Modern Parenting

Sounds like the name of an 80s band, doesn’t it?
In looking around the symbolic room, I have watched parents attempt to deconstruct millennia of parenting philosophy only to be shockingly reminded that, as the Bible says, there’s nothing new under the sun.
There is a proper way to raise children and now, capital ‘S’ Science seems to be providing some support for that ideology: NurtureShock is a book—reviewed by George Will—that debunks modern parenting’s unsavory love affair with ‘self-esteem,’ among others.
There are the Massachusetts school students who jump rope with no rope because, you laggard, how dare you damage their self-esteem when they trip on the jump rope!?!
It’s been proven over and again that self-esteem and accomplishment are not necessarily linked. A ready example is found in the so-called African American “community” where the swaggering young men are filled to the brim with bravado and self-esteem yet couldn’t spell bravado. Perhaps this is a bad example—some would argue the inability to spell bravado is a measure of how bad the “Man” keeps the black community down—but it’s not far off the mark, I wager.