These comments have been so much more interesting and insightful than I dared to hope! Thank you, everyone, for making this experiment a resounding success.
A few brief takeaways for me:
* Hadn't thought enough about the role that afternoon siestas / naptime play in explaining the difference.
* Geography and architecture clearly play a big role: easier to do this when it's warm out and you can sit on a terrace with a place for kids to play adjacent / have a communal space other than a mall to run around in even if you're not spending money on a meal.
* The US in general is much more age-segregated than southern Europe.
* It's a collective action problem: You won't bring your kids to a dinner party if no one else brings theirs; you'll be reluctant to bring them to a restaurant if others may see them as a nuisance, etc.
* So the question in significant part is not about how different equilibria are sustained, but rather about how they came about in the first place; a question that is much harder to answer.
Having said all of that, on the whole the comments have strengthened the hunch I had coming in. There is, I think, an American parenting culture that puts the needs of kids above those of parents, which makes the day much more exhausting for adults, and creates the need for a few hours of "alone time." In southern European cultures, the bargain between the generations is different: during the summer and on weekends, a) kids get to be up late and have fun; but b) they understand that they're not always the center of attention; and therefore c) develop better social skills of how to behave around adults. From the perspective of parents, you give up some of that evening alone time without the kids, but it is much easier to sustain a social life and you spare yourself the battle of enforcing bedtime. Sounds like a better deal to me--but I'm not a parent, so what do I know!
Thanks again to everyone who commented. We'll do these "Help me Understand" threads more often!
I have so many thoughts on this to write if not a book then at least an article. But that won't happen so here is the attempt to sum it up: it is capitalism. I raised one child in Europe until the age of 13 and had another child in the US (who will spend a year with me in Prague now at the age of 11 so we will test all my theories). When we say it is cultural I agree in general but particularly in the sense that the US culture is a very much corporate/capitalist culture. In the US, missing a couple of days of school is incredibly hard to make up and keep good grades. Schools are just like workplaces where you are expected to show up and perform equally every day (which is insane, unhealthy and impossible) and they prepare students for future corporate service. People in the US go to jail for their kid's truancy. My son had Covid, we followed the protocol and I still got a super scary letter warning me of Social Services for missing school!!! In Europe, elementary schools are not scary places. Parents don't need to volunteer and co-fund schools, kids don't require an army of tutors, and missing school is not as dramatic. I still can not get used to taking my kid to school and packing lunches even though we have changed so much (the environment makes us change more than we like to acknowledge) since we immigrated to the States. People in most of Europe can perform at work even if they go to bed after midnight. People in the States can’t. Parents in the States can’t. In the States, we are constantly sleep-deprived and hungry. Our economy is driving our behavior and consequently designs our culture. Our policies (reflected in taxes to cover - or not - education and healthcare for all) are as much affecting our behavior as they are the expression of our culture. I have to stop here because I don't have time to summarize it all, but I hope it gives a gist.
"Corporate capitalism" is a uniquely poor explanation for the contemporary US school schedule and, in particular, its tendency to start and end significantly earlier than the typical US work day. The American tradition of starting the school day between 7-9 am, and ending it between 2-4 pm, actually has its roots in the needs of farming parents to get their kids back early enough in the day that they could help out with the farm. Many, many contemporary American parents (and their employers!) would love to switch school schedules to more closely match the contemporary corporate working day, but they're almost always stymied by implacable, and successful, opposition from teachers' unions, which tend to be full of members who like the traditional hours for their own reasons.
The American school system is modeled on Prussian common schools. They are institutions. State law largely controls compulsory attendance, including number of days. The schedule, other than number of compulsory days of attendance, is bargained for because teaching is unionized.
I’m pretty sure there are different ways to do this, but educational experimentation at the k-12 level is stymied by legal restrictions.
How long are the school days in Europe, I wonder? The way we do school here means that if the school day ran from, say, 8-5, teachers would be on duty for 10 hours a day, 7:30-5:30, with a 30 min lunch break, maybe an hour of planning time, and would likely put in 2 hours additional every night because one hour of planning time for seven instructional hours is grossly insufficient. And the kids, pressured to be "learning for mastery" every minute?
A lot of things besides the hours would have to change about how we do school in the US.
At least in Germany, school hours are significantly shorter. There are afterschool programs, but it can be difficult to find one with an opening for your child.
Corporate culture was designed as patriarchal, where mothers are supposed to be at home and volunteer in schools. The fact that it didn’t catch up with the times doesn’t mean it wasn’t intended this way. I am not an expert on American culture per se, but it is clear that the school expectation in the U.S. is that mothers bake, volunteer and answer phones from schools. In Europe, I went to school like 4 times a year max.
You don't seem to like anyone with the temerity to disagree with you or question how you reached conclusions, which I am sorry about. I won't, however, allow that to dissuade me from asking questions. Your personal experience is very different from mine. I would agree that school days being shorter than full-time work days does mean that parents need to find solutions, which will vary by region as well as economic resources. I am also aware that schools do ask for volunteer help in many different ways, and are quite happy to accept it from a stay at home parent. But a few decades of direct and observed experience of friends and neighbors do not indicate to me that schools systemically expect a stay at home parent of either sex.
I believe sports are the main impediment to a later school day in the US, not unions. One school district cannot change its schedule too much because then it sports teams will lose out on the ability to play against other schools in the area.
Like most humans my children definitely perform and behave better after a good nights sleep. The oldest is about to start middle school, which starts 45 minutes earlier than grade school, and I’m seriously worried how he’ll cope as he’s already going to bed at 9 but sleeping until 7:30. If we make bedtime much earlier it will interfere with after school activities.
Don’t forget that teachers are parents too. Everyone wants them to work 16 hour days for 10 hours of pay, so their own kid’s benefit/needs but forget that teachers face all those issues about their own kids. Ask a finance Bro to work without compensation and see how fast it takes them to melt into a puddle of self righteous pity about how they’re being exploited. I’m not a teacher but my Mom was.
If you don't have the time or inclination to articulate a reply or a viewpoint, don't expect anyone else to have the time or inclination to do your homework assignment.
We all have Google, and this is a comment thread.
I don't have a strong opinion on the topic that Yascha has chosen for his first comment section open to non-subscribers, so in the spirit of driving engagement that I'm sure motivated this open house, and in the spirit of establishing community norms that he mentions, I'm establishing this one.
Oh, it's even better! And to save anyone else the time;
The linked essay is a piece titled The History of School and Summer Vacation by James Pederson apparently published in the Journal of Inquiry & Action in Education, 2012.
There are no pages 4&5, I assume the document just retains the journal's original formatting, the pages are 54 to 62, so I had to read the whole thing. There is not a single mention of the topic under discussion, here, the entire essay is about the history of 12 month schooling and summer vacations and it doesn't talk about starting times or daily hourly schedules at all.
the opinion that school schedules and the amount of time kids go to school being based on farming needs is something that — well, it’s simply not true and so instead of wasting my time posting an opinion, I posted a study if you don’t like it don’t read it.
It isn't a study, it's an essay, which is an opinion. It cites some data but that doesn't make it a study.
And you obviously haven't read it (or my previous comment) yourself or you'd know that it doesn't say anything that contradicts the notion that daily school schedules were set as they are because of farming. It doesn't support the notion either. It's about a different topic; annual schedules and summer vacations.
Whatever you're saving time for by not posting you own opinion, it clearly isn't reading.
You point out that the school system has regimented schedules and attendance expectations. The US school system is dominated by publicly owned and operated schools. You point out that those same schools enforce their dictates by threatening parents with social services. Social services is 100% governmental. I don’t understand how you blame capitalism for the actions of the most socialist and fascist parts of the US system.
Apparently your mild response is a sign you are "enraged." All I can do is wonder at how one reads rage into your questioning that capitalism is the source of every perceived ill.
I am not. I am stating the influence of capitalism to the overall culture. Yes, we can trace it back to Protestantism and work ethic but I don’t think that is truly relevant today. Not sure what enraged you here but I am very jet lagged so I’ll leave it here.
I’m not sure how you read that as enraged. I point out two things you said, point out that they are respectively the most socialist (schools) and fascist (social services) examples of American government, and ask you how you got to your conclusion. That’s not an attack. I’m genuinely confused about what you call capitalism.
I am genuinely confused of what you call socialist and fascist and how is that relevant for this conversation. School system in America is also private, more than anywhere else. I was raised and finished primary education in communism, then socialism. My older child went to public school, then went to US public school (skipped a grade after placement test), then went to public hs and then elite private college. Then went to elite graduate institution. I am attending for PhD (Comparative cultures and languages) and teaching at state university. My son went to classic public school in the U.S. and then charter school. What I want to say, I have very diverse experience, as a student on both continents, as a parent, and as a teacher. However, my original comment was related to culture, social and economic environment and human behavior. I am very invested in the discussion on educational system in the States because I am planning to keep working in it, but that was not my idea here, nor was the author’s question.
Ok. It’s fair to ask for definition. I define socialist as a system in which the state owns the means of production. That is predominantly true in the educational system in the US. Yes, there are private and religious schools, and home schooling. But the public systems dominate and set the terms for the remainder of supply.
I define fascist, in this context, to mean a highly authoritarian system in which the state interferes extensively and forcefully in private relations for reasons typically believed to be paternalistic and good for the nation and its unity. It typically goes with a belief that the system and its actors are better than those acted upon. I think all of that fairly described many child protective services. (Which is what I think you were describing previously. If so, I’m genuinely sorry you ran into them. They are terrifying for people born here. They must be extra-bewildering for someone who didn’t grow up with the horror stories.)
It is relevant to the discussion because you seemed to be asserting that many things about US schools to which you object are due to capitalist influence on US culture. I find it bewildering to think that capitalism (ie a free market system) would be blamed for a union-dominated socialist system that typically fails to deliver what privately supplied education typically does. Perhaps you mean something different when you say capitalism? Maybe you mean something more like corporatism (which I view as fascism’s less villainous brother)?
Fascism is an alternate solution to the class struggle. Mussolini reasoned that the bourgeois and the proletariat needed each other, and so needed the all powerful state to make them work together. Soviet propaganda characterized communism and fascism as polar opposites for obvious reasons. They are equally bad.
You mean communism? French socialism is not bad, and overall what we have in Europe is a combination of socialism and open market. Only in the U.S. the word socialism is tainted and mistaken for communism. I was born in communism, trust me I know.
Unfortunately, traditional definitions have been muddied so that people have conversations with no understanding of what the other is talking about.
Traditionally:
Fascism is the merger of the government and the corporate. Basically, corporations and government are the same. This is, obviously, the case in America. "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because is is a merger of state and corporate power."~ Benito Mussolini
Socialism is a planned, centralized system in which the government regulates the economy, distribution of resources, and the provision of services.
Communism is a system in which the population as a whole owns everything with no individuals owning anything. Each giving according to their ability and consuming according to their need.
Capitalism is a free-market economy in which private citizens own the means of production. Think Mom and Pop shops and individually-owned factories and businesses.
No country fit neatly into any of these systems. America is more fascist than capitalist. The Soviet Union was more socialist than communist. And Europe is more capitalist than socialist.
I was making the point on the level where it didn’t make much difference if I am referring to traditional definitions or colloquial (for example I do say “socialism” while referring to developed European countries that are obviously also capitalist, but that is not critical in that context because capitalism is not drastically changing culture in those countries as it does in the States). I grew up with Marxism instead philosophy until half way through HS so I’m very familiar with theory (and in all honesty am bored to death of such discussions), but what I wanted to share is the experience of living in all of them and parenting in socialism and capitalism, and how that models our behavior and relationships within a family and community. And not just models but conditions and limits.
