Technology is at least part of the issue. Back in the day, you couldn’t be in constant contact with people. Certain level of independence by necessity. Not the case now. Plus and minus. That you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you should.
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I just watched a several hours long parent orientation zoom for one of my kids. One of the student representative talked about child/parent contact. He showed texts from his parents stating they bought him a car, him thanking them, and the parents telling him it was just a ruse to get him to contact them. Eventually they came up with a system that he would text them each morning, afternoon and evening. That also seemed like overkill to me.
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Went to college in the day when touch tone phones just started to become the standard. I still remember having a device that I needed to put over the rotary phone mouthpiece in our dorm room phone so I could use my Sprint long distance card. My parents and I are early morning people, not so much my college roommates. The early Saturday or Sunday morning calls usually resulted in some form of corporal punishment or other “penalty”.
If your kids will do a Snapchat streak with you, then you’ll get a daily sign of life. I really appreciate DD’19’s when she’s away. She sends one mid-day which is generally a fairly interesting pic or selfie (not just the floor or something); and then night streaks when she goes to bed, at which point I know she was back in the dorm/apt. Okay, usually I don’t see that one till next morning, but I can see what hour she finally settled in…
Not all kids will do this but for some it’s an easy way to keep up a little contact. And a way for me to remember to send those pet pics to the kids!
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I’ve had kids away at college for 7 years now, at least 4 more years to go, I’m fine with a phone call every week or so (one always facetimes me instead of calling) and texts here and there, plus we have a family text. I try hard not to text much the first week they are away freshman year, but so far none have experienced home sickness (actually the opposite).
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So? Probably most of them aren’t even active, they’re just part of the group…
Yes, I completely agree that college freshmen are being infantilized. When my family dropped me off as a freshman 40 years ago, there were no activities for parents. Seven years ago when I dropped off my oldest, there were parent activities stretched over 2 days. Nice, but really not necessary.
I’m of the philosophy that college is where young adults should learn to function independently of their parents. I might have texted my kid once every week or two. I wanted him to learn how to deal with adults and navigate bureaucracies without my help. This is development you hope to gain from college. Parents who insist on texting every 5 minutes are indeed infantilizing their children, often because of their own desire to continue to control their children, or be their friend.
It’s part of a broader infantilizing of society, what I call the “eat dessert first” syndrome. We cant wait for Christmas, so we put the tree up in November. We cant wait until the birth of our child, so we have a gender reveal party. In my town families of graduating seniors used to be the only ones who put up congratulatory lawn signs in their front yards; no longer, now they must go up for kindergarten, 6th and 8th grades. I would also add the disturbing statistic that most adults now get their news from social media, because as immature infants, they have time for facebook but not the evening news, let alone a newspaper. And we wonder how half the population lacks the critical thinking skills to fall for a demogogue and rejects science. The future is here.
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Good point! One thing I had to teach my kids is that part of being an adult is staying on top of things that need to be done and if they aren’t done, well you face the consequences…
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True, but a lot of these things are choices.
I don’t think texting your kids a lot is infantilizing, and I certainly don’t know anyone who texts their kids or ANYONE every 5 minutes unless they are already having a conversation. With my kids, they were usually the ones texting us. Also, I’m not trying to be my kid’s friends, but my kids and I are close and we enjoy each other’s company.
If parents think parent activities after drop-off are unnecessary: they are more then welcome not to attend. At my kids schools there were no parent events that lasted two days after drop-off. Guess it varies by school.
As for putting up the Christmas tree in November: that is a choice. It’s not a requirement. I don’t put mine up in November, because I choose not to. If people choose to, ok with me. Not a big deal. Same with gender reveals: people are not required to have a gender reveal. Don’t like gender reveals, don’t have one. If people want to have one, well fun for them.
In my town, most years it is only graduating seniors who get signs. This year they included 5th and 8th graders because the kids had to miss so much due to COVID. It’s nice that they could do something so positive in these negative times. I think it’s fun, not infantilizing. Not everything needs to be so cynical.
