Flowers Fall

The Slow Parent Trap

by Bethany Saltman, June 30, 2009

Last week it seemed that everywhere I turned in my meager daily media diet, I saw something about “slow parenting,” the latest buzz from the movement, which got its start with “slow food” in the late 1980s. Essentially, this newsflash points to the fact that kids need unstructured time and space in order to develop into well-adjusted adults. Apparently all the jacked-up schedules, toys, and extracurricular activities that privileged, type-A, “helicopter” Überparents have been pushing are not only unnecessary, but can also actually be harmful. Obesity, attention-deficit disorder, plummeting test scores, spoiled brat behavior, anxiety disorders, violence: Turns out, Baby Einstein wasn’t the brightest bulb in the batch. So lots of people are turning down the dial and trying to, as New York Times blogger Lisa Belkin titled her latest piece on the matter, “let the kid be,” making an effort to connect with nature, the world, other people. Slow parenting advocates are encouraging people to relax, and to release their kids from their anxious, narcissistic expectations of them. This can only be good. And yet the whole thing makes me feel funny.

I grew up in a small town in Michigan at the end of a dirt road. My parents practiced a form of retro-slow parenting bordering on neglect with me and my two older brothers. My dad worked—he was an auto-parts salesman who eventually bought, then lost, his own store—and my mom stayed home. I am not sure what she did all day, but I guess she cleaned the house while we were at school or in our playpens because it was always spotless and she certainly never hired someone to help her like so many of us do these days. Things were different then. My mom talked on the phone, watched soaps, loaded us kids into the station wagon sans car seats or even seat belts to “run errands,” did laundry, chain-smoked, had friends over for coffee, and cooked things with method-based descriptors, like chicken-fried steak and twice-baked potatoes. And we watched TV, played in our rooms, beat each other up (or tried to, in my case), developed the psychological wounds that make us who we are today.

We were in different worlds: kids and mom. My mom had a vague sense, I’m sure, of what I was doing in school—learning to read and write, for instance. But nothing like the “how much homework do you have and let me help you study for the math test” kind of (s)mothering that is expected these days. If it hadn’t been for a buddy from English class who insisted I apply to Antioch College, I never would have gone beyond my barely passing high school “education.” My parents were pleased when I was accepted, but not very involved in the process, to say the least. The dark side of being a free-range kid.