Yes, exactly! I think that this gets at 95% of the difference. That, and the likely fact that, in Italy, there are far more extended families that live in close proximity so that there is plenty of back-up and supervision built-in to the raising of children.
True, I use it very liberally here. And interchangeably with corporate. But what I am talking about is uniquely American, because nowhere else we have such concentration of wealth and lack of social support network that affect families in so many ways. There are authors who worked on terminology but my brain is not drawing anything better right now, and I didn’t think it has to since it is not university seminar. I am sure it is clear what I meant. But if someone thinks socialism is a dirty word, my loose use of terminology is the least of the problems :-)
And that is not because people don’t like to have life they can actually survive. It’s just the corporate grip we can’t get off of us. I love America and I became an American by choice, for other great things that we have, but we need to move forward to make our culture livable.
I think this is very thoughtful. I will be mulling it over for days. I am gradually starting to see how capitalism shapes so much else around us. I think the sleep deprivation situation cannot be stated enough. I think (and experienced) that a consistent bedtime routine could be very effective, and I can’t blame parents for not wanting to mess up a routine they invested many trials, errors, and time into developing. I also think that America is not accommodating or validating of children as legitimately having needs, especially in semi-public spaces like restaurants.
I found that we can not remain healthy in the US without consistent bedtime. The US capitalism is affecting our bodies in different ways. But consistent bedtimes and routines make me depressed, there’s no color to that life.
So called US and even western cultural is very regimented due in no small part due to the need for a regimented workforce for industrialization starting 400-500 years ago. Once structures and laws are enacted they are very hard to change. Even experimentation with alternatives is difficult. Interestingly Covid forced a change in many workplaces, office requirements and even homes (the need for quality workspace)
Simply so parents can have some “me” time at the end of the day. Putting the kids to sleep at 8pm frees up a couple of hours for the parents. That and ofc bc they need to get good rest, but the 8pm time is arbitrary so parents can have some alone time at the end of the day.
That's probably right. Though I guess it seems like a bad calculus to me. Italian parents have adult time with their friends out a nice restaurant while their kids play in the nearby piazza. American parents have to fight a battle over getting the kids to sleep and then are either stuck at home on their own or need to shell out for a babysitter...
I think this gets at the crux of the problem. A complete lack of spaces for kids to safely go out of the restaurant and play. Even if you did bring them along, if they got antsy, you can’t shoo them out. There’s no piazza outside, probably just a parking lot and 3 lane highway.
This is a good point. It's not that American parenting norms are over-protective, it's that in many cases, they're appropriately protective. Having a well-lit piazza in walking distance on which your cultural life can center is a privilege most Americans, even those in the upper class, don't enjoy.
CPS personnel would rather go after the middle class doing what was normal two or three decades ago than deal with actual child abuse, which usually involves multiple unpleasant confrontations.
The USA had a panic about child abduction in the’90s. It was foolish. Any particular incident is serious, but it’s not a widespread problem. They receive national media coverage. Availability heuristic.
This is something that can only be achieved collectively. I'd be happy to bring my kids along to social outings, but I know there will be no other kids there. They will get bored, being the only kids. I will get a lot of "side eye" if I let them play "nearby," without directly supervising them. It wouldn't be fun for me or for them, so we just don't do it.
This confirms what I just said (I made two comments on this thread--see my comment about how American versus Southern European parents react when their children are present). In Southern Europe the children can play without (too much) supervision. In Southern Europe the children can be present at adult events without them becoming the center. In America, if children are present, the entire event needs to be centered on them.
That is correct. People frown on you bringing your kids and then not really paying too much attention to them. Even though I don't agree with it, it's difficult to do anything about it as an individual family. Now, families with kids will sometimes get together and let the kids play, but those are usually private events not out on public.
I remember being invited as a youngster to all large family gatherings. Weddings were my favorite, running around the hall with all the cousins. I don’t think kids get invited to things like weddings, showers, anniversary parties, etc anymore which is unfortunate. Back then it seemed to be a cultural thing in a large Polish family that is just not done today. Luckily, I grew up playing outside with dozens of kids and we knew to come in when the street lights came on. My kids were also able to play outside and roam our neighborhood with friends. I kept my kids up fairly late in their toddler years because the later they stayed up, the later they slept in. As they got older, they regulated their own bedtimes based on activities/homework. We always took our kids to restaurants with us or with family. When we were with a group of friends we didn’t because that was adult time and it was respected as such. Also, in the US, restaurants don’t really like customers to linger for hours and hours so the scenario mentioned by the poster wouldn’t really happen here. If kids are invited to a private party at a restaurant then that’s great. My youngest daughter fell asleep at a restaurant party one time on top of a pile of coats. Our kids were always invited to house parties with friends and stayed up late on weekends. They had a blast and and truthfully, for our family bed times never dictated our lives.
This may just be me, but as a parent of a 2-year old I've become so adapted to a bedtime routine for my daughter and waking up early, that staying up late for a social outing doesn't sound all that appealing. I've adapted and pushed my social outings with friends to mornings, afternoons, and evenings. And if there are social outings that are late, such as a wedding Im attendings next weekend, I'm fine pushing the bedtime out to 9:30 for a night but not much past that...that is just too heavy a price to pay. But perhaps if she were older my calculus would be different.
This! little kids tend to wake early. I’m incapable, sadly, of sleeping in. My body wakes me when I usually wake, which is now when my kids wake- a little before 6.
Yes! When my kids were little, I absolutely hated them the day after a late event! It might be different if I had a handful of adults to pass them around to when they got cranky, but, like most American parents, it was just me and my husband when he wasn't working.
Maybe that's why Italian women aren't choosing to have kids! The fun-loving Italian dads are probably sleeping in while the self-sacrificing mammas take care of the aftermath. (It's not just a stereotype and not limited to Italians!)
It sounds like you're raising a small child in a way that’s good for you and not your child. Try adding some adversity to their schedule. You just might be surprised at what happens. Stress is a part of life. Better for kids to be dealt wirh some stress early in life rather than when you send them off to a college campus. Just my two cents.
There are several issues here that preclude comparisons. There are no piazzas around which restaurants are situated in the US. You cant compare a sleepy Tuscan town to a suburb where you have to drive to get to a restaurant. I would hazard a guess that in Rome and Milan you would not find a sleeping kid in a restaurant. (Since having kids we have travelled pretty exclusively with them and have taken them to dinners at all hours, but most Americans dont do that). Quite frankly, unless this was an intergenerational gathering I would hate to be the one stuck next to a sleeping kid. Which brings me to another point, I think in the summer people tend to go out more for dinner, so it's not an "occasion ", but a casual food moment. That makes it easier to bring kids. Then the diet of most US kids preclude them from easy integration with an adult meal. However, there is a place inthe US where this type of gathering takes place and kids do run around playing while adults eat. Funny enough it's on the grounds of Disney World. Although I imagine that in seaside and resort towns of the Carolinas, Jersey Shore, Florida, etc, you will also see kids late out at night, albeit at "family" restaurants. Finally I would like to add my personal pet pieve. And that's when certain type of American parents do bring their kids into restaurants and then use put upon voices, meant for everyone in the restaurant to hear, how fabulously they're educating their kids.
Interesting comments especially “the diet of most US kids precise them from easy integration with an adult meal”. I agree but why is this? Why don’t we do a better job integrating our kids into eating like an adult. I have a 10 year old niece who still has the palate of her 4 year old self: chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese. Worse yet my brother and sister in law still cut up her food.
It takes persistence to offer more complex foods over and over until kids accept them. Unfortunately in the US there's a pervasive assumption that it's unrealistic to expect kids to eat a wider variety of foods, which makes it harder to keep up that persistence.
Even worse though, many American adults have very limited palates. If you don't eat vegetables yourself it's going to be hard to offer them to your kids enough to get them to eat them, even if you know you should. Especially if you're strapped for cash on top of that. (I remember reading a study that found lower income Americans were much more likely to throw away kids' uneaten vegetables. I thought that can't be right, how could they afford it? — but if no adult in the house eats vegetables either, it makes more sense. And then because they can't afford the waste, they give up.)
We could really use some big changes to help with this. Maybe something akin to the French creche (daycare) system, in which concerted efforts are made to offer little kids a variety of healthy foods, over and over in different forms, or so I've read. But that seems pretty pie-in-the-sky for the US.
I was very curious about this while my son was growing up. Until he started daycare, he was eating wonderful meals like salmon, spinach and he loved kale salad. But as soon he started interacting with the world on his own, he asked for peanut butter, then mac and cheese, then chicken nuggets. We didn’t have peanut butter in the house until he asked for it (nothing against it, just not a thing for us). And we didn’t have cable so he wasn’t exposed to ads. He picked it up from other kids. It is hard to fight it, people are busy and you just end up with what is being pushed on you. I have been fighting it with my tooth and nail but it is a serious commitment and I guess a privilege.
Also, I have brought my twin boys to many restaurants in SF. Often times only to have gay couples in their 60s stop by on the way out and complain about how rude I was to bring my kids to a restaurant. They were also behaving very well the entire time. Thankfully I was with my wife so I decided not to step outside and ask for some clarification on why they were upset. This hallened at a Gavin Newsome establishement and a french restautrant. The french waiters told me to ignore the assholes. We were regulars at both places.
Interesting, my son was dining all over Palo Alto and around and has developed a beautiful taste and manners. Never had any issue with people complaining, also not in SF. And then he started school and all went out the window.
When I'm in Paris there are often children and dogs in restaurants. Children in a 2 or 3 star? Not always but often enough. And they are well behaved, quiet and respectful.
When else are you going to get the dishes done, catch up on work you didn’t finish, deal with paperwork, or watch your favorite show? Parents of young children can’t do all of those things before 8 PM when the kids go to sleep, unless one parent does all the childcare, which is increasingly out of fashion in America.
Incidentally, we do go out to dinner occasionally with our kids. The main advantage is having no clean up afterwards.
Good question. I remember my surprise when arriving in the center of Rome on seeing all the families out strolling so late (it was 10 or 11 PM).
I don't have an answer, but let me suggest some possible factors:
Maybe American parents want their kids asleep by a certain time because they want the rest of the evening to themselves.
Maybe they believe that if bedtimes are arbitrary there'll be a nightly struggle.
Maybe American parents lack the mimetic knowledge of extended, multi-generational families and are thus less comfortable winging it. Maybe, then, the parenting books they read recommend regular bedtimes -- rightly or wrongly.
Maybe American kids are generally less well-behaved (or less tractable when ill-behaved), making the parents fear to take them out with other adults. This could be due to all kinds of things, up to and including the willingness to give the kid a swat.
Maybe the Italian kids throw just as many tantrums, but the other adults laugh it off.
Maybe the American morning routines are more tightly-scheduled or demanding, making it more of a problem if a kid gets up groggy.
These all seem plausible! But I guess most of them feel like good sociological explanations rather than good justifications for American parenting practices...
Were you asking for an explanation or a justification? The hypothesis seems to be (based on your responses) that the Italian approach is qualitatively better. What evidence would you be looking for to support one approach over the other? It seems to me one could draw a line through Europe dividing it into the contrasting behavior you observed, but it isn't clear to me that the quality of life is superior in Italy, Spain, and Turkey to Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark.
I just can't help but notice that there's another clear contrast between the two groups of countries you mentioned.
I find that nationals of the former group are all more socially open and friendly with strangers than nationals of the latter group. Do you think there might be a causal connection between that and the different parenting attitudes?
So I suspect we're all basing this on what we have lived, but here are my thoughts. I'm not sure what you mean by socially open, and I certainly have not found that people of the first group of countries are friendly than those in the latter. But I don't equate reserve with unfriendliness. Very broadly speaking, Canadians are more reserved than Americans, but I don't think anyone finds them less friendly. As to social openness, in many areas of life northern Europe has been much more open to diversity than the south. Traditional attitudes to religion and gender roles have changed much more slowly in the countries you describe as more open and friendly. I don't think any of this has to do with bedtimes, which I think is a red herring.