I don’t know. There is a lot wrong with the world, but a lot of things are choices. And while things like gender reveals and putting up signs for 5th and 8th graders at the end of the year may be a little much…they’re not the worst thing in the world and they’re not harmful (well some gender reveals start fires and hurt people, but those are extreme cases) and people don’t have to participate if they don’t want to…
To me the biggest problem is people being so self-centered…
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You are conflating unrelated issues.
Instant Gratification has been the mantra of the USA since the 1950s, and it was started by the Boomers, when they were teen consumers. It is, in fact, not nearly as bad as it was in the 1970s and 1980s, and “kids today” (AKA Millennials and Gen-Zs) are actually, if anything, pushing back. They thrift, they freecycle, they prefer to meet in person, etc.
In fact, most of the ills about which you complain are stuff which was started, and is still most embraced, by the older people, especially Baby Boomers. The Boomers are the people getting their news from social media - these are the people sharing fake news on Facebook.
As for the congratulatory signs? I will repeat - these are parents whose own parents focused on their own lives, and now, as is always the case, the kids are doing the exact opposite. The reason that Silent Generation and Boomers didn’t put as much effort is that they felt that their own parents didn’t give them enough freedom, so they were hands-off. So Gen-Xers and Millennials are super hands-on. The 1950s and 1960s “teen rebellion” movies were generally about teens trying to get away from their parents, and these started with Not-So-Silent Generation. On the flip side, an inordinate number of the “teen” movies from the 1980s to the mid 1990s had absentee parents, and parents were often being satirized as not paying attention to their kids.
As for “critical thinking”? The idea that there was once a mythical time during which most people had critical thinking skills is laughable. McCarthy wasn’t popular and powerful because the people in the 1950s had critical thinking skills, and Reagan was elected because of his abilities as a demagogue. During the 1980s, pseudoscience was everywhere, and the Reagans had their own astrological advisor. Hardly the hallmarks of an era which was full of critically thinking people. I could go on, but it’s pretty certain that “when I was younger, schools were good, and people spoke to each other and neighbors were neighbors” is delusional thinking.
Next, somebody is going to claim that the 1990s were a more innocent time, with less crime…
Of course, claiming that making a fuss about 5th grade graduation as though it was high school graduation is “infantilizing” is contradictory. It is, actually, the exact opposite - treating 10 year old kids as though they were already college-bound.
Finally, I will repeat my mantra - please stop making generalizations about societal norms, based on the limited experience of the upper middle class White families.
The VAST majority of families do not “put up congratulatory lawn signs in their front yards” for kindergarten, 6th, and 8th grades. The VAST majority of the population do not have “gender reveal parties”. If fact, the majority of families do not send their kids to a 4 year college, much less behave in the manner in which the OP was complaining. In fact, only about 35% of all new high school graduates who are off to college are being taken to their dorm or apartment by their parents.
Only about 13% of all first year college students live in college dorms.
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Citation needed.
(Both for the claim that instant gratification became new since the 1950s, and what in the world the term “instant gratification” means anyway.)
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Let me guess you want that citation and damn it you want it now!
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I’m pretty sure it goes back to the beginning of time. Humans might have electricity, cell phones, and gas engines now, but “humans” haven’t really changed a bit. It’s always interesting to read about ancient cities and see that we aren’t really different.
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Good point. I guess that the 1950s started the expectation of instant gratification.
In the 1950s, they talked about “Immediate gratification” which was slowly replaced by “Instant Gratification” across the 1960s. It was term used by psychologists as well, especially when talking about “juvenile delinquents”, and “Lower classes”.
Here is an article from 1969 in which an older academic calls out “young people”, i.e., the Baby Boomers, for being “the ‘instant gratification’ generation”
https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/48406/EDPVol8%232_18-20.pdf
Another one by Hubert Humphries in the W&M Law Review, decrying the expectation for Instant Gratification on the part of “the Youth”, again, Baby Boomers.
https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2811&context=wmlr
An article from 1962 talking about how Television “stands for immediate gratification”, and how it is not “accord very well with middle-class values”. The Symposium was in 1959.
Schramm, W. (1962). Television in the Life of the Child-Implications for the School. In New Teaching Aids for the American Classroom: A Symposium on the State of Research in Instructional Television and Tutorial Machines, Held 13 and 14 November, 1959, at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Under the Auspices of the United States Office of Education and Institute for Communication Research, of Stanford University (p. 50).
