Today's Kids Are Needy?

The Post has a piece by a two-profession couple with 8 and 12 year old daughters, on their struggles to handle home schooling while still doing their professions.  In order to minimize interruptions they designate one parent as the duty parent for the morning and the other one in the afternoon.  The kids are supposed to go to the duty parent for their questions and needs. 

One day (not a big sample) they did a spreadsheet showing how many times the daughters interrupted the duty parent's work. I found the graph of the results to be incredible.

I know when I was young, maybe 8, I'd get bored and nag at mom.  But that wouldn't last long--it wasn't tolerated and I'd find something to do or play with.  Now I wasn't being home schooled; I'd understand that makes a difference.  But still...

I suppose it's just an example of how child rearing has changed over 70 years--parents and children are much closer now.  I know that.  But it still strikes me in my gut as being needy.

Kids Are (More) Less Mature These Days

Was reading a Slate article by a woman who thought she could pass on what she learned as a teenager navigating romances to her daughter.  Turns out, according to the woman, her daughter needed no teaching; she found the waters very different given social media but handled them just fine.

Then there's this NYTimes piece entitled Children Are Grown, But Parenting Doesn't Stop.

I like to bridge opposites, so I suggest that in different times/societies people develop different faculties at different rates.  Perhaps today's society provides more models of how to develop emotionally for people to learn from while simultaneously making it more complicated to maneuver through society.  Compared to my youth individual development is more emphasized and more important, while discussion of social forces is more restricted to race and gender.