I do believe the reaction to children is often different in Italy, Turkey or Spain than in England, Germany, and Switzerland. There is a higher tolerance in the former for normal behavior of children, and unscientifically it seems to me like strangers are on average happier to see children around. But I've seen that change again in Scandinavia, where children's bedtimes are typically earlier.
I like to know something about a subject before passing judgment, so I mentioned some areas for investigation. I don't expect readers to go out and research them and present their findings, but then I'm content to just not form an opinion.
Meaning, I don't know whose practices are better, or whether each is appropriate to its setting. I have eight children and sixteen (or is it seventeen? Don't make me count) grandchildren and a few opinions on parenting, but would need more information about the specifics here to pronounce on the matter.
Maybe the move towards remote work will shake this up. Pre-pandemic, my colleagues’ schedules were dictated by school schedules. I think that is still the case, although the place I work for has started to allow people to work from while their kids are at home. This was largely prohibited pre-pandemic, meaning that even if one was working from home, kids had to be dropped off at preschool or daycare. It seems arbitrary, or at least not narrowly tailored.
My first response to this question was that the built environment in Europe is much more conducive to walking and requires much less driving. So taking your kid to a neighborhood restaurant down the block is a very different event than putting them in the car and driving 15 minutes to a restaurant. My own kids fell asleep almost immediately on any car ride of longer than a few minutes.
However, on reflection, I see that in my own neighborhood, it is quite common to see families out walking after 9 PM along the public beach. Not all families, but Asian, Indian, or other more recently immigrated groups. Incidentally, some of these families are likely getting into the car to drive to the beach to have this evening walk.
Maybe American parents do not set and enforce boundaries? And are afraid to discipline children? Just a thought. No personal experiences except with nieces and nephews.
The question of why children might be enjoying a late summer night out is not the same as the question why American kids go to bed at 8 pm. Italian kids go to bed early on school nights as well.
What I notice more and more is how badly kids need clearly-defined structure, parameters and routine, and how so much of kids' unhappiness can be attributed to the absence of these things in their young lives. I'm all for the 8 pm bedtime rule and also all for exceptions to the rule when one is on vacation from rules.
Fair! But that raises a crucial follow-up question: Are Italian parents more willing to vary their routine between weekdays and weekends and it just doesn't affect their ability to get the kids to sleep at a reasonable time on a school night? Or, if not, do they just put up with the negative consequences? (I suspect, but can't confirm, the former.)
I let my kids go to bed a little later on weekends, and usually they get right back into it Sunday night. But I think it really depends on your kids. How much sleep a child needs does vary from child to child, and how changes in routine affect children also varies. So parents have to figure it out. And it isn't hard to figure out at all. Take it from a mom of five :)
" it just doesn't affect their ability to get the kids to sleep at a reasonable time on a school night? " The former. I mean, why would it? That's also part of being a parent. You adapt to circumstances and adapt circumstances to you child's need. You do not need a rigid structure superimposed to be reasonable and to have some clearly-defined structure with exceptions (as Sheela above says).
As a pediatrician, I can attest to what you surely know already, as you surely did a literature search on this: There are a lot of unanswered questions about this very topic among sleep researchers.
As to Southern Europe, let me add an observation based on my recent travels to southern Spain where dinners are even later than in Italy:
First of all, adults and children hold siestas. Therefore, it would be unreasonable to go to bed at 8pm or 9pm - people just woke up! Secondly, the lack of ACs in much of southern Spain means that it takes at least an hour after the sun sets until the bedrooms are sufficiently cooled down...less sticky, really...for a semblance of sleep to be possible.
In other words, I believe that there are common sense reasons why children go to bed late in southern Europe - which is a separate observation (and a separate question) from the fact that children are far more integrated in adult activities in southern Europe.
Clinically, I work a lot with the Amish. And in this community, albeit in Pennsylvania and other northern US states, you see many of the same features as in Spain and Italy (albeit not the late bedtime): Children are expected to take part in all "family" aka adult activities. There is no babysitter culture. And indeed, I am struck, as a pediatrician, how much better behaved most Amish children are compared to "English" children of the same age. And not just better behaved - also far more independent! The other day I bought my tomatoes from a 7-year-old - and she used the little calculator to determine the tax on the birdhouse I had added to my purchase with a Selbstverstaendlichkeit that was stunning.
You had written about Rob Henderson's "luxury beliefs" - maybe this is a different kind of luxury belief, our US middle-class fixation on sleep times?
You overestimate me! I did look at the sleep literature a bit but not enough to have a secure footing. What would you say is the consensus within it as it bears on this question, and what are the open questions?
Ha! Spoken like a true academic. "Back to you, my friend"...
I am not a sleep researcher, hence no secure footing here either. That said, it is widely believed among pediatricians that most US children do not sleep enough, with resulting negative consequences re: behavior and academic achievement. But the question I pose, connected to my circumcision comment to Scott a few minutes ago, is this one: How certain are we - including our academies- that 'duration of sleep' is the critical variable here? Or are we, potentially, measuring a surrogate marker for poor behavior and poor academic achievement?
Wouldn't be the first time!
More generally speaking, I would love for you to devote a podcast and/or essay to the issue of 'hyper-individualism' versus communitarianism. And look at some of the post-liberal movement in that light (possibly via the angle of parenting!): How much of it is simply dangerous illiberal authoritarianism versus how much of it addresses a very real deficiency in our modern meritocratic world?
I look at the kids of my communitarian Amish families, and I cannot help but think that we have lost something precious in our modern world.
Thanks, very interesting. And the point about the surrogate marker seems plausible. Who do you think could speak to the lack of the right kind of community in much of American society well?
By the way, it always strikes me as weird that Americans, at least in the big cities, seem to have a lot less community than many Europeans, but talk much more about this or that community (with those communities characteristically being based in either ethno-cultural commonalities or interest groups, such as the "knitting community," rather than organic ones based on geography.
How about your colleague and mentor Michael Sandel? It is not parenting, directly, but in his "Tyranny of Merit" he addresses some of the underlying issues, as I see it.
I agree with you 100%, having both German and Pakistani family roots (the latter via my wife), that American communities are strikingly "lonely". Hyper-individualized might be the better term: I have a Sunday soccer "community" and maybe a political activism "community" - but simply a neighborhood Kneipe where we all meet when we meet, chat and play cards? That doesn't exist here - at least not in urban and suburban America.
Interestingly, my Amish families still have that. They remind me of Laupheim of a generation ago - or Hanau and Heidelberg, in my case.
Is this loss a necessary consequence of modern life and modern wealth - including the loss of multi-generational families? Or could there be a better 'middle way"?
I friend of mine just pointed out another potential guest for such a show: Abigail Shrier. She just published a new book, "Why the Kids aren't Growing up", and while I have not read the book myself, my best guess is that it touches on some of these very issues. If your focus was less on meritocracy and more on the many dysfunctions in our US society as it relates to childhood and parenting, then maybe she could be your guest.
One of the challenges with forming geographic-centric "community" versus common-interest "community" in multicultural polyglot cities (e.g. New York, Los Angeles, London) versus more monocultural places (Rome, Madrid, Zurich) is self-evident, and playing out in the news these days.
But consider also how Amish adolescents go wild when it’s time for them to go on their Rumspringa - the year where they go into the majority culture and many go wild with sex and drugs. They have no healthy boundaries in many cases.
This is not true, Kitty. I work with the community: "Rumspringa" is first of all done by a small percentage, and then within that small percentage it is a tiny percentage who choose to "go wild". Unfortunately some rather sensationalist movies and (pseudo)documentaries have given a false impression in this regard.
I think things are different during school holidays. In Italy and France, vacations are family affairs, kids included - even if, or perhaps especially if, things go late. Family vacations are viewed as unmissable opportunities for kids to get to know their grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles - and their parents and godparents - free of the strictures of a school schedule. These vacations are an essential part of upbringing - almost a parallel education system. This exists to some extent in the US among families that are fortunate enough to be able to gather together, over distances, in one place. My husband's family used to take two rental homes on the Jersey Shore every summer for a week and bring 20-plus people together. It was not a luxury vacation at all, but the memories are priceless - and kids went to bed whenever they wanted.
Thanks, Anne! That all seems broadly right to me. And certainly parents in Italy and France will want their kids to go to sleep at a reasonable time when they have to make it to school the next morning. But, at least in Italy, you do see kids out in the streets late on weekends during the school years as well. So at the very least there seems to be a greater willingness to have a different schedule on Friday/Saturday night than the rest of the week?
Keep in mind that even doctors in the US tell young mothers to get their children on a routine bedtime of 7, 8, or 9 and keep it every night for good sleeping habits. Most sleep "experts" tell adults the same thing. Get a routine going and keep it. I wonder what Italian doctors say.
Absolutely. Another factor is that in continental Europe, children are taught to socialize with adults. They eat dinner with their parents, attend long Sunday lunches with the extended family, and are expected to behave civilly (if not perfectly - hey, they're kids). They learn table manners, the art of conversation, and to eat what is put in front of them. Compare and contrast with many American families who eat dinner on the run between activities and homework - or with British families who give the kids "nursery tea" at 5pm and put them to bed at 6.
Correct me if I'm wrong because I don't have any direct experience with Europe, but isn't the difference partially the function of the siesta (I believe riposo in Italy)? At least, it used to be the case that stores closed midday and people took what Americans would think of as naps. (There are some studies that suggest that breaking sleep up into two blocks like that might be a healthier alternative.) Anyway, that tradition, if it's still practiced, enables people to stay out later. (If I had work the next day, I wouldn't have stayed out with friends until midnight. But if I'd slept for three hours in the afternoon, maybe.) It might also change the idea of when family time is. I'm just theorizing.
As far as American schools are concerned, I was a teacher for 36 years (mostly high school English), so I can comment on that a bit. One of the issues that affects education is that K-12 education is funded more erratically than it is in a lot of countries. It's typically funded by local property taxes, which means in practice that more affluent communities end up with better schools. The funding system has changed somewhat, but that's a state-level kind of reform, not a national one, so results are still uneven.
It used to be the case that some European countries sorted students into trade school and academic tracks relatively young. In the US, that kind of sorting never happened, in part because of the fear that students in poorer communities would have a harder time preparing for the academic track. The result was that, as more and more jobs required a college education, the attitude developed that everyone needed to go to college (or at least be prepared for college). This is one of the reasons that American schools have somewhat higher stress levels. Teachers, usually working with insufficient resources, have to get everyone ready for college while at the same time dealing with a number of other mandates. Hence, the emphasis on attendance and focus. In fact, there are still some career paths that don't require a four-year college experience, but even a student aiming for one of those has to be prepared for college, just in case.
This is more of an issue in high school, but the process really starts much younger. I think that may account for some of the differences that we're discussing.
Good point about the siesta. Don't think that's the whole explanation - especially since American kids, at least up to a certain age, also take naps - but it's surely part of it.
When I lived in Spain, elementary school students would leave school daily to eat a meal and take a nap. Their parents might nap too. Then everyone would be out later. The kids went to bed later and their parents even later. In the US, as others have mentioned, naps are dropped. No one is leaving school partially through the day to get one. When my own kids and my friends kids have dropped naps (often around age 3-5) they sleep an hour or two longer at night. Kids who have later bedtimes tend to drop them later. In my experience the package deal of napping and going to bed later works well, the alternative of kids just sleeping longer at night also works well. What does NOT work well is no nap and a late bedtime. Too many nights of that and you get tired grumpy kids.
