parents often trade their own time to save their children’s time—sometimes at seemingly irrational exchanges, like spending 40 minutes to pick a child up from school just to save them 20 minutes of waiting. This kind of prioritization of children's time over their own is different from past generations. There was a time when parents seemed far less invested in whether their children's time was wasted.

This change has brought about both upsides and downsides. kids today have more opportunities to make the most of their time. They might have fewer idle moments, more curated experiences, and a heightened sense that their parents value them deeply. this shift might be contributing to a sense of entitlement. When children constantly receive the message that their time is more important than anyone else's, they may grow to feel that they are the central figures not just in their families, but in any setting they inhabit.

I wonder if this trend is tied to the rise of helicopter parenting. I recently watched kids at a playground in California, with parents trailing and hovering, ready to intervene at the first sign of trouble. In contrast, in Las Vegas, things look more like when I grew up—parents sitting back, letting their children sort things out themselves. The differences in parental involvement seemed to speak volumes about changing philosophies of what good parenting looks like. This might also be tied to politics. California tends to have a more liberal population, whereas in Las Vegas, the population is split between liberal and conservative, and even the liberals tend to be more union-oriented rather than socially liberal.

Are kids today better or worse off because of these shifts? It's complicated. In many ways, they're better—they have more support, more time to explore their interests, and a deeper connection with their parents. I've also noticed that kids today are much kinder than they were when I was growing up. There's less bullying, less casual cruelty. But in other ways, they might be worse off—perhaps they lack resilience, or an understanding of their place in the broader social fabric, because they've always been made to feel like the center of the universe.

And what about the parents? There's certainly a cost to this kind of hyper-involvement. It’s exhausting and takes away from parents' ability to lead their own lives and be individuals. It's a much greater sacrifice than what parenting was in the past. Yet the connection many parents now have with their children seems far deeper than what was typical in past generations.

Ultimately, these are all tradeoffs. Time will tell as the children of this generation grow up, become adults, and either reflect our own parenting efforts or reject them when they become parents themselves.

A lot of my family's long-term planning has centered around how to preserve this strong relationship with our kids, while also giving ourselves time to be ourselves. What do we need to exist around us for that to happen? That's part of why I'm so focused on the idea of urbanism – I want to live in a place that is dense enough to allow my children to grow up knowing how a wide variety of other people live, safe enough to explore the world around them independently, and ideally, equitable enough that they can make their way in that world no matter what path they choose. Finding such a place in the US has so far seemed like a pipe dream.