Read on Twitter
For part 7 of our “Catching Up With ‘Coddling’” series, I sat down with @TheAtlantic’s @KateJulian to take a long look at the role of parents in childhood anxiety, some potential causes, AND a promising new treatment. 1/15 https://www.thefire.org/catching-up-with-coddling-part-seven-the-mustlisten-kate-julian-interview-runaway-homophily-and-the-second-coddling-caveat/
If you haven’t seen it yet, “Catching Up With ‘Coddling’” is where we revisit the topics in @JonHaidt & my 2018 book, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” with new data, developments, and caveats. 2/15 https://www.thefire.org/tag/eri-catching-up-with-coddling/
. @KateJulian’s May cover story in The Atlantic, “What Happened to American Childhood,” focuses squarely on how parental anxiety contributes to anxiety in kids, & what parents (who are sometimes irrational/afraid) can do about it. 3/15 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/childhood-in-an-anxious-age/609079/
If you want to hear the entire #mustlisten conversation with @KateJulian, good news! It’s the just-uploaded episode of our @freespeechtalk podcast, So To Speak! But I wanted to give a sampling of what we discuss. 4/15 https://www.thefire.org/so-to-speak-podcast-what-happened-to-american-childhood-with-kate-julian-and-greg-lukianoff/
1. Parental accommodation of anxiety may be a primary cause of the increase in anxiety for Generation Z. “Accommodation” refers to anything a parent does to avoid a child feeling anxiety; for example, always keeping a light on for a child who is afraid of the dark. 5/15
2. Some of the most effective interventions for childhood stress involve addressing the parents’ anxiety first. We discuss the work of Eli Lebowitz at @YaleCSC_Anxiety and his Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) program. 6/15 https://www.spacetreatment.net/
3. The risks of not teaching students to overcome their anxieties early are grave. As @KateJulian notes, w/o treatment, kids with anxiety "are much more likely to suffer from depression" & other problems as adults. (h/t to @SStossel's book) 7/15 https://amzn.to/3pVJ7XH
4. Some of the increase in anxiety MAY be attributable to assortative mating. That is, more anxious people meeting each other and having kids could mean a higher likelihood of kids genetically prone to anxiety. 8/15
ZERO TWEET: Check out my year-end “Prestigious Awards,” OR continue descend into the depths of my last dozen tweet storms OR keep climbing down this thread! 0/15 https://twitter.com/glukianoff/status/1344772028549767170
5. Runaway homophily: My theory that many societal ills are caused by the unprecedented ability to self sort. Political polarization & depression clusters may be caused partly by like-minded people meeting online or in places like Silicon Valley… 9/15 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/
Communities like Palo Alto show high rates of anxiety/suicide partially b/c like-minded young adults sort themselves around a strong commitment to elite education, thereby creating a stressful environment w/ intense expectations. @HannaRosin 10/15 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/
6. Potential students from communities that don’t have pre-existing "elite college" expectations do not exhibit the same level of achievement-related stress. This is really the flip-side of US income stratification as a casual thread. 11/15 https://www.thefire.org/catching-up-with-coddling-part-six-u-s-income-stratification-a-seventh-causal-thread/
7. Lack of free play deprives children of critical skills, like the ability to navigate intersubjective realities — systems that work primarily on mutual agreement/imagination. See: @harari_yuval's 'Sapiens' 12/15 @FreeRangeKids https://amzn.to/38IRcZQ
But all this leads me to a new “Coddling Caveat.” Sometimes people think I don't know how hard it is not to be an anxious or paranoid parent in modern times. Au contraire. I am not just an anxious person (as I discuss in COTAM) I AM an anxious parent! 13/15
As I was reminded recently when resisting the urge (with my wife’s help) to carry our kids up a sketchy staircase (see photo) I know at a personal level that free range parenting can be hard! 14/15
That does it for part seven of “Catching Up With Coddling.” Thanks, @KateJulian for coming on the podcast, and I look forward to your book, The Sex Recession coming out next year! 15/15
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/kate-julians-sex-recession-book-goes-bodley-head-1116626
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/kate-julians-sex-recession-book-goes-bodley-head-1116626
And if you’re hungry for more check out my SUPER LONG thread on the global picture for #freespeech — at least as of late December! And THANKS as always to my team @AdGo & @rynoweiss for making my Byzantine tweetstorm labyrinth possible! 16/15 https://twitter.com/glukianoff/status/1341864543711092736?s=20