Earlier bedtimes for kids are also common in the Nordic countries. I'm interested in how temperatures and daylight hours might have affected regional differences historically. Where it's darker and colder, perhaps kids went to bed earlier. Where it's lighter and warmer, maybe later with naps during the day.
From experience, a child's naptime does not help them catch up from the previous late night. Frequently, the naps the next day are shorter and it's more difficult to get them down.
When I was raising my two sons I was happy to take them everywhere with me (I’m first generation American and I was never left with babysitters as a child) but I found that Americans consider children “private property” so to speak, and it’s not customary to invite and welcome them into adult social life - American society tends to divide things in a mono generational way, generally speaking. Someone once even told me that the city we live in is an “adult city” and that people with children shouldn’t live there. That person also told me that children are a burden on society, as if children are not part of society, and as if the development of individual potential were not a social resource. His might have been an extreme view but there sure was that vibe in general of a hard line between the adult world and the child world, which i personally found hard to navigate. My sons are both adults now so I get to enjoy spending time with them anywhere, without that cultural complexity, i’m sure glad to not have to deal with that anymore.
Niki, that “burden on society” remark does sound like an extreme view. But I have lived almost all of my 68 years in family oriented neighborhoods (even now that my three sons are grown) and that’s probably why it sounds extreme.
We took our sons out to eat with us often(usually on Sunday after church—a popular practice in my region of America). That’s where I have seen that type of multigenerational socializing.
My son and his wife have a young child and one on the way. They do not live nearby but do take her out to eat(not all the time). They too live in a family friendly community.
thanks for that, Lee. I think we are venturing into the territory of the “culture wars” aspect of things. Church and religion tend to hold family / community values while “coastal elite” places like mine tend to be more fragmented . Again, i’m speaking in broad strokes and likely over- generalizing but i’m writing a post and not an essay here!
Niki, I should clarify: lots of people, churchgoers and non/churchgoers, go out to brunch in my city (Dallas Tx) like cities all over America. My reference to “ after church”merely indicates part of a behavior pattern I have observed, not a religious orthodoxy of any sort.
Right. It's very hard to import norms that are more inclusive of children to a context that isn't. So I guess one question should be about the origin of American norms regarding this, and another question about how the norms reach equilibrium and perpetuate. The latter is easier to understand than the former...
All kids are different. Some fit right in with adults and don't cause a disruption, like my now-grown son, who wouldn't go to bed until mom and dad did. But he was quiet and well-behaved so there was never a problem. Other kids are miserable if they miss their bedtime. And I remember a little Italian boy who came to dinner with his father in a restaurant with a bunch of adults and he crawled under the table, wouldn't stop demanding attention, and was a general pain in the a.... He was eight. Know your kid and act accordingly.
That's fair! Though my general impression is that in southern Europe a) kids end up better behaved because they're more used to being around adults (while American kids expect to be the center of attention because they usually are); and b) there's more tolerance for reasonable interruptions from kids.
As an American grand parent I can say that most American kids are badly behaved and ill trained when out in public. Especially in restaurants. Except mine of course. They were absolute angels.
The helicopter parenting of today may account for solipsistic children who consider themselves the life of every party. Relaxed parents generally have relaxed children.
Having raised my kids in the States, but being English I have some observations. Americans have fixed ideas about how families should have fun together (parks, sports, backyard events etc)and how adults have fun (bars restaurants etc). I believe it is something to do with the alcohol laws. I noticed that by 16 years of age in UK and Europe kids are used to socializing with and around adults and then they are admitted into the adult world (I.e can drink) from then on. However, in USA kids are excluded from adult life until 21. They spend years bored, treated like something inferior and excluded from adult company in many instances. It all starts back at the beginning with parents unwittingly creating a divide with strict bedtimes and low expectation of bringing children into adult settings.
We used to dress our kids up and go to fancy restaurants at ages about 6. They learned a lot and were treated like royalty because waiters almost never saw kids in such settings.
I think I found the answer: if American parents bring the children with them, the entire event will end up centering the children, because in America the child is always at the center. The adults always center the child's desires and whims. In Southern Europe you can bring your children to social events, and still continue to have an event for adults: the children do their thing, the adults their thing. If children and adults share the same table, in America the children are let to lead the discussion, while in Southern Europe the children are simply allowed to eavesdrop, but the discussion is still centered on the adults. Briefly, in order for adults to have some time just for themselves, in America the children need to be absent (exiled to bed).
Definitely a big part of the answer! (Would just add that it’s not like children are expected to be silent or overly deferential at the table or anything like that in Italy. They get to participate—they just know they’re one constituency at the meal, not the sole center of attention.)
As an Indian mom married to an American dad.... my husband's family basically neglects kids I feel. I find it very hard to believe this narrative of "Americans coddle their kids". Just this past thanksgiving, there was this baby that was buckled up in a baby chair drinking milk from a bottle that was propped up and all of the twenty adults were ignoring the baby and chatting with each other. I couldn't stand it and went and played with the baby, and folks were a bit surprised. When I took my toddler to an Indian wedding, she was crying after about an hour because "everyone is saying hello to me".
There's an art to having a conversation where the kids feel included enough until they get bored and skip away. Feels like that's what I experienced growing up. You need to acknowledge children and include them in the conversations. Otherwise they don't learn how to have conversations with people of different ages. My husband and his siblings still get quite quiet when their parents are chatting with their uncles and aunts because "the grownups are talking". The first time I went to a family event of my husband's, I was worried he was ashamed of me or he had a bad relationship with his family, because he was so quiet. We discussed it and traced it back to having to be quiet because the grownups are talking. Not saying that is abuse or neglect, but it definitely doesn't seem healthy.
Maybe I am blind to my own situation, but I would not characterize our social situation in the US that way. I hope at least it is not broadly applied. We certainly don't consciously center the kids in our community. We just got back from camping with singles, "empty nesters", and families. Barely saw the kids while we sat around the fire and talked as adults.
Echoing some of the comments and responses I think it has to do with keeping a routine that is compatible with getting up at 7am or earlier for school - shifting wakeup / sleep time isn't optimal for anyone, including kids.
During the summer, our kids have drifted to a 10pm bedtime and play outside with neighbors until 9pm - and this is compatible with the occasional "late night" with the family going to bed at 11pm e.g to watch fireworks.
There is also the utility of kids in bed = 1-2 hours of time to unwind. However, if kids have others to play with, and you don't have to supervise / entertain every hour, the need for "me" time doesn't feel so acute. So I suppose you could tie this into the trend towards more isolated / structured childhood. I know many attribute this to less walkable / dense neighborhoods, but I suspect it has more to do with the fertility rate - you can't expect a sufficient concentration of children in any given neighborhood to "go out and play with other kids" unless you go out of your way to move to one with lot's of families.
"However, if kids have others to play with, and you don't have to supervise / entertain every hour, the need for "me" time doesn't feel so acute."
This is a great point. Get your kids outside with a gaggle of neighborhood kids in the evening and parents will have the me time they understandably crave without needing to enforce an early bedtime or hire a sitter. Unfortunately this type of activity (kids playing in the neighborhood til dusk or later) is happening less and less in many US neighborhoods, as parents feel they need to actively supervise their children every waking moment.
I'm guessing you would find kids staying up later and doing family stuff if you were around more lower middle class and below types of folks. I live in Baltimore and kids are still out and about playing at all hours and no one really makes a fuss, with the exception of people complaining about Black teenagers being in areas where white upper middle class people hang out on weekends, in which case they complain loudly on Facebook
I second that, Glenn. I practiced in Baltimore as a pediatrician for several years, and I was always amazed how many toddlers would be out well after 10pm. Almost always these were children of "lower middle-class families" - or more precisely: This phenomenon did not occur among the educated. As in most things in modern America, there is a rural/urban divide here - and more than that a divide between the "professional class" and others.
I have two knee-jerk instincts. First, from my limited experience, southern Europe seems to generally operate on a later schedule. I may be misremembering this or applying one set of cultural norms to a whole region, but when I was in southern Spain in college, the workday started later than the usual American workday, there was the famed late afternoon lunch and rest time, and a typical weeknight dinner at home was often after 9pm (norm in America is 6 or 7, I’d guess?) Secondly, being “out late” in America, in and of itself, has a sort of vibe of debauchery to it. I suspect there’s some sort of connection there, though wouldn’t want to stake a guess on the direction of causality. Are northern Europe’s norms about this more like the US or southern Europe’s?
Spain is a bit weird because it's just objectively on the wrong time zone. You should basically always subtract one hour from the official time, which makes the country a bit less of an outlier than it often seems. And then the usual school start time - which I believe is between 8.30am and 9am - isn't remarkably late at all.
As for northern Europe, yup--closer to the U.S. but not as extreme, would be my guesstimate.
Dinner times - and that sense of "debauchery" – depends on where you are in the US. In NYC, for example, 6-7 pm is early for many if not most people, at least not that long ago. Nowadays dinner times appear to have crept towards earlier hours; 7-8 pm is more like it now, I believe. But once, many didn't even think about going for dinner until 9 pm or so. And staying out late is "normal" for many people, certainly not "debauchery"! :-)
Late (or later) dinner times is also common in other parts of the world, not just in Southern Europe or Spain or Italy. It's commin in many places in SE Asia and in Taiwan etc etc. Ever heard of the "night markets" in SE Asia, Taiwan, etc? Or folks going out for a meal of Bak Kut Teh at 11 p.m. in Malaysia, especially in places like Kuala Lumpur?
My wife and I had one kid, who is now in college. We drug him everywhere, and made no compromises with our social life in his raising. Our rules were simple: you go wherever we go, and try to look like you’re having a good time. The kid fell asleep in many a spare bedroom or couches of our friends. We did the same thing that Yasha speaks of…we simply scooped him up at the end of the night. Now, as he is a young adult, many of our friends comment on how mature he is or how he can “hang with the adults”. I actually credit this to all the times we took him out when he was a kid, often staying out to the wee hours. Sure there were some Monday mornings where we had to drag him out of bed to get to school, but frankly we were dragging ourselves out of bed to get to work. Thus is life. So my advice…take your kids out with you wherever you go…they’ll be none off worse for the wear!
These comments have been so much more interesting and insightful than I dared to hope! Thank you, everyone, for making this experiment a resounding success.
A few brief takeaways for me:
* Hadn't thought enough about the role that afternoon siestas / naptime play in explaining the difference.
* Geography and architecture clearly play a big role: easier to do this when it's warm out and you can sit on a terrace with a place for kids to play adjacent / have a communal space other than a mall to run around in even if you're not spending money on a meal.
* The US in general is much more age-segregated than southern Europe.
* It's a collective action problem: You won't bring your kids to a dinner party if no one else brings theirs; you'll be reluctant to bring them to a restaurant if others may see them as a nuisance, etc.
* So the question in significant part is not about how different equilibria are sustained, but rather about how they came about in the first place; a question that is much harder to answer.
Having said all of that, on the whole the comments have strengthened the hunch I had coming in. There is, I think, an American parenting culture that puts the needs of kids above those of parents, which makes the day much more exhausting for adults, and creates the need for a few hours of "alone time." In southern European cultures, the bargain between the generations is different: during the summer and on weekends, a) kids get to be up late and have fun; but b) they understand that they're not always the center of attention; and therefore c) develop better social skills of how to behave around adults. From the perspective of parents, you give up some of that evening alone time without the kids, but it is much easier to sustain a social life and you spare yourself the battle of enforcing bedtime. Sounds like a better deal to me--but I'm not a parent, so what do I know!
Thanks again to everyone who commented. We'll do these "Help me Understand" threads more often!
