Front Stoop Parenting
written by Tony Goldsmith
Why does it seem that parenting today is so much more difficult than it was when I was a child? My parents made it seem so easy.
There are countless reasons that parenting may be more difficult today. There are many more choices available today for children and parents. One of the most common ones is that with the easy accessibility of television and the internet in most families’ homes, children are exposed to more information about the world now.
Perhaps the greatest change today is the difference in where families live. In the sixties and seventies, even as recently as the 80’s, a larger proportion of families lived in cities and the older suburbs. In the last twenty years, more families have moved to the newer suburbs and exurbs. We have become increasing dependent upon cars to get us and our children around.
Additionally, people are generally becoming more socially isolated. A study by sociologists at Duke University measuring changes in social networks over 19 years between 1985 and 2004 shows that there is a significant decrease in how many people say they have someone to confide in about important matters. `
When it comes to being a parent, it is very important to have people in your life to confide in and who confide in you. Connections like these are crucial to the art of parenting. Parents need to exchange ideas about what does and doesn’t work in the challenging arena of raising children. Having people whom you trust as part of your parental network makes the responsibility feel less lonely, less overwhelming, and at times, even impossible.
If the trend has been moving away from being connected to others, then that would help explain the impression that being a parent today seems so different from when we were being raised. I have conversed with a number of people about this. Some of them recall living in the city where children played on the block. Parents sat on their front stoops and met and talked while the children played. While playing, the children had a sense that their parents were sharing with each other what was going on in their lives. The children also sensed that the parents shared what each of them observed about each other’s children. “I could not get away with anything. My parents would find out about from someone else’s mother on the street.” There was a sense of a community of parents who would not hesitate to share their experiences with each other. And the children had the security of knowing that there were adults, more than just their parents, looking out for them, giving them guidance, and enriching and broadening a child’s experience of other adults who care about them.
In today’s communities, and most particularly now that social isolation has become the norm due to the Corona virus, there is an even greater challenge to parents who need the support of one another. The challenge of social isolation demands more of parents to find creative ways of engaging with their own children as well as supporting each other in their parenting efforts. Parents who participate in parenting groups report that talking to one another helps them to understand their own children better. They also say that they can adjust how they can expand their range of responses to their own children, such as tempering or altering their own reactions to their children’s misbehavior, creating space for themselves to listen to their children when they feel the impulse to interrupt them, creating boundaries and expectations more effectively, and allowing time to talk about the real things that matter like having a discussion about making and keeping friends or sharing dreams they have for themselves.
If we are going to change the trend of the last two decades, and to adapt to the new challenges of the social separation created by the pandemic, parents need to re-create the “front stoop.” This may mean participating in parent groups. It may mean reaching out more to a neighbor or making the extra effort to give a friend a call, even when you are busy or you think he or she might be too busy as well. It will be time well spent. And perhaps the job of parenting will seem more like the art that it is.