Let's Unpack Some Intensive Parenting Trends (In a Way That Will Not Make You Feel Like Crap)

Culture Study Podcast

Arts, Society & Culture

4.5 • 789 Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

People often ask me why I care so much about parenting when I am not, myself, a parent. This question is always so weird to me — of course I care about parenting norms, because I’m surrounded by parents! The choices that parents make (in the voting booth, as consumers, as community members, as friends) have so many direct and indirect effects on my life and everyone’s lives. Plus I’m always interested in how people try and make sense of a ton of contradictory information and “best practices” about how to be in the world, and whew, that is contemporary parenting right now.I’m so pleased that Melinda Wenner Moyer, author of Hello, Cruel World!, agreed to join us to unpack your questions about contemporary parenting trends — she is so good at balancing empathy (for why we gravitate towards certain strategies) with reassurance (less is almost always more). So if you want to talk about the weird ways gentle parenting rhetoric has seeped into the playground, the pressure to overschedule, and the deeply annoying professionalization of kids’ sports, whew is this the episode for you. And if you’re not a parent but affected by parenting practices: you’ll also find so much here. This week’s discussion is gonna be a good one.Thanks to the sponsors of today’s episode!Raw Signal Group: If you’re a manager doing good in the world, and you want a better toolkit for how you’re showing up for your community, go to worldsbestmanagementtraining.com to find out moreMake the switch to Blueland today! Get 15% off your first order by going to Blueland.com/cultureHead to Ollie.com/CULTURE, tell them all about your dog, and use code CULTURE to get 60% off your Welcome Kit when you subscribeArticle is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. Visit ARTICLE.COM/culture and the discount will be automatically applied at checkoutShow Notes:Buy Melinda’s book, Hello, Cruel World!: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Kids in Terrifying Times Subscribe to Melinda’s wonderful parenting newsletter, Now WhatAny writing on a parenting practice draws a lot of ire but this New Yorker look at gentle parenting from 2022 both elucidated the roots and gave me a lot to think aboutMy polemic against Kids Sports and my interview with Linda Flanagan re: whether or not they’re reformableWe reference Virginia Sole-Smith’s classic post on The Grandmothers Are Not OkayThe Culture Study discussion from a few months ago re: “What Are We Actually Talking About When We Talk About Intensive Parenting”?Melinda references The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom by Nancy ReddyWe’re currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:Evangelical Summer Camp, past and presentThe intersection of technology and parenting (especially how mothers are surveilled)REGIONAL ACCENTS!!!! (We have a accent/dialect expert as co-host!)Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) hereFor this week’s discussion: I feel like I don’t even need a prompt here because people are going to have THOUGHTS. Let’s just try and abide by normal Culture Study guidelines: don’t make people feel like crap in the comments!

Transcript

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0:00.0	There's so much anxiety right now, so much fear. It's not our fault. Like we are being fed all these,
0:08.8	you know, fear-based messages about parenting, whether it's like, you know, social media is going to
0:13.8	cause our kids to become murderers or nobody can get into college anymore and my kid is going to, you know,
0:20.5	end up on the street.
0:22.2	It's coming at us from like every possible direction. And so, and we know that like mom anxiety is at
0:29.3	an all time high right now. So it's like even if you argue that like things aren't that bad right
0:34.4	now compared with generations past, The fact is parents are hyper anxious
0:38.5	right now. Right. And the thing that I always come across is this feeling that like there is no
0:44.1	way to do it right. There's so much messaging about like parents are too up in their kids business.
0:51.4	They're doing too much. Like stop parenting so much. But then at the same
0:55.4	time, if you take your foot off the gas, there's so many messages telling you that that is also
1:01.7	bad parenting, right? So, like, everything is bad parenting. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's like it's impossible,
1:08.5	I think, to be a parent right now because, yeah, the minute you try to sort of challenge any of the norms, then other parents are judging you.
1:16.2	You know, sometimes, like maybe the cops will be called because your kid is in the park alone.
1:20.2	Like there's all these forces that are working against you trying to push against some of the norms that you might think are not necessary or particularly
1:28.3	helpful. And so it's like we're just stuck in this cycle of like, you know, not getting,
1:35.1	not being able to get out of the sort of over parenting hamster cycle. Yeah. If we want to.
1:46.3	Hi, everyone. This is the Culture Study podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.
1:50.7	I'm Melinda Winter Moyer, and I am the author of Hello, Cruel World Science-Based Strategies
1:56.6	for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times. How did you get started thinking about parenting?
2:02.6	It's like, like you did not conceive of yourself as a parenting journalist.
2:06.6	No.
	...

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