A Nation of Wimps?
In a similar vein to what I was reading about the Twixters, some observers think that the modern trend of parents protecting their children to the extreme is also delaying people’s entry into true adulthood and causing signficant distress in the lives of these young adults.
I read Albert Mohler’s blog somewhat regularly (He’s the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), and he wrote about this topic earlier this week. He references an article in Psycholgy Today from last fall that basically says more kids are breaking down in late adolesence or early adulthood (especially when they are away from home for the first time) because their parents have coddled them all their lives.
Mohler writes (quoting the Psychology Today article):
Whether we want to or not, we’re on our way to creating a nation of wimps,” Marano warns. She fast-forwards to college and university campuses, where “the fragility factor” is now most clearly evident. As she explains, “It’s where intellectual and developmental tracks converge as the emotional training wheels come off. By all accounts, psychological distress is rampant on college campuses.”
This statement is easily verified by observing the reports issued by academic institutions. Psychological distress–sometimes evident in the mild form of anxiety and, in other cases, in binge drinking, self-mutilation, and even suicide–are now major concerns of college administrators.
I find Mohler’s commentary and the original article interesting both from the perspective of someone doing college ministry and from my perspective as a new parent. As a person involved with college ministry, it underscores the need for us as Christians to come along side students in distress and to both support them and to point them toward the Lord at a time when they support system they have relied upon in the past may not be there.
As a parent, it reminds me again of the necessity to allow Madeline to make mistakes and to not shield her from all the woes of life. While there is a limited need to do that now when she is still a baby, I can already see within me the motherly instinct that wants her not to have to ever suffer. She has been a little under the weather the past few days, and it pains me every time I hear her cough. I am sure it will feel much worse as I have to watch her fall down learning to ride a bike or help her learn the consequences of disobedience when she hits the “terrible twos.”
A verse that comes to mind is Hebrews 12:11: “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyfull, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the fruit of righteousness.”