I have so many thoughts on this to write if not a book then at least an article. But that won't happen so here is the attempt to sum it up: it is capitalism. I raised one child in Europe until the age of 13 and had another child in the US (who will spend a year with me in Prague now at the age of 11 so we will test all my theories). When we say it is cultural I agree in general but particularly in the sense that the US culture is a very much corporate/capitalist culture. In the US, missing a couple of days of school is incredibly hard to make up and keep good grades. Schools are just like workplaces where you are expected to show up and perform equally every day (which is insane, unhealthy and impossible) and they prepare students for future corporate service. People in the US go to jail for their kid's truancy. My son had Covid, we followed the protocol and I still got a super scary letter warning me of Social Services for missing school!!! In Europe, elementary schools are not scary places. Parents don't need to volunteer and co-fund schools, kids don't require an army of tutors, and missing school is not as dramatic. I still can not get used to taking my kid to school and packing lunches even though we have changed so much (the environment makes us change more than we like to acknowledge) since we immigrated to the States. People in most of Europe can perform at work even if they go to bed after midnight. People in the States can’t. Parents in the States can’t. In the States, we are constantly sleep-deprived and hungry. Our economy is driving our behavior and consequently designs our culture. Our policies (reflected in taxes to cover - or not - education and healthcare for all) are as much affecting our behavior as they are the expression of our culture. I have to stop here because I don't have time to summarize it all, but I hope it gives a gist.
"Corporate capitalism" is a uniquely poor explanation for the contemporary US school schedule and, in particular, its tendency to start and end significantly earlier than the typical US work day. The American tradition of starting the school day between 7-9 am, and ending it between 2-4 pm, actually has its roots in the needs of farming parents to get their kids back early enough in the day that they could help out with the farm. Many, many contemporary American parents (and their employers!) would love to switch school schedules to more closely match the contemporary corporate working day, but they're almost always stymied by implacable, and successful, opposition from teachers' unions, which tend to be full of members who like the traditional hours for their own reasons.
The American school system is modeled on Prussian common schools. They are institutions. State law largely controls compulsory attendance, including number of days. The schedule, other than number of compulsory days of attendance, is bargained for because teaching is unionized.
I’m pretty sure there are different ways to do this, but educational experimentation at the k-12 level is stymied by legal restrictions.
How long are the school days in Europe, I wonder? The way we do school here means that if the school day ran from, say, 8-5, teachers would be on duty for 10 hours a day, 7:30-5:30, with a 30 min lunch break, maybe an hour of planning time, and would likely put in 2 hours additional every night because one hour of planning time for seven instructional hours is grossly insufficient. And the kids, pressured to be "learning for mastery" every minute?
A lot of things besides the hours would have to change about how we do school in the US.
At least in Germany, school hours are significantly shorter. There are afterschool programs, but it can be difficult to find one with an opening for your child.
Corporate culture was designed as patriarchal, where mothers are supposed to be at home and volunteer in schools. The fact that it didn’t catch up with the times doesn’t mean it wasn’t intended this way. I am not an expert on American culture per se, but it is clear that the school expectation in the U.S. is that mothers bake, volunteer and answer phones from schools. In Europe, I went to school like 4 times a year max.
Where do you get the idea that the school expectation is for stay at home mothers? That wasn't even true 40 years ago, and most certainly is not now.
I’m a mother and my child is in school. That is mostly where I get my ideas on the subject. I also don’t like your tone.
You don't seem to like anyone with the temerity to disagree with you or question how you reached conclusions, which I am sorry about. I won't, however, allow that to dissuade me from asking questions. Your personal experience is very different from mine. I would agree that school days being shorter than full-time work days does mean that parents need to find solutions, which will vary by region as well as economic resources. I am also aware that schools do ask for volunteer help in many different ways, and are quite happy to accept it from a stay at home parent. But a few decades of direct and observed experience of friends and neighbors do not indicate to me that schools systemically expect a stay at home parent of either sex.
No, I don’t like your tone.
Yeah the PTA emails never end.
If you have a kid who does afterschool activities like sports, you'll understand why school ends in the afternoon and not at night.
I believe sports are the main impediment to a later school day in the US, not unions. One school district cannot change its schedule too much because then it sports teams will lose out on the ability to play against other schools in the area.
Like most humans my children definitely perform and behave better after a good nights sleep. The oldest is about to start middle school, which starts 45 minutes earlier than grade school, and I’m seriously worried how he’ll cope as he’s already going to bed at 9 but sleeping until 7:30. If we make bedtime much earlier it will interfere with after school activities.
Don’t forget that teachers are parents too. Everyone wants them to work 16 hour days for 10 hours of pay, so their own kid’s benefit/needs but forget that teachers face all those issues about their own kids. Ask a finance Bro to work without compensation and see how fast it takes them to melt into a puddle of self righteous pity about how they’re being exploited. I’m not a teacher but my Mom was.
It isn’t that simple- see pgs 4&5: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1134242.pdf
If you don't have the time or inclination to articulate a reply or a viewpoint, don't expect anyone else to have the time or inclination to do your homework assignment.
We all have Google, and this is a comment thread.
I don't have a strong opinion on the topic that Yascha has chosen for his first comment section open to non-subscribers, so in the spirit of driving engagement that I'm sure motivated this open house, and in the spirit of establishing community norms that he mentions, I'm establishing this one.
Oh, it's even better! And to save anyone else the time;
The linked essay is a piece titled The History of School and Summer Vacation by James Pederson apparently published in the Journal of Inquiry & Action in Education, 2012.
There are no pages 4&5, I assume the document just retains the journal's original formatting, the pages are 54 to 62, so I had to read the whole thing. There is not a single mention of the topic under discussion, here, the entire essay is about the history of 12 month schooling and summer vacations and it doesn't talk about starting times or daily hourly schedules at all.
the opinion that school schedules and the amount of time kids go to school being based on farming needs is something that — well, it’s simply not true and so instead of wasting my time posting an opinion, I posted a study if you don’t like it don’t read it.
It isn't a study, it's an essay, which is an opinion. It cites some data but that doesn't make it a study.
And you obviously haven't read it (or my previous comment) yourself or you'd know that it doesn't say anything that contradicts the notion that daily school schedules were set as they are because of farming. It doesn't support the notion either. It's about a different topic; annual schedules and summer vacations.
Whatever you're saving time for by not posting you own opinion, it clearly isn't reading.
You point out that the school system has regimented schedules and attendance expectations. The US school system is dominated by publicly owned and operated schools. You point out that those same schools enforce their dictates by threatening parents with social services. Social services is 100% governmental. I don’t understand how you blame capitalism for the actions of the most socialist and fascist parts of the US system.
Apparently your mild response is a sign you are "enraged." All I can do is wonder at how one reads rage into your questioning that capitalism is the source of every perceived ill.
I am not. I am stating the influence of capitalism to the overall culture. Yes, we can trace it back to Protestantism and work ethic but I don’t think that is truly relevant today. Not sure what enraged you here but I am very jet lagged so I’ll leave it here.
I’m not sure how you read that as enraged. I point out two things you said, point out that they are respectively the most socialist (schools) and fascist (social services) examples of American government, and ask you how you got to your conclusion. That’s not an attack. I’m genuinely confused about what you call capitalism.
I am genuinely confused of what you call socialist and fascist and how is that relevant for this conversation. School system in America is also private, more than anywhere else. I was raised and finished primary education in communism, then socialism. My older child went to public school, then went to US public school (skipped a grade after placement test), then went to public hs and then elite private college. Then went to elite graduate institution. I am attending for PhD (Comparative cultures and languages) and teaching at state university. My son went to classic public school in the U.S. and then charter school. What I want to say, I have very diverse experience, as a student on both continents, as a parent, and as a teacher. However, my original comment was related to culture, social and economic environment and human behavior. I am very invested in the discussion on educational system in the States because I am planning to keep working in it, but that was not my idea here, nor was the author’s question.
Ok. It’s fair to ask for definition. I define socialist as a system in which the state owns the means of production. That is predominantly true in the educational system in the US. Yes, there are private and religious schools, and home schooling. But the public systems dominate and set the terms for the remainder of supply.
I define fascist, in this context, to mean a highly authoritarian system in which the state interferes extensively and forcefully in private relations for reasons typically believed to be paternalistic and good for the nation and its unity. It typically goes with a belief that the system and its actors are better than those acted upon. I think all of that fairly described many child protective services. (Which is what I think you were describing previously. If so, I’m genuinely sorry you ran into them. They are terrifying for people born here. They must be extra-bewildering for someone who didn’t grow up with the horror stories.)
It is relevant to the discussion because you seemed to be asserting that many things about US schools to which you object are due to capitalist influence on US culture. I find it bewildering to think that capitalism (ie a free market system) would be blamed for a union-dominated socialist system that typically fails to deliver what privately supplied education typically does. Perhaps you mean something different when you say capitalism? Maybe you mean something more like corporatism (which I view as fascism’s less villainous brother)?
Also, fascist and socialist equated? Why am I talking to you?
Fascism is an alternate solution to the class struggle. Mussolini reasoned that the bourgeois and the proletariat needed each other, and so needed the all powerful state to make them work together. Soviet propaganda characterized communism and fascism as polar opposites for obvious reasons. They are equally bad.
You mean communism? French socialism is not bad, and overall what we have in Europe is a combination of socialism and open market. Only in the U.S. the word socialism is tainted and mistaken for communism. I was born in communism, trust me I know.
Socialism is state ownership of the means of production. It concentrates decision making too much.
French employment laws make it difficult to fire an employee. That makes employers reluctant to hire. Many European countries have that problem.
Why did the Soviets translate CCCP as Union of Soviet _Socialist_ Republics?
My point is that schools are socialist and social services is at least populated by fascists.
Unfortunately, traditional definitions have been muddied so that people have conversations with no understanding of what the other is talking about.
Traditionally:
Fascism is the merger of the government and the corporate. Basically, corporations and government are the same. This is, obviously, the case in America. "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because is is a merger of state and corporate power."~ Benito Mussolini
Socialism is a planned, centralized system in which the government regulates the economy, distribution of resources, and the provision of services.
Communism is a system in which the population as a whole owns everything with no individuals owning anything. Each giving according to their ability and consuming according to their need.
Capitalism is a free-market economy in which private citizens own the means of production. Think Mom and Pop shops and individually-owned factories and businesses.
No country fit neatly into any of these systems. America is more fascist than capitalist. The Soviet Union was more socialist than communist. And Europe is more capitalist than socialist.
I was making the point on the level where it didn’t make much difference if I am referring to traditional definitions or colloquial (for example I do say “socialism” while referring to developed European countries that are obviously also capitalist, but that is not critical in that context because capitalism is not drastically changing culture in those countries as it does in the States). I grew up with Marxism instead philosophy until half way through HS so I’m very familiar with theory (and in all honesty am bored to death of such discussions), but what I wanted to share is the experience of living in all of them and parenting in socialism and capitalism, and how that models our behavior and relationships within a family and community. And not just models but conditions and limits.
Yes, exactly! I think that this gets at 95% of the difference. That, and the likely fact that, in Italy, there are far more extended families that live in close proximity so that there is plenty of back-up and supervision built-in to the raising of children.
Europe is capitalist too, so I think you/we need a different word to capture your argument which has some great points.
True, I use it very liberally here. And interchangeably with corporate. But what I am talking about is uniquely American, because nowhere else we have such concentration of wealth and lack of social support network that affect families in so many ways. There are authors who worked on terminology but my brain is not drawing anything better right now, and I didn’t think it has to since it is not university seminar. I am sure it is clear what I meant. But if someone thinks socialism is a dirty word, my loose use of terminology is the least of the problems :-)
I agree. The US is not family friendly at all. I’m American too.
And that is not because people don’t like to have life they can actually survive. It’s just the corporate grip we can’t get off of us. I love America and I became an American by choice, for other great things that we have, but we need to move forward to make our culture livable.
