Jun 3, 2015
What the hell is going on? Since 1965, labor-force rates for women with kids under 18 have risen from 45 percent to 78 percent, and today’s mothers—both working and stay-at-home at tlike—spend more than 14 hours a week in 2010, up from just 10 hours a week in 1965. Despite spending all this time with our monkeys, 51 percent of working moms say they feel guilty about not spending enough time with their kids!
All this working-mom guilt keeps us back professionally, leading to dropping out of the work force, failing to go for promotions and higher-paying work so we can spend even more hours on children. Children, it must be noted, do not need all the hours we're currently devoting to them.
Psychologist Dr. Madeline Levine recently claimed that children of over-involved parents are three times more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety, and David Code, wrote in his book To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First.
Families
centred on children create anxious, exhausted parents and
demanding, entitled children. We parents today are too quick to
sacrifice our lives and our marriages for our kids. Most of us have
created child-centred families, where our children hold priority
over our time, energy and attention. But as we break our backs
for our kids, our marriage and self-fulfilment go out the window
while our kids become more demanding and dissatisfied. That's why
children seem to have many more problems nowadays than we did, or
our parents did. By killing ourselves to provide a perfect,
trauma-free childhood for our children, we're wasting our energy.
The greatest gift you can give your children is to have a
fulfilling marriage yourself.
In this episode I elaborate more on why both parents and kids need to less time together. After all, what did we learn from all the complaints about milenials, who were the first generation to be subject to so much helicoptering, and are seen as a generation unable to function in adulthood?
Caller Denise asks whether it is a good idea to bribe with money her 11-year old to maintain basic personal hygeine. I surprised myself with the answer!