There is always value in looking at something from a different perspective. For the last 4+ years I have studied counselling. Therefore, I am reasonably educated in therapeutic approaches, being trauma-informed and attachment-based, understanding the influence of one’s childhood, and ways to consider mental health challenges.
In addition, like anyone who has parented (or taught) children over the last 2 decades, I have observed the ever-rising rates of anxiety and depression, the ballooning well-being spaces in schools, the common usage of psychological terminology, the increased use of medication and therapy, and the plethora of diagnostic labels applied to more and more children.
In Bad Therapy, Shrier explores why. She first poses some key questions.
[We believed that we] “would cultivate the happiest, most well-adjusted kids. Instead, with unprecedented help from mental health experts, we have raised the loneliest, most anxious, depressed, pessimistic, helpless, and fearful generation on record. Why?”Shrier posits that this over-parented, over-counselled, over-pathologised generation of children and young adults would mostly be fine if allowed to experience failures and challenges, develop resilience and perseverance, and be expected to mature. (She acknowledges some children do need professional help).
How did the first generation to raise kids without spanking produce the first generation to declare they never wanted kids of their own? How did kids raised so gently come to believe that they had experienced debilitating childhood trauma? How did kids who received far more psychotherapy than any previous generation plunge into a bottomless well of despair?” (xvii)
She proposes that some of the main issues are:
- A model of parenting designed to produce happy children.
“We adopted a therapeutic approach to parenting… Successful parenting became a function with a single coefficient: our kids’ happiness at any given instant. An ideal childhood meant no pain, no discomfort, no fights, no failure – and absolutely no hint of “trauma”.” (xvi)
- Schools that are over-involved in children’s mental health, often without the skills to do so (and often to manage classroom behaviour better)
- The damage of smartphones
“If mental health experts wanted to do what was best for adolescents, advising parents against giving young teens smartphones would be a no-brainer.” (24)
- Constantly asking children how they are feeling can lead to rumination and an inward, self-absorbed focus.
- A lack of values and overarching worldview. Everyone is looking in at themselves, rather than outwards, and what it means to be connected to a wider community. There is some interesting data about the mental health of those with liberal political views, and the high numbers of kids who get caught up with extremist views and in cults:
“In so many liberal American families today… parents disavow their authority, give children endless choices, and constantly solicit kids’ opinions on major life decisions. But the hunger for authority and boundaries is profoundly connected to a child’s sense of self and well-being. It does not dissipate simply because parents fail to supply it.” (194)It is a bit of a diatribe, but it also offers a well-argued alternative view to some current theory. Shrier clearly enunciates and explains some concerns that had already been floating through my mind. In her opinion, adults (as parents, educators, and mental health professionals) have misstepped - and in doing so, have created an over-psychoanalysed, over-diagnosed and over-medicated generation of young people, very few of whom are happy.
What is her solution?
She strongly encourages parents to back themselves, suggesting they know their children best and should stop handing authority to mental health professionals, school counsellors, parenting books and internet forums.
“When you mute the expert advice, when you log off Slate Parenting, when you lay down the rules according to your values, and insist your kids abide by them – you will be surprised by just how much you like your kids.” (240)
“The purpose of childhood is to allow kids to take risks – things that involve all kinds of hurt – and to practice the skills they will need while they are still safely under their parents' roofs. Childhood exists to allow kids to hazard an unpredictable friend, lose a ball game, stand up to a bully, pick themselves up, offer another kid a hand. We want them to venture out and get their hearts broken, try and fail, and at last succeed – all while we're still in the next bedroom.” (241)
“Remove… the technology, the hovering, the monitoring, the constant doubt. The diagnosing of ordinary behaviours as pathological. The psychiatric medication you aren’t convinced your child needs. The expert evaluations. Banish from their lives everyone with the tendency to treat your children as disordered.” (250)An interesting read for a timely concern.
