Are parents over-outsourcing their duties?

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The discussion centers on the trend of affluent parents outsourcing traditional parenting roles, with services like potty training, bike riding lessons, and cookie baking gaining popularity. This shift is attributed to parents' struggles to balance work and family life, leading to concerns about the emotional availability of paid caregivers compared to parents. Critics argue that this practice mirrors historical trends where wealthy families relied on nannies and governesses, raising questions about the motivations of parents who choose not to engage directly in their children's upbringing. The conversation highlights concerns about parental insecurity, the pressure to conform to societal expectations, and the implications for children's development when they are raised by caregivers rather than their parents. Some participants suggest that licensing parents could be a solution, while others express skepticism about the long-term effects of such outsourcing on family dynamics and child-rearing practices.
Math Is Hard
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Comments by Zooby, Moonbear, and others in another thread on "problems in education" got me thinking about an article regarding a trend toward upwardly-mobile parents outsourcing their traditional parental jobs. Services now available include: potty training sessions, bike-riding lessons, cookie-baking, teaching organizational skills, and more.

http://www.startupjournal.com/ideas/services/20050404-stout.html
"Childwork, as I would call it, is one of our economy's growth industries, as affluent parents try to balance work and family, deal with ever intensifying anxieties, and give their kids a leg up in the race for success," says Steven Mintz, a historian at the University of Houston, who specializes in childhood.

I would enjoy hearing your opinions.
 
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Soon American children will develop Indian accents because they have spent too much time with their outsourced parents.
 
I really wonder why some people have kids when they don't seem to want to be parents. I just can't understand the motivation there. Having other people raise your kids for you...we used to call that adoption.
 
Why even bother having children? This reminds me of the rich families in the 18th to early 20th centuries. They had very little contact with their own children, the children were raised by nannies or governesses or sent off to boarding schools.

I was watching a series on PBS about wealthy English families and it was actually frowned on for the parent's to spend much time with the children.
 
Yah its as if this country is moving to make everything in our lives as simple as possible.

Why have a child if you aren't going to be their parent?
 
Or are we now seeing the reprocussions of a generation sent to day care at 6 months of age, often bounced from care giver to care giver. Then off to preschool when they are 3, because both parents need to work?
How would these children{now adults} know how to raise children? There parents didn't raise them.
 
hypatia said:
Then off to preschool when they are 3, because both parents need to work?
How would these children{now adults} know how to raise children? There parents didn't raise them.

I wouldn't think that's the case. I don't see why someone would be so effected by what they had done to them at 2 years of age. But then again if your parents told you that they did that to you instead of acted like parents, you would think its perfectly ok. So I take it back, that probably is a big cause come to think of it.
 
We're reverting to the ways (rich) children were raised for the past couple of hundred years, we've gone full circle. This is nothing new except it is expanding more to the lower middle classes.
 
Evo said:
We're reverting to the ways (rich) children were raised for the past couple of hundred years, we've gone full circle. This is nothing new except it is expanding more to the lower middle classes.
And we all know how well-adjusted royalty are. :rolleyes:
 
  • #10
I don't think it's right. I think you shouldn't have children if you don't want to raise them. I think a lot of people that have children shouldn't be allowed to.

It's just not a new phenomena, it's an old practice. Unfortunately so many of those parents are so self absorbed, the paid care takers are more emotionally available to the children than their own parents.

I vote for licensing parents.
 
  • #11
Evo said:
I don't think it's right. I think you shouldn't have children if you don't want to raise them. I think a lot of people that have children shouldn't be allowed to.
It's just not a new phenomena, it's an old practice. Unfortunately so many of those parents are so self absorbed, the paid care takers are more emotionally available to the children than their own parents.
Yes, sadly, these kids probably are better off with the nannies than with their own parents.

I vote for licensing parents.
Now you sound like Pengwuino! :eek: :smile:
 
  • #12
Evo said:
We're reverting to the ways (rich) children were raised for the past couple of hundred years, we've gone full circle. This is nothing new except it is expanding more to the lower middle classes.
I guess there's nothing new under the Sun.
And we all know how well-adjusted royalty are.
Excellent point.

What the article made me also think is that these parents don't seem to trust themselves to know the best way to raise their kids, so they hire consultants to advise them, and to do things for their kids that they themselves might do inadequately or incorrectly. They just seem very insecure in some ways.
 
  • #13
Moonbear said:
Now you sound like Pengwuino! :eek: :smile:

Soon you shall succumb to Pengwuinoness as well :devil: :devil: :devil:
 
  • #14
Math Is Hard said:
What the article made me also think is that these parents don't seem to trust themselves to know the best way to raise their kids, so they hire consultants to advise them, and to do things for their kids that they themselves might do inadequately or incorrectly. They just seem very insecure in some ways.

Yah but we must remember that there is a line between advice and dellegation.
 
  • #15
Math Is Hard said:
What the article made me also think is that these parents don't seem to trust themselves to know the best way to raise their kids, so they hire consultants to advise them, and to do things for their kids that they themselves might do inadequately or incorrectly. They just seem very insecure in some ways.
Potty training consultants. :smile:

Too many people are too concerned about perfection. If little Joey isn't potty trained but little Bobby is, little Joey is a loser, which means little Joey's parents are losers, and we can't have that. :rolleyes:

"potty-training. The cost is usually $185 for an hour-long session, $350 for the session plus a week of e-mail follow-ups. "There's just so much worry," says Lisa Spiegel, the center's co-director."

$350 for a week of e-mails? I'm going into the potty training business.
 
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  • #16
Math Is Hard said:
They just seem very insecure in some ways.
I would hazard the guess that they are insecure in a lot of ways. They probably have the careers they have out of pressure to keep up with the Jones', then had kids because that seemed like what everyone is supposed to do at their age, then didn't know what to do with the kids, so hired someone to take care of them rather than ask, read books, or whatever to learn to be parents themselves.
 
  • #17
This reminds me of when I was talking to one of my friends earlier, the stereotypical American parents... "soccer mom" who doesn't really raise her own children, but rather get drunk with her American football-watching, always-wearing-some-sort-of-sports-cap-and-sunglasses-and-is-slightly-overweight and are bad influences on their children. :rolleyes:

The only thing I would find acceptable nanny-wise is if he/she spoke the British variant of English, way cooler than General American English. It would be quite interesting to have one's kids speak British English :-p.
 
  • #18
oh, mummy, I've soild my nappy?

Where Wolram? I need to learn to type British nanny style...nanny via e-mail...we'll be rich!