I think this is very thoughtful. I will be mulling it over for days. I am gradually starting to see how capitalism shapes so much else around us. I think the sleep deprivation situation cannot be stated enough. I think (and experienced) that a consistent bedtime routine could be very effective, and I can’t blame parents for not wanting to mess up a routine they invested many trials, errors, and time into developing. I also think that America is not accommodating or validating of children as legitimately having needs, especially in semi-public spaces like restaurants.
I found that we can not remain healthy in the US without consistent bedtime. The US capitalism is affecting our bodies in different ways. But consistent bedtimes and routines make me depressed, there’s no color to that life.
So called US and even western cultural is very regimented due in no small part due to the need for a regimented workforce for industrialization starting 400-500 years ago. Once structures and laws are enacted they are very hard to change. Even experimentation with alternatives is difficult. Interestingly Covid forced a change in many workplaces, office requirements and even homes (the need for quality workspace)
As an American, much of this rings true.
Simply so parents can have some “me” time at the end of the day. Putting the kids to sleep at 8pm frees up a couple of hours for the parents. That and ofc bc they need to get good rest, but the 8pm time is arbitrary so parents can have some alone time at the end of the day.
That's probably right. Though I guess it seems like a bad calculus to me. Italian parents have adult time with their friends out a nice restaurant while their kids play in the nearby piazza. American parents have to fight a battle over getting the kids to sleep and then are either stuck at home on their own or need to shell out for a babysitter...
Americans wouldn't let their kids play on their own nearby while they ate at a restaurant even in the middle of the day.
Sadly true!
I think this gets at the crux of the problem. A complete lack of spaces for kids to safely go out of the restaurant and play. Even if you did bring them along, if they got antsy, you can’t shoo them out. There’s no piazza outside, probably just a parking lot and 3 lane highway.
This is a good point. It's not that American parenting norms are over-protective, it's that in many cases, they're appropriately protective. Having a well-lit piazza in walking distance on which your cultural life can center is a privilege most Americans, even those in the upper class, don't enjoy.
We’ve created a built environment centered around multi-ton vehicles barreling around at insane speeds everywhere.
You’d get turned into CPS for letting your kids play unattended in parts of the USA.
CPS personnel would rather go after the middle class doing what was normal two or three decades ago than deal with actual child abuse, which usually involves multiple unpleasant confrontations.
The USA had a panic about child abduction in the’90s. It was foolish. Any particular incident is serious, but it’s not a widespread problem. They receive national media coverage. Availability heuristic.
Especially given that most child abductions (by "most" I mean "99%") are conducting by someone the child knows.
Probably 95% are the divorced parent who doesn’t have custody.
Once upon a time children were allowed to play outside without adult supervision. I was one. In a large metropolitan city.
Free Range Kids FTW!
This is something that can only be achieved collectively. I'd be happy to bring my kids along to social outings, but I know there will be no other kids there. They will get bored, being the only kids. I will get a lot of "side eye" if I let them play "nearby," without directly supervising them. It wouldn't be fun for me or for them, so we just don't do it.
This confirms what I just said (I made two comments on this thread--see my comment about how American versus Southern European parents react when their children are present). In Southern Europe the children can play without (too much) supervision. In Southern Europe the children can be present at adult events without them becoming the center. In America, if children are present, the entire event needs to be centered on them.
That is correct. People frown on you bringing your kids and then not really paying too much attention to them. Even though I don't agree with it, it's difficult to do anything about it as an individual family. Now, families with kids will sometimes get together and let the kids play, but those are usually private events not out on public.
I remember being invited as a youngster to all large family gatherings. Weddings were my favorite, running around the hall with all the cousins. I don’t think kids get invited to things like weddings, showers, anniversary parties, etc anymore which is unfortunate. Back then it seemed to be a cultural thing in a large Polish family that is just not done today. Luckily, I grew up playing outside with dozens of kids and we knew to come in when the street lights came on. My kids were also able to play outside and roam our neighborhood with friends. I kept my kids up fairly late in their toddler years because the later they stayed up, the later they slept in. As they got older, they regulated their own bedtimes based on activities/homework. We always took our kids to restaurants with us or with family. When we were with a group of friends we didn’t because that was adult time and it was respected as such. Also, in the US, restaurants don’t really like customers to linger for hours and hours so the scenario mentioned by the poster wouldn’t really happen here. If kids are invited to a private party at a restaurant then that’s great. My youngest daughter fell asleep at a restaurant party one time on top of a pile of coats. Our kids were always invited to house parties with friends and stayed up late on weekends. They had a blast and and truthfully, for our family bed times never dictated our lives.
This may just be me, but as a parent of a 2-year old I've become so adapted to a bedtime routine for my daughter and waking up early, that staying up late for a social outing doesn't sound all that appealing. I've adapted and pushed my social outings with friends to mornings, afternoons, and evenings. And if there are social outings that are late, such as a wedding Im attendings next weekend, I'm fine pushing the bedtime out to 9:30 for a night but not much past that...that is just too heavy a price to pay. But perhaps if she were older my calculus would be different.
This! little kids tend to wake early. I’m incapable, sadly, of sleeping in. My body wakes me when I usually wake, which is now when my kids wake- a little before 6.
Yes! When my kids were little, I absolutely hated them the day after a late event! It might be different if I had a handful of adults to pass them around to when they got cranky, but, like most American parents, it was just me and my husband when he wasn't working.
Maybe that's why Italian women aren't choosing to have kids! The fun-loving Italian dads are probably sleeping in while the self-sacrificing mammas take care of the aftermath. (It's not just a stereotype and not limited to Italians!)
It sounds like you're raising a small child in a way that’s good for you and not your child. Try adding some adversity to their schedule. You just might be surprised at what happens. Stress is a part of life. Better for kids to be dealt wirh some stress early in life rather than when you send them off to a college campus. Just my two cents.
Appreciate the different perspective. I'll consider this and see where it makes sense to add more variety/adversity.
I agree with this!
There are several issues here that preclude comparisons. There are no piazzas around which restaurants are situated in the US. You cant compare a sleepy Tuscan town to a suburb where you have to drive to get to a restaurant. I would hazard a guess that in Rome and Milan you would not find a sleeping kid in a restaurant. (Since having kids we have travelled pretty exclusively with them and have taken them to dinners at all hours, but most Americans dont do that). Quite frankly, unless this was an intergenerational gathering I would hate to be the one stuck next to a sleeping kid. Which brings me to another point, I think in the summer people tend to go out more for dinner, so it's not an "occasion ", but a casual food moment. That makes it easier to bring kids. Then the diet of most US kids preclude them from easy integration with an adult meal. However, there is a place inthe US where this type of gathering takes place and kids do run around playing while adults eat. Funny enough it's on the grounds of Disney World. Although I imagine that in seaside and resort towns of the Carolinas, Jersey Shore, Florida, etc, you will also see kids late out at night, albeit at "family" restaurants. Finally I would like to add my personal pet pieve. And that's when certain type of American parents do bring their kids into restaurants and then use put upon voices, meant for everyone in the restaurant to hear, how fabulously they're educating their kids.
Milanese dad here. It's quite common to bring kids to restaurants, aperitivi or whatnot in Milan (I certainly do).
Interesting comments especially “the diet of most US kids precise them from easy integration with an adult meal”. I agree but why is this? Why don’t we do a better job integrating our kids into eating like an adult. I have a 10 year old niece who still has the palate of her 4 year old self: chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese. Worse yet my brother and sister in law still cut up her food.
I think you answered the question. Your brother and sister are helicopter parents, and they are contributing to the stupidity of American youth.
It takes persistence to offer more complex foods over and over until kids accept them. Unfortunately in the US there's a pervasive assumption that it's unrealistic to expect kids to eat a wider variety of foods, which makes it harder to keep up that persistence.
Even worse though, many American adults have very limited palates. If you don't eat vegetables yourself it's going to be hard to offer them to your kids enough to get them to eat them, even if you know you should. Especially if you're strapped for cash on top of that. (I remember reading a study that found lower income Americans were much more likely to throw away kids' uneaten vegetables. I thought that can't be right, how could they afford it? — but if no adult in the house eats vegetables either, it makes more sense. And then because they can't afford the waste, they give up.)
We could really use some big changes to help with this. Maybe something akin to the French creche (daycare) system, in which concerted efforts are made to offer little kids a variety of healthy foods, over and over in different forms, or so I've read. But that seems pretty pie-in-the-sky for the US.
I was very curious about this while my son was growing up. Until he started daycare, he was eating wonderful meals like salmon, spinach and he loved kale salad. But as soon he started interacting with the world on his own, he asked for peanut butter, then mac and cheese, then chicken nuggets. We didn’t have peanut butter in the house until he asked for it (nothing against it, just not a thing for us). And we didn’t have cable so he wasn’t exposed to ads. He picked it up from other kids. It is hard to fight it, people are busy and you just end up with what is being pushed on you. I have been fighting it with my tooth and nail but it is a serious commitment and I guess a privilege.
What is put upon voices?
Also, I have brought my twin boys to many restaurants in SF. Often times only to have gay couples in their 60s stop by on the way out and complain about how rude I was to bring my kids to a restaurant. They were also behaving very well the entire time. Thankfully I was with my wife so I decided not to step outside and ask for some clarification on why they were upset. This hallened at a Gavin Newsome establishement and a french restautrant. The french waiters told me to ignore the assholes. We were regulars at both places.
Interesting, my son was dining all over Palo Alto and around and has developed a beautiful taste and manners. Never had any issue with people complaining, also not in SF. And then he started school and all went out the window.
When I'm in Paris there are often children and dogs in restaurants. Children in a 2 or 3 star? Not always but often enough. And they are well behaved, quiet and respectful.
When else are you going to get the dishes done, catch up on work you didn’t finish, deal with paperwork, or watch your favorite show? Parents of young children can’t do all of those things before 8 PM when the kids go to sleep, unless one parent does all the childcare, which is increasingly out of fashion in America.
Incidentally, we do go out to dinner occasionally with our kids. The main advantage is having no clean up afterwards.
Good question. I remember my surprise when arriving in the center of Rome on seeing all the families out strolling so late (it was 10 or 11 PM).
I don't have an answer, but let me suggest some possible factors:
Maybe American parents want their kids asleep by a certain time because they want the rest of the evening to themselves.
Maybe they believe that if bedtimes are arbitrary there'll be a nightly struggle.
Maybe American parents lack the mimetic knowledge of extended, multi-generational families and are thus less comfortable winging it. Maybe, then, the parenting books they read recommend regular bedtimes -- rightly or wrongly.
Maybe American kids are generally less well-behaved (or less tractable when ill-behaved), making the parents fear to take them out with other adults. This could be due to all kinds of things, up to and including the willingness to give the kid a swat.
Maybe the Italian kids throw just as many tantrums, but the other adults laugh it off.
Maybe the American morning routines are more tightly-scheduled or demanding, making it more of a problem if a kid gets up groggy.
These all seem plausible! But I guess most of them feel like good sociological explanations rather than good justifications for American parenting practices...
Were you asking for an explanation or a justification? The hypothesis seems to be (based on your responses) that the Italian approach is qualitatively better. What evidence would you be looking for to support one approach over the other? It seems to me one could draw a line through Europe dividing it into the contrasting behavior you observed, but it isn't clear to me that the quality of life is superior in Italy, Spain, and Turkey to Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark.
I just can't help but notice that there's another clear contrast between the two groups of countries you mentioned.
I find that nationals of the former group are all more socially open and friendly with strangers than nationals of the latter group. Do you think there might be a causal connection between that and the different parenting attitudes?
