While on the Issues, Etc., podcast this past week, I was asked, “How would you describe modern parenting?” This is a complex question indeed! I could have spent the next 45 minutes talking about just this, but we had other topics to delve into. So, after briefly discussing some aspects of it, I ended by saying that all in all, I believe modern parenting to be one of the devil’s greatest triumphs.
Let me explain.
Modern parenting is a philosophy and an ideology. It holds to certain views about children, about parents, about the purpose and need of the family unit, about free time, education, and work ethic. Modern parenting is a value system that has usurped the place of God’s value system and has managed to permeate not just the average pagan family in America, but the average Christian family. And in so doing, it has imploded the Christian family unit.
Modern parenting holds the following fundamental “truths”:
- Children are a burden and a nuisance.
- Children don’t understand things.
- One child can be naturally better than another child. Parents know and decide this based on whatever they personally find to be the most aggravating trait to deal with.
- You, as the parent, are powerless to influence your child or change their course.
- If a child wants something, you have to give it to them, especially if it is something most kids have at their age.
- Some children just don’t respond to discipline!
- Early childhood is an empty/void time. Get through it however you can until they can go to school. This means free time in front of the screen is perfectly fine because the child can’t do or learn much anyway.
- Trivialize sin when children are young because it’s cute or funny.
- Do not teach kids God’s Word because that would be “forcing your religion on them.”
- Socialization is the highest good for your child.
- The best way to achieve this greatest good is by ensuring your child is left in groups of their peers as young as possible without your supervision. The best and easiest way to achieve this is if you just put them into daycare/school.
- All friendship is good friendship.
- If something is popular for children, then it is ok for children.
- Children should not have to apply themselves to tasks they do not wish to do except very sporadically and only when social media agrees it is absolutely necessary.
- Self-discipline is cruel to teach and unrealistic to expect of children.
- Screens are a non-negotiable and must be the center and circumference of our lives. There is nothing you can do about that as a parent.
- “Me time” is how you ensure you’re a good parent. Since this is a fundamental truth and the highest good, you must use whatever means possible to achieve that time. There is no price too high to pay for time to yourself.
- Talking badly about your children in front of them is normal, funny, and acceptable.
I could continue, but since the blog can’t go on forever, I’ll stop there. Children raised under modern parenting principles are growing up to be lazy, disobedient, selfish, rude, disordered, angry, and godless, and you don’t need me to tell you that. You only have to step outside your house to see it for yourself.
This hasn’t just led to the family unit imploding and causing outright hatred and resentment between children and their parents. It hasn’t just led to children growing up in nominally Christian homes only to turn to paganism once they leave for college (which would be bad enough!). This issue extends far beyond the family unit. Modern parenting has created hostility and anger between children and society at large. Many people cringe when they see children entering their establishment. They brace themselves for the potential disaster and havoc they are about to wreak. No one knows what they’ll do, and everyone assumes they’ll get away with it because the typical modern parent feels powerless and apathetic, and they are that way because they have been taught to be so. Modern parenting has succeeded in turning the incredible gift and blessing of a child into a living nightmare, not just for parents and family members but for society as a whole.
This is a tragedy comparable to abortion, and I don’t say that lightly. In abortion, a parent pays someone to end their child’s life before they have a chance to live outside the womb. In modern parenting, we see that children are also being permanently and profoundly harmed in a myriad of ways, and parents are falling into utter despair. We have covered up the blessing of children with the dung of unaddressed sin, and we have squandered the unique opportunity childhood offers to instill Christian beliefs and virtues because we believe it is both wrong to teach this and somehow also that children can’t learn it. We have poisoned the bond between parents and their children by giving up at the slightest provocation and handing our children a screen or passing them off to someone else when they become difficult. We have even damaged society’s view of little ones made in the image of God because the resulting mess is so foul to behold. Our children are at risk both metaphorically and literally because we have believed the lies of modern parenting and swallowed these deceptions.
We have done this because we have lost the light to our path. We do not know God’s Word because we cannot take time away from our doomscrolling to read it, not even for a few minutes a day. But we need it. We desperately need it as parents and can rely only on it to guide us. It is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Our children also need it to defend them against this world’s many attacks. The Bible is the most fundamental aspect of our lives as Christians and should be the defining element of our families. And it can be. We can put it back in its rightful place. We can change course and make a difference not just in our own lives and in our children’s lives, but in society as a whole. May God help us as we make countercultural parenting decisions based not on the world’s lies, but on Him!
