“Kids are Too Coddled”
“The most important psychological idea in the book [The Coddling of the American Mind] is antifragility. That there’s some things that are fragile, like a wine glass: if you knock it over, it breaks, nothing good happens. If something is plastic, you knock it over, it doesn't get damaged but it doesn’t get better. But there’s some things that have to be stressed or challenged, like the immune system. If you protect your kid’s immune system, use antibacterial wipes, you’re actually hurting the kid. You’re preventing the system from getting the information it needs. Same thing with social life: if you protect your kids from being excluded, from being insulted, from being teased, when they grow up, it’