So I suspect we're all basing this on what we have lived, but here are my thoughts. I'm not sure what you mean by socially open, and I certainly have not found that people of the first group of countries are friendly than those in the latter. But I don't equate reserve with unfriendliness. Very broadly speaking, Canadians are more reserved than Americans, but I don't think anyone finds them less friendly. As to social openness, in many areas of life northern Europe has been much more open to diversity than the south. Traditional attitudes to religion and gender roles have changed much more slowly in the countries you describe as more open and friendly. I don't think any of this has to do with bedtimes, which I think is a red herring.
I do believe the reaction to children is often different in Italy, Turkey or Spain than in England, Germany, and Switzerland. There is a higher tolerance in the former for normal behavior of children, and unscientifically it seems to me like strangers are on average happier to see children around. But I've seen that change again in Scandinavia, where children's bedtimes are typically earlier.
I like to know something about a subject before passing judgment, so I mentioned some areas for investigation. I don't expect readers to go out and research them and present their findings, but then I'm content to just not form an opinion.
Meaning, I don't know whose practices are better, or whether each is appropriate to its setting. I have eight children and sixteen (or is it seventeen? Don't make me count) grandchildren and a few opinions on parenting, but would need more information about the specifics here to pronounce on the matter.
Maybe the move towards remote work will shake this up. Pre-pandemic, my colleagues’ schedules were dictated by school schedules. I think that is still the case, although the place I work for has started to allow people to work from while their kids are at home. This was largely prohibited pre-pandemic, meaning that even if one was working from home, kids had to be dropped off at preschool or daycare. It seems arbitrary, or at least not narrowly tailored.
My first response to this question was that the built environment in Europe is much more conducive to walking and requires much less driving. So taking your kid to a neighborhood restaurant down the block is a very different event than putting them in the car and driving 15 minutes to a restaurant. My own kids fell asleep almost immediately on any car ride of longer than a few minutes.
However, on reflection, I see that in my own neighborhood, it is quite common to see families out walking after 9 PM along the public beach. Not all families, but Asian, Indian, or other more recently immigrated groups. Incidentally, some of these families are likely getting into the car to drive to the beach to have this evening walk.
Maybe American parents do not set and enforce boundaries? And are afraid to discipline children? Just a thought. No personal experiences except with nieces and nephews.
The question of why children might be enjoying a late summer night out is not the same as the question why American kids go to bed at 8 pm. Italian kids go to bed early on school nights as well.
What I notice more and more is how badly kids need clearly-defined structure, parameters and routine, and how so much of kids' unhappiness can be attributed to the absence of these things in their young lives. I'm all for the 8 pm bedtime rule and also all for exceptions to the rule when one is on vacation from rules.
Fair! But that raises a crucial follow-up question: Are Italian parents more willing to vary their routine between weekdays and weekends and it just doesn't affect their ability to get the kids to sleep at a reasonable time on a school night? Or, if not, do they just put up with the negative consequences? (I suspect, but can't confirm, the former.)
I let my kids go to bed a little later on weekends, and usually they get right back into it Sunday night. But I think it really depends on your kids. How much sleep a child needs does vary from child to child, and how changes in routine affect children also varies. So parents have to figure it out. And it isn't hard to figure out at all. Take it from a mom of five :)
" it just doesn't affect their ability to get the kids to sleep at a reasonable time on a school night? " The former. I mean, why would it? That's also part of being a parent. You adapt to circumstances and adapt circumstances to you child's need. You do not need a rigid structure superimposed to be reasonable and to have some clearly-defined structure with exceptions (as Sheela above says).
Yascha,
As a pediatrician, I can attest to what you surely know already, as you surely did a literature search on this: There are a lot of unanswered questions about this very topic among sleep researchers.
As to Southern Europe, let me add an observation based on my recent travels to southern Spain where dinners are even later than in Italy:
First of all, adults and children hold siestas. Therefore, it would be unreasonable to go to bed at 8pm or 9pm - people just woke up! Secondly, the lack of ACs in much of southern Spain means that it takes at least an hour after the sun sets until the bedrooms are sufficiently cooled down...less sticky, really...for a semblance of sleep to be possible.
In other words, I believe that there are common sense reasons why children go to bed late in southern Europe - which is a separate observation (and a separate question) from the fact that children are far more integrated in adult activities in southern Europe.
Clinically, I work a lot with the Amish. And in this community, albeit in Pennsylvania and other northern US states, you see many of the same features as in Spain and Italy (albeit not the late bedtime): Children are expected to take part in all "family" aka adult activities. There is no babysitter culture. And indeed, I am struck, as a pediatrician, how much better behaved most Amish children are compared to "English" children of the same age. And not just better behaved - also far more independent! The other day I bought my tomatoes from a 7-year-old - and she used the little calculator to determine the tax on the birdhouse I had added to my purchase with a Selbstverstaendlichkeit that was stunning.
You had written about Rob Henderson's "luxury beliefs" - maybe this is a different kind of luxury belief, our US middle-class fixation on sleep times?
You overestimate me! I did look at the sleep literature a bit but not enough to have a secure footing. What would you say is the consensus within it as it bears on this question, and what are the open questions?
Ha! Spoken like a true academic. "Back to you, my friend"...
I am not a sleep researcher, hence no secure footing here either. That said, it is widely believed among pediatricians that most US children do not sleep enough, with resulting negative consequences re: behavior and academic achievement. But the question I pose, connected to my circumcision comment to Scott a few minutes ago, is this one: How certain are we - including our academies- that 'duration of sleep' is the critical variable here? Or are we, potentially, measuring a surrogate marker for poor behavior and poor academic achievement?
Wouldn't be the first time!
More generally speaking, I would love for you to devote a podcast and/or essay to the issue of 'hyper-individualism' versus communitarianism. And look at some of the post-liberal movement in that light (possibly via the angle of parenting!): How much of it is simply dangerous illiberal authoritarianism versus how much of it addresses a very real deficiency in our modern meritocratic world?
I look at the kids of my communitarian Amish families, and I cannot help but think that we have lost something precious in our modern world.
Thanks, very interesting. And the point about the surrogate marker seems plausible. Who do you think could speak to the lack of the right kind of community in much of American society well?
By the way, it always strikes me as weird that Americans, at least in the big cities, seem to have a lot less community than many Europeans, but talk much more about this or that community (with those communities characteristically being based in either ethno-cultural commonalities or interest groups, such as the "knitting community," rather than organic ones based on geography.
How about your colleague and mentor Michael Sandel? It is not parenting, directly, but in his "Tyranny of Merit" he addresses some of the underlying issues, as I see it.
I agree with you 100%, having both German and Pakistani family roots (the latter via my wife), that American communities are strikingly "lonely". Hyper-individualized might be the better term: I have a Sunday soccer "community" and maybe a political activism "community" - but simply a neighborhood Kneipe where we all meet when we meet, chat and play cards? That doesn't exist here - at least not in urban and suburban America.
Interestingly, my Amish families still have that. They remind me of Laupheim of a generation ago - or Hanau and Heidelberg, in my case.
Is this loss a necessary consequence of modern life and modern wealth - including the loss of multi-generational families? Or could there be a better 'middle way"?
Sandel to the rescue!
Yascha,
I friend of mine just pointed out another potential guest for such a show: Abigail Shrier. She just published a new book, "Why the Kids aren't Growing up", and while I have not read the book myself, my best guess is that it touches on some of these very issues. If your focus was less on meritocracy and more on the many dysfunctions in our US society as it relates to childhood and parenting, then maybe she could be your guest.
https://greglukianoff.substack.com/p/abigail-shrier-versus-the-perfect
One of the challenges with forming geographic-centric "community" versus common-interest "community" in multicultural polyglot cities (e.g. New York, Los Angeles, London) versus more monocultural places (Rome, Madrid, Zurich) is self-evident, and playing out in the news these days.
But consider also how Amish adolescents go wild when it’s time for them to go on their Rumspringa - the year where they go into the majority culture and many go wild with sex and drugs. They have no healthy boundaries in many cases.
This is not true, Kitty. I work with the community: "Rumspringa" is first of all done by a small percentage, and then within that small percentage it is a tiny percentage who choose to "go wild". Unfortunately some rather sensationalist movies and (pseudo)documentaries have given a false impression in this regard.
I think things are different during school holidays. In Italy and France, vacations are family affairs, kids included - even if, or perhaps especially if, things go late. Family vacations are viewed as unmissable opportunities for kids to get to know their grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles - and their parents and godparents - free of the strictures of a school schedule. These vacations are an essential part of upbringing - almost a parallel education system. This exists to some extent in the US among families that are fortunate enough to be able to gather together, over distances, in one place. My husband's family used to take two rental homes on the Jersey Shore every summer for a week and bring 20-plus people together. It was not a luxury vacation at all, but the memories are priceless - and kids went to bed whenever they wanted.
Thanks, Anne! That all seems broadly right to me. And certainly parents in Italy and France will want their kids to go to sleep at a reasonable time when they have to make it to school the next morning. But, at least in Italy, you do see kids out in the streets late on weekends during the school years as well. So at the very least there seems to be a greater willingness to have a different schedule on Friday/Saturday night than the rest of the week?
Keep in mind that even doctors in the US tell young mothers to get their children on a routine bedtime of 7, 8, or 9 and keep it every night for good sleeping habits. Most sleep "experts" tell adults the same thing. Get a routine going and keep it. I wonder what Italian doctors say.
Absolutely. Another factor is that in continental Europe, children are taught to socialize with adults. They eat dinner with their parents, attend long Sunday lunches with the extended family, and are expected to behave civilly (if not perfectly - hey, they're kids). They learn table manners, the art of conversation, and to eat what is put in front of them. Compare and contrast with many American families who eat dinner on the run between activities and homework - or with British families who give the kids "nursery tea" at 5pm and put them to bed at 6.
Correct me if I'm wrong because I don't have any direct experience with Europe, but isn't the difference partially the function of the siesta (I believe riposo in Italy)? At least, it used to be the case that stores closed midday and people took what Americans would think of as naps. (There are some studies that suggest that breaking sleep up into two blocks like that might be a healthier alternative.) Anyway, that tradition, if it's still practiced, enables people to stay out later. (If I had work the next day, I wouldn't have stayed out with friends until midnight. But if I'd slept for three hours in the afternoon, maybe.) It might also change the idea of when family time is. I'm just theorizing.
As far as American schools are concerned, I was a teacher for 36 years (mostly high school English), so I can comment on that a bit. One of the issues that affects education is that K-12 education is funded more erratically than it is in a lot of countries. It's typically funded by local property taxes, which means in practice that more affluent communities end up with better schools. The funding system has changed somewhat, but that's a state-level kind of reform, not a national one, so results are still uneven.
It used to be the case that some European countries sorted students into trade school and academic tracks relatively young. In the US, that kind of sorting never happened, in part because of the fear that students in poorer communities would have a harder time preparing for the academic track. The result was that, as more and more jobs required a college education, the attitude developed that everyone needed to go to college (or at least be prepared for college). This is one of the reasons that American schools have somewhat higher stress levels. Teachers, usually working with insufficient resources, have to get everyone ready for college while at the same time dealing with a number of other mandates. Hence, the emphasis on attendance and focus. In fact, there are still some career paths that don't require a four-year college experience, but even a student aiming for one of those has to be prepared for college, just in case.
This is more of an issue in high school, but the process really starts much younger. I think that may account for some of the differences that we're discussing.
Good point about the siesta. Don't think that's the whole explanation - especially since American kids, at least up to a certain age, also take naps - but it's surely part of it.
You mentioned in your example scenario that the child is 8. In the US, naps are usually dropped by kindergarten.