For these things to reach academia by 1959, they would have had to be circulating for a few years before that. So maybe not 1950, but, instead, the early to mid 1950s. For certain, though, it referred to the Boomers and the silent Generation.
The attacks on comics in the late 1940s contained other, familiar, claims. See the book “Seduction of the Innocent” written by psychiatrist and Fredric Wertham.
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So the term was used then. But was the desire for instant gratification really new at that point? I would argue no, given the rhetoric in the public sphere on the prioritizing of immediate pleasure in, say, rhetoric criticizing flappers in the 1920s, reactions Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis in the 19th century, medieval condemnations of gluttony and concupiscence…
(I could go back further, but eventually what’s the point?)
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You asked for a citation for my claim that a CULTURE of “instant gratification” existed, or was perceived to have existed, at least since the 1950s. That is what the articles I cited indeed demonstrate.
In both cited articles, there is a complaint or claim that such a culture exists. What else do you want?
The post I initially responded to said that there has been a culture of instant gratification in the US since the 1950s. This seemed (please clarify if I misunderstood) to me to be a claim that it hadn’t existed prior, and that was one of the things I asked for a citation for.
ETA: That is, the label has clearly existed since midcentury—but was the creation of the label really a change? I would suggest not.
The sale of instant gratification was really linked to television, since, unlike ads on billboards and in newspaper and magazines, these ads were there for a minute. So they had themes of “you need this RIGHT NOW!”
Look at the very first ad on this compilation - the boss needs those Sugar Snaps immediately!
It wasn’t that people did not crave instant gratification before TV, but a mix of a booming economy, technological advances, a rapidly expanding middle class, and a manufacturing industry which was constantly looking to also grow and expand, all made it possible for manufacturers to sell instant gratification, and made selling instant gratification the most profitable sales strategy.
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This. 100%.
This makes me chuckle. I am from the Midwest. Without having any idea of what I was in for, accepted an athletic scholarship to Duke in lieu of Big 10 offers. I was as poor as could possibly be - single mother with severe health issues. Grabbed a ride to Wake with a competitor friend, finagled another ride to Durham via a ride board. Dorms weren’t open so I slept in the locker room. Coach - also the assistant AD- found out and wasn’t happy - sleeping on the floor was very un-Duke like. Went to stay at the home of the dean of the business school! His spouse - knowing an immature idiot when she saw one - taught me how to budget! I ran their Dalmatian for 8 miles and it was lame for days! Great start! But the family looked out for me all four years. I was no victim. I had absolute freedom, although I had to really bring it in athletics. No parents checking on grades, no one to put boundaries on my conduct but me. In a foreign world of rich, spoiled and often effete rich kids, I liked being accountable to the man in the mirror. Now, Duke was a poor choice for me for any number of reasons, but the education inside the four walls of the classrooms was rigorous and later made grad school seem easy. Absolutely conned my way into an honors program by spinning the scholarship athlete thing but did the work and came through for my nervous director of the program by earning highest honors. I did it because he stuck his neck way out, and had to come through. He was like a father. So college is what you make it.
My daughter went to Princeton. The school chased parents away in drop off - I was impressed. My daughter knew I was far from a hovering parent, and was happy with it. My other daughter was a Shipman Scholar at Michigan and the Shipman activities started right away, so it was a drop and leave thing too. I might add, though, that we did make a trip to Meijer and spent way more than I imagined. Of course, spoiling my daughters was really about me, taking solace in not having to endure what I did. But again I was no victim and enjoyed my freedom tremendously. One take away is that by genetic disposition (and being sore and tired from athletics) I had zero interest in alcohol and drugs. Making it out of a bad circumstance was frankly due to a lot of luck, and there is not a day which goes by and I don’t know it.
My daughter called me out of the blue one day at Princeton and said I don’t know how you (me) did it. I told her, that is funny, because you did everything the right way with limited input from us and I have the same thoughts about you!! A personal reward 30 years in the making!!! Not hovering can have its rewards.
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