Accepting or Rejecting the Norm
On a recent podcast episode, Ezra Klein talked with sociologist Caitlyn Collins about why parenting in the United States feels more challenging than ever.
Klein framed one difference between his peers and previous generations with a line that floored me: “[A]re the children in the parents’ world or is the parent in the child’s world?”
I mentioned that line to several friends, and they all reported living in their parents’ worlds when growing up. One friend noted that while her mother was gardening on the weekend, she was expected to sit and read. Another described waiting on his mom for hours at the hair salon, with only old magazines to occupy him.
In contrast, as Klein reflected on modern parenting, “at least in my cohort, on the weekends, the parents are in the children’s world” and an “endless procession” of visits to playgrounds, museums, and activities.
Collins reflected that when she talks to her mother and grandmother about parenting, they are “shocked about how much time I spend with my daughter.”
In describing her study of parenting in Sweden, Italy, Germany, and the United States, Collins argued that parenthood is difficult because there is both an “ideal worker norm” and an “intensive parenting norm.”
She describes the ideal worker norm as “the idea that adults today should be fully committed and entirely devoted to their jobs and their employers — available at a moment’s notice, unencumbered by external responsibilities that might diminish from their ability to perform their jobs well.”
The intensive parenting norm is that “child rearing should be time-intensive, emotionally involved, and child-centered or child-focused, such that what it means to be a good mother is to be self-sacrificing, to devote yourself entirely to your children’s well-being and upbringing.” (It’s also called the “intensive mothering norm” since fathers feel some of the pressure, but have generally lower societal expectations of their parenting contribution.)
Obviously, the ideal worker and intensive parent norms conflict, especially because neither one can be satisfied. Trying to carry both only leads to stress.
However, what’s interesting to me is how the ideal worker and intensive parenting norms are just that—norms. And those norms are based on specific cultural, economic, and social systems—what Collins calls “lifeworlds” in her book Making Motherhood Work.
Parents in Italy and Sweden have different beliefs about what defines a good worker and a good parent. German parents have different beliefs based on which side of the Berlin Wall their families had lived in previous generations.
That’s all to say that while the social and economic factors that drive us to adopt intensive parenting and be ideal workers are real and can feel inescapable, they are, in fact, choices.
A recurring theme in Collins’s book is that the parents she spoke with could easily cite how ridiculous specific approaches were in other cultures—especially when looking at the U.S.—but they often took their culture’s norms for granted. And they perceived there were fewer choices available because everyone else in their limited peer group shared the same beliefs.
It’s easy to forget that we always have the choice to step outside those norms and forge a path built on what matters to us, not just what matters to those around us.