When I lived in Spain, elementary school students would leave school daily to eat a meal and take a nap. Their parents might nap too. Then everyone would be out later. The kids went to bed later and their parents even later. In the US, as others have mentioned, naps are dropped. No one is leaving school partially through the day to get one. When my own kids and my friends kids have dropped naps (often around age 3-5) they sleep an hour or two longer at night. Kids who have later bedtimes tend to drop them later. In my experience the package deal of napping and going to bed later works well, the alternative of kids just sleeping longer at night also works well. What does NOT work well is no nap and a late bedtime. Too many nights of that and you get tired grumpy kids.
Earlier bedtimes for kids are also common in the Nordic countries. I'm interested in how temperatures and daylight hours might have affected regional differences historically. Where it's darker and colder, perhaps kids went to bed earlier. Where it's lighter and warmer, maybe later with naps during the day.
From experience, a child's naptime does not help them catch up from the previous late night. Frequently, the naps the next day are shorter and it's more difficult to get them down.
Yup
When I was raising my two sons I was happy to take them everywhere with me (I’m first generation American and I was never left with babysitters as a child) but I found that Americans consider children “private property” so to speak, and it’s not customary to invite and welcome them into adult social life - American society tends to divide things in a mono generational way, generally speaking. Someone once even told me that the city we live in is an “adult city” and that people with children shouldn’t live there. That person also told me that children are a burden on society, as if children are not part of society, and as if the development of individual potential were not a social resource. His might have been an extreme view but there sure was that vibe in general of a hard line between the adult world and the child world, which i personally found hard to navigate. My sons are both adults now so I get to enjoy spending time with them anywhere, without that cultural complexity, i’m sure glad to not have to deal with that anymore.
Niki, that “burden on society” remark does sound like an extreme view. But I have lived almost all of my 68 years in family oriented neighborhoods (even now that my three sons are grown) and that’s probably why it sounds extreme.
We took our sons out to eat with us often(usually on Sunday after church—a popular practice in my region of America). That’s where I have seen that type of multigenerational socializing.
My son and his wife have a young child and one on the way. They do not live nearby but do take her out to eat(not all the time). They too live in a family friendly community.
thanks for that, Lee. I think we are venturing into the territory of the “culture wars” aspect of things. Church and religion tend to hold family / community values while “coastal elite” places like mine tend to be more fragmented . Again, i’m speaking in broad strokes and likely over- generalizing but i’m writing a post and not an essay here!
Niki, I should clarify: lots of people, churchgoers and non/churchgoers, go out to brunch in my city (Dallas Tx) like cities all over America. My reference to “ after church”merely indicates part of a behavior pattern I have observed, not a religious orthodoxy of any sort.
Right. It's very hard to import norms that are more inclusive of children to a context that isn't. So I guess one question should be about the origin of American norms regarding this, and another question about how the norms reach equilibrium and perpetuate. The latter is easier to understand than the former...
All kids are different. Some fit right in with adults and don't cause a disruption, like my now-grown son, who wouldn't go to bed until mom and dad did. But he was quiet and well-behaved so there was never a problem. Other kids are miserable if they miss their bedtime. And I remember a little Italian boy who came to dinner with his father in a restaurant with a bunch of adults and he crawled under the table, wouldn't stop demanding attention, and was a general pain in the a.... He was eight. Know your kid and act accordingly.
That's fair! Though my general impression is that in southern Europe a) kids end up better behaved because they're more used to being around adults (while American kids expect to be the center of attention because they usually are); and b) there's more tolerance for reasonable interruptions from kids.
As an American grand parent I can say that most American kids are badly behaved and ill trained when out in public. Especially in restaurants. Except mine of course. They were absolute angels.
The helicopter parenting of today may account for solipsistic children who consider themselves the life of every party. Relaxed parents generally have relaxed children.
Having raised my kids in the States, but being English I have some observations. Americans have fixed ideas about how families should have fun together (parks, sports, backyard events etc)and how adults have fun (bars restaurants etc). I believe it is something to do with the alcohol laws. I noticed that by 16 years of age in UK and Europe kids are used to socializing with and around adults and then they are admitted into the adult world (I.e can drink) from then on. However, in USA kids are excluded from adult life until 21. They spend years bored, treated like something inferior and excluded from adult company in many instances. It all starts back at the beginning with parents unwittingly creating a divide with strict bedtimes and low expectation of bringing children into adult settings.
We used to dress our kids up and go to fancy restaurants at ages about 6. They learned a lot and were treated like royalty because waiters almost never saw kids in such settings.
Yes, this seems exactly right to me re: US.
Yes, and that is the way all of us, not just children, learn to behave: by observing and doing.
I think I found the answer: if American parents bring the children with them, the entire event will end up centering the children, because in America the child is always at the center. The adults always center the child's desires and whims. In Southern Europe you can bring your children to social events, and still continue to have an event for adults: the children do their thing, the adults their thing. If children and adults share the same table, in America the children are let to lead the discussion, while in Southern Europe the children are simply allowed to eavesdrop, but the discussion is still centered on the adults. Briefly, in order for adults to have some time just for themselves, in America the children need to be absent (exiled to bed).
Definitely a big part of the answer! (Would just add that it’s not like children are expected to be silent or overly deferential at the table or anything like that in Italy. They get to participate—they just know they’re one constituency at the meal, not the sole center of attention.)
Exactly.
As an Indian mom married to an American dad.... my husband's family basically neglects kids I feel. I find it very hard to believe this narrative of "Americans coddle their kids". Just this past thanksgiving, there was this baby that was buckled up in a baby chair drinking milk from a bottle that was propped up and all of the twenty adults were ignoring the baby and chatting with each other. I couldn't stand it and went and played with the baby, and folks were a bit surprised. When I took my toddler to an Indian wedding, she was crying after about an hour because "everyone is saying hello to me".
There's an art to having a conversation where the kids feel included enough until they get bored and skip away. Feels like that's what I experienced growing up. You need to acknowledge children and include them in the conversations. Otherwise they don't learn how to have conversations with people of different ages. My husband and his siblings still get quite quiet when their parents are chatting with their uncles and aunts because "the grownups are talking". The first time I went to a family event of my husband's, I was worried he was ashamed of me or he had a bad relationship with his family, because he was so quiet. We discussed it and traced it back to having to be quiet because the grownups are talking. Not saying that is abuse or neglect, but it definitely doesn't seem healthy.
Maybe I am blind to my own situation, but I would not characterize our social situation in the US that way. I hope at least it is not broadly applied. We certainly don't consciously center the kids in our community. We just got back from camping with singles, "empty nesters", and families. Barely saw the kids while we sat around the fire and talked as adults.
Echoing some of the comments and responses I think it has to do with keeping a routine that is compatible with getting up at 7am or earlier for school - shifting wakeup / sleep time isn't optimal for anyone, including kids.
During the summer, our kids have drifted to a 10pm bedtime and play outside with neighbors until 9pm - and this is compatible with the occasional "late night" with the family going to bed at 11pm e.g to watch fireworks.
There is also the utility of kids in bed = 1-2 hours of time to unwind. However, if kids have others to play with, and you don't have to supervise / entertain every hour, the need for "me" time doesn't feel so acute. So I suppose you could tie this into the trend towards more isolated / structured childhood. I know many attribute this to less walkable / dense neighborhoods, but I suspect it has more to do with the fertility rate - you can't expect a sufficient concentration of children in any given neighborhood to "go out and play with other kids" unless you go out of your way to move to one with lot's of families.
"However, if kids have others to play with, and you don't have to supervise / entertain every hour, the need for "me" time doesn't feel so acute."
This is a great point. Get your kids outside with a gaggle of neighborhood kids in the evening and parents will have the me time they understandably crave without needing to enforce an early bedtime or hire a sitter. Unfortunately this type of activity (kids playing in the neighborhood til dusk or later) is happening less and less in many US neighborhoods, as parents feel they need to actively supervise their children every waking moment.
I'm guessing you would find kids staying up later and doing family stuff if you were around more lower middle class and below types of folks. I live in Baltimore and kids are still out and about playing at all hours and no one really makes a fuss, with the exception of people complaining about Black teenagers being in areas where white upper middle class people hang out on weekends, in which case they complain loudly on Facebook
Yes, definitely a strong class element to this—and one of the ways in which the “upper” classes are probably worse off.
I second that, Glenn. I practiced in Baltimore as a pediatrician for several years, and I was always amazed how many toddlers would be out well after 10pm. Almost always these were children of "lower middle-class families" - or more precisely: This phenomenon did not occur among the educated. As in most things in modern America, there is a rural/urban divide here - and more than that a divide between the "professional class" and others.
I have two knee-jerk instincts. First, from my limited experience, southern Europe seems to generally operate on a later schedule. I may be misremembering this or applying one set of cultural norms to a whole region, but when I was in southern Spain in college, the workday started later than the usual American workday, there was the famed late afternoon lunch and rest time, and a typical weeknight dinner at home was often after 9pm (norm in America is 6 or 7, I’d guess?) Secondly, being “out late” in America, in and of itself, has a sort of vibe of debauchery to it. I suspect there’s some sort of connection there, though wouldn’t want to stake a guess on the direction of causality. Are northern Europe’s norms about this more like the US or southern Europe’s?
Spain is a bit weird because it's just objectively on the wrong time zone. You should basically always subtract one hour from the official time, which makes the country a bit less of an outlier than it often seems. And then the usual school start time - which I believe is between 8.30am and 9am - isn't remarkably late at all.
As for northern Europe, yup--closer to the U.S. but not as extreme, would be my guesstimate.
Re: Northern Europe — Well, we Americans do tend towards zealotry when we get a notion about the right way to do things! 😅
Dinner times - and that sense of "debauchery" – depends on where you are in the US. In NYC, for example, 6-7 pm is early for many if not most people, at least not that long ago. Nowadays dinner times appear to have crept towards earlier hours; 7-8 pm is more like it now, I believe. But once, many didn't even think about going for dinner until 9 pm or so. And staying out late is "normal" for many people, certainly not "debauchery"! :-)
Late (or later) dinner times is also common in other parts of the world, not just in Southern Europe or Spain or Italy. It's commin in many places in SE Asia and in Taiwan etc etc. Ever heard of the "night markets" in SE Asia, Taiwan, etc? Or folks going out for a meal of Bak Kut Teh at 11 p.m. in Malaysia, especially in places like Kuala Lumpur?
Some late night places for BKT in KL: https://www.google.com/maps/search/bak+kut+teh/@3.1384962,101.6045872,30876m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!2m1!6e5?entry=ttu
Some late night places for KL-style Hokkien Mee in KL: https://www.google.com/maps/search/hokkien+mee/@3.1384962,101.6045876,30876m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!2m1!6e5?entry=ttu
Night market hours in Taipei: https://www.google.com/search?q=night+market+in+taipei+hours
In KL: https://www.google.com/search?q=night+market+in+kuala+lumpur+hours
In Penang: https://www.google.com/search?q=night+market+in+penang+hours
In Bangkok: https://www.google.com/search?q=night+market+in+bangkok+hours
In Singapore: https://www.google.com/search?q=night+market+in+singapore+hours
...and so on and so forth.
My wife and I had one kid, who is now in college. We drug him everywhere, and made no compromises with our social life in his raising. Our rules were simple: you go wherever we go, and try to look like you’re having a good time. The kid fell asleep in many a spare bedroom or couches of our friends. We did the same thing that Yasha speaks of…we simply scooped him up at the end of the night. Now, as he is a young adult, many of our friends comment on how mature he is or how he can “hang with the adults”. I actually credit this to all the times we took him out when he was a kid, often staying out to the wee hours. Sure there were some Monday mornings where we had to drag him out of bed to get to school, but frankly we were dragging ourselves out of bed to get to work. Thus is life. So my advice…take your kids out with you wherever you go…they’ll be none off worse for the wear!