How parents today are making their daughters emotionally fragile, afraid of new experiences
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." -- Samuel Beckett
It's an inspiring quote. So inspiring that tennis player Stan Wawrinka, who won the prestigious French Open in June, had it tattooed on his arm a couple of years ago, back when he was having trouble reaching his potential.
None of the women on the professional tennis tour have followed Wawrinka's example, and it's certainly not because they don't like getting tattoos. They're simply less likely to share Beckett's mindset, says Jessica Lahey, author of the new book "The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed."
America's recent generations of girls have suffocated their "natural curiosity and love of learning at the altar of achievement, and it's our fault," Lahey writes. The "our," in this case, refers to parents.
Needless to say, many parents try to shield both sons and daughters from failure, and so has our culture in recent years -- hence the rise of "participation" trophies for every kid who shows up for a peewee league. It's an outgrowth of the idea, first popularized in the 1970s, that instilling high self-esteem in a child is the most important thing a parent can do.
Children's self-image is indeed important, but psychologist and author Jim Taylor insists we've been going about it the wrong way. "Parents were told to love and praise and reinforce and reward and encourage their children no matter what they did," he wrote in a 2010 Psychology Today article. "Unfortunately, this approach created children who were selfish, spoiled and entitled."
Not to mention anxious, depressed and afraid.
Recent studies on the subject suggest that the self-esteem parenting movement only makes early adulthood more difficult for kids, for we all inevitably meet failure and we need to know how to deal with it. And the growing problem appears to be much greater for girls, who tend to take failure more personally. They're more likely than boys to view failure as a value judgment on their inherent ability, as a definitive comment on themselves as individuals. Boys often will view a setback as a challenge to get better. Societal biases, often unconsciously in play, reinforce this attitude more with boys than girls.
The point, Lahey, Taylor and others say, is that failure takes practice. We have to get used to it, even embrace it. Otherwise, it will become a bogeyman.
Time magazine, citing the academic literature, writes that children have "been so protected from mistakes, usually by their parents, that they fear failure, avoid risk, and value image over learning. By the time they go to college, they are more vulnerable to How parents today are making their daughters emotionally fragile, afraid of new experiences | OregonLive.com: