My wife, Gena, and I have friends across the field of politics. And we respect all Americans, those who agree with us and those who differ.
Nevertheless, regardless of your political persuasion, if you love your kids and grandkids as much as we do, you need to pay careful attention to this brand-new report.
First, I've got to give kudos to Breccan F. Thies, an investigative reporter for the Washington Examiner, who did another stellar and impartial job in examining this issue.
The opening of Thies' column this past week immediately grabbed my attention: "Children of politically liberal parents are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety, lack of sense of life meaning, and have substance abuse issues," according to Dr. Leonard Sax, Ph.D. in psychology, author of four books for parents, and also a family physician with more than 30 years of experience.
Dr. Sax explained that, over the past decade in particular, a massive movement has grown of "permissive parents." They are those who are persuaded to carry out a more "gentle parenting," because they do not want to come across as "controlling" or "coercive" to their children.
Sax said that, according to scientific and social data, these "aggressively permissive" parents tend to be left-of-center in their parenting style. They often leave their children without proper authority. In fact, in most cases, the kids become the authority, while their passive parents are advocates of being more "patient, calm, and punishment-free."
As an example of this type of parenting, the Examiner cited Dr. Sax's testimony that many of these "gentle parents" "do not train their children to use the toilet, but rather 'model' using the toilet [themselves] in hopes of inspiring the child to use the toilet and grow out of their diaper."
Yet, permissive parenting goes far beyond potty training.
In an article for the Institute for Family Studies, "Do Your Political Beliefs Affect Your Parenting?" Dr. Sax wrote: "A mom brought her 6-year-old daughter into the office with a fever and a sore throat. I asked the little girl to open her mouth and say 'Ah.' She shook her head and clenched her mouth shut. 'Mom, it looks like I'm going to need your help here,' I said. 'Could you please ask your daughter to open her mouth and say "Ah"?' Mom arched her eyebrows and replied, 'Her body, her choice.'" (A clear reference to the pro-abortion stand and mantra.)
Sax said, "I have been a family doctor for nearly 34 years. Until recently, I saw no connection between politics and parenting. Left-of-center parents were no better and no worse parents, on average, than right-of-center parents. Some left-of-center parents were too harsh, some were too soft, and some were just right; and the same was true of right-of-center parents."
But that's all changed for Dr. Sax and countless other health care professionals like him.
Sax explained, "Every day that I am in the office, I now encounter parents who believe in 'gentle parenting,' or its close relatives, mindful parenting or intentional parenting. The gentle parent lets the child decide. The gentle parent never uses punishments of any kind, not even time-outs. … And the parents who are practicing gentle parenting are (in my experience) almost always politically left-of-center."
Excessive (or aggressive) permissive parenting is what prompted Dr. Sax to write, eight years ago, his New York Times bestseller, "The Collapse of Parenting."
Again, he explained, "I wrote the book because I had noticed that more and more parents were becoming too permissive. As I showed in the book, that trend toward permissiveness wasn't confined to families in my practice: scholars now find that the culture of the United States is increasingly a culture in which 'children rule.'"
The culture of "children ruling" is so prevailing that Dr. Sax said, "This change may help to explain some new findings regarding political views and depression in teenagers. Researchers have known for decades that teenage girls are more likely than teenage boys to be depressed. But some recent studies have called attention to the intersection of politics and depression among adolescents: namely, the finding that left-of-center adolescents are increasingly more likely to be depressed than right-of-center adolescents. This finding is so pronounced that left-of-center boys are now more likely to be depressed than right-of-center girls."
A 2022 study published in Science Direct by Dr. Catherine Gimbrone and colleagues at Columbia University is titled, "The politics of depression: Diverging trends in internalizing symptoms among U.S. adolescents by political beliefs." In it, Dr. Gimbrone and her colleagues try to explain increased depression among adolescents in political terms, with a point of origin being in 2012 when the country veered kids steadily and increasingly left-of-center. (The year 2012 is when incumbent president Obama and Vice President Biden cranked up their leftist secular progressive agenda across America.)
Some have contested Dr. Gimbrone and her colleagues' conclusions, opting instead for the view that increased depression among kids stems from their increased use of social media and all its trappings. However, all of the above experts agree that studies show left-of-center kids are more likely to be on social media than right-of-center kids. Therefore, the answer of increased depression might lie at the influence of both political persuasions and social media, as they both intersect in the digital world every day.
NYU professor Jonathan Haidt took it one step further. Sax explained that Dr. Haidt "argues that the real reason that left-of-center kids are more likely to be depressed compared with right-of-center kids is that left-of-center kids have been taught to catastrophize events, to assume the worst, while right-of-center kids are taught to be more optimistic."
"Taught to catastrophize events" like global warming, nuclear war or America's involvement in the Ukrainian-Russian war debacle? But aren't those also political issues they are being pounded with on social media and school as well? Isn't "teaching catastrophizing events" (rather than looking at them through optimistic lenses) taught on an even greater scale by public education, which is now the bastion of the left's secular progressive agenda?
Dr. Sax doesn't deny the power of social media or the bent of "catastrophizing events." He says they all are interconnected in leftist ideologies.
For kids, Sax explained to the Washington Examiner, "Whether or not you're a good person doesn't matter. If you're not famous, you're nobody. ... If you don't have a million followers on Instagram, if you don't have lots of likes on your TikTok, you are nobody, you are nothing.
"If parents have grounded their kids in a more lasting culture, then kids are to some degree insulated and protected from that toxicity of contemporary American culture. But if parents are permissive and let their kids spend hours a day on social media and playing video games, then kids are immersed in that toxic culture, and that toxic culture we know leads to anxiety, depression, and disengagement."
"These parents are also more permitting to life-altering medical treatments, such as transgender drugs and surgeries, than authoritative parents," the Examiner concluded.
Bottom line, there is a ginormous shift underway among left-of-center parents, and it doesn't look good for their kids.
Dr. Sax summarizes, "This is a big change. As recently as 10 years ago, it wasn't unusual to find left-of-center parents who were authoritative, even strict. That is less common today. In my experience, permissive parenting is now more common among left-of-center parents than among right-of-center parents. That's important, because researchers have found that permissive parenting leads to young adults with 'less sense of meaning and purpose in life, less autonomy and mastery of the world around them.' Other researchers have found that permissive parenting leads to lower emotional intelligence and lower personal growth. Still other researchers report that permissive parenting is associated with an increased risk of drug and alcohol abuse, and lower academic achievement, while authoritative parenting is associated with lower risk of drug and alcohol abuse and higher academic achievement. The children of permissive parents are more likely to become anxious and depressed. Two decades ago, Brad Wilcox showed that conservative religious parents were most likely to be authoritative – both strict and loving. From my perspective, that's even more true today."
Lastly, to be fair to Dr. Sax, let me state his concluding credo with his modus operandi: "I am a family doctor, not a politician. I am not suggesting that left-of-center parents should adopt right-of-center politics. I just ask that parents keep politics out of their parenting. Your child, your teenager, needs you, as the parent, to provide structure, to set boundaries, and to lay down guardrails that are enforced. This has nothing to do with Blue states vs. Red states or Democrat vs. Republican. This is about what every kid needs to thrive."
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