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Too Much of a Good Thing: Raising Children of Character in an Indulgent Age
By Dan Kindlon, PhD
Talk Miramax
Hardback 267 pp $23.95
Hyperion
Paperback 267pp $13

Gearing up for his 25th high school reunion, Harvard psychologist Dan Kindlon was poised to fill out the standard class-reunion survey form. The organizers wanted to know how the grads felt about their lives so far. Biggest accomplishment? Most memorable experience? Observations about family life?

Embedded in his answer to that last question, Kindlon, the author of Raising Cain, an earlier book about children and anger -- found the theme for his latest book. "I'm avoiding the mistakes my parents made," he wrote, "but I'm making others."

As he thought about the question, Kindlon concluded that baby boomers like himself -- anxious to avoid the strict discipline and emotionally distant parenting of previous generations -- had gone overboard in the opposite direction. "We give our kids too much and demand too little of them." As a result, he says, this generation of children -- whom he dubs the "millennials" -- are in bad shape.

That warning serves as the theme in Too Much of a Good Thing: Raising Children of Character in an Indulgent Age. Baby boomers, says Kindlon, have become so eager to please their children that they have blurred the line between parent and friend. In doing so, they have done their offspring no favors.

A Harvard psychology professor, Kindlon did his research by staking out a study group in the upper echelons of wealth and privilege. The strategy ran against the tide of contemporary research, which has tended for the last decade to focus on the social problems of the poor.

His initial research asked parents in the study to describe what possessions their children had: Computer, television, or telephone in their bedrooms? Cars, cell phones? Horses? Personal credit cards? Fancy vacations? No surprise, perhaps, that he found a high correlation between a family's wealth and the luxuries provided to the children.

But the meat of the book is this: Children showered with material possessions are wandering the hallways of their schools feeling depressed, inadequate, and lost. The observations echo the warnings put forth, some more than a decade ago, by Dr. Robert Coles, the famed Harvard psychiatrist and author of such classics as The Spiritual Life of Children. Early on, Coles identified a spiritual emptiness among children raised in an atmosphere of plenty.

In a series of contemporary portraits of teens in distress, Kindlon cites the case of 16-year-old Connor, who cheats on a test and thinks nothing of it. His parents aren't concerned with the moral implications so much as getting their son off the hook so his college applications won't be harmed. Another indulged teen, Melissa, has her own credit card and plenty of freedom, yet she longs for some limits -- some indication that her too-busy parents care what she is doing with her life.

The book quotes one mother who sums up at least one root of the problem: "Too much to do, too little time."

As for the young people, Kindlon says the current indulged generation is both "hurried and worried." Raised in a competitive world, yet too protected to have any practice at meeting life's real challenges, they suffer from depression and other ills. Children sheltered with goods and services are naïve about the way the world works, Kindlon concludes. They have nothing left to fight for -- or against. Their social lives are often fueled by drugs and alcohol. They tend to be selfish, helpless, and short on the ability to handle frustration.

Parents, eager to get the kids into good schools, are often tempted to do for the kids what the kids should be doing for themselves, getting them out of jams while ignoring the childrens' emotional deficits and distress.

Kindlon takes on the problems that indulged teens face, one by one, from eating disorders and lack of self-control to drug and alcohol abuse, from sexual permissiveness to a state of being "happily ignorant about the way most people live."

Perhaps this is the saddest thing of all, that in a world filled with challenges, those youngsters being raised with every expectation of good educations and social clout are unlikely -- unless there is some wake-up call -- to contribute any solutions.

Let them eat quiche, some might be tempted to say. Yet Kindlon's observations are important. Furthermore, they apply, I think, to many people of lesser means. The temptation to be a friend, rather than a parent, for instance; the temptation to fill our kids' lives with activities and things rather than spending meaningful time with them; the pitfall of ignoring our children's pleas for help.

If upwardly mobile families suffer from too much attention to the marketplace and workplace and too little attention to the soul and psyche, families who are struggling for mere survival face similar pressures -- parents working double shifts are hard pressed for time and energy to talk and listen to their children. The sad thing, of course, is that the parents on the lower economic rungs have fewer options available to modify their lives.

Kindlon's answer? Our children need our time, and our care -- parental infusions of understanding, love, and time -- in short more of that "quality" time that's been talked about for several decades now.

Kindlon also urges parents to set firm and consistent limits. Pick three important areas, he says. Decide what's acceptable and what isn't. Then sit down and discuss the limits with your children. Spell out the consequences of overstepping. But take note, parents: "Families are not democracies," writes Kindlon, "and these meetings are not democratic. We should listen carefully to our kids' opinions, but the final words are ours."

The book advises parents to limit their children's disposable income and to require that chores around the house be completed before any allowances are given. Kindlon notes that teens who aren't required to do a little work tend to see themselves as spoiled. "They know they are getting something for nothing."

Ultimately, he says, children need to learn to endure hardship, overcome obstacles, and learn that there's more to life than mall hopping. "We need the manufactured hardships of hockey camps, survival training, and two years of helping out at a health clinic in sub-Saharan Africa," he writes. "For most American kids, physical and psychological hardships of this magnitude are not part of their experience."

The author underscores the sad statistics about how few parents spend special time with their children -- not arguing or watching television, but actually enjoying each other. He notes how few families even share a meal together anymore. He cites the example of one parent, urged by a therapist to spend just one hour a week doing something that both parent and child wanted to do. The parent returned amazed, reporting that a single hour made all the difference. "We are going to make a habit of it," said the parent.

"Let's all do the same thing," Kindlon urges. "Let's all resolve to make a habit of spending time with our children. There is nothing more important that we could do to help an overtly angry child, or a child who has turned his or her anger inward and become listless, anxious, and depressed."

Kindlon did his research before the current economic downturn. Many of those parents who lavished cars and credit cards on their teenagers during the upswing may now be suffering from the economic fallout of the downturn -- layoffs, dashed stock option hopes, greatly diminished portfolios. These kinds of financial stress, however, undoubtedly just add to the problems. In hard times, is it more likely that a corporate dad or mom on the fast track will redouble his or her efforts in the workplace or decide to spend more time with the kids?

If the answer were the latter, it might add a little silver lining to an otherwise bleak picture.

-- Karin Evans is the author of The Lost Daughters of China: Abandoned Girls, Their Journey to America, and the Search for a Missing Past (Penguin Putnam). She is currently at work on a Ford Foundation-sponsored training manual for China's social welfare institutions, titled A Kind Word, A Gentle Touch, and Someone to Help Us Learn.

Last updated October 19, 2009
Copyright © 2003 Consumer Health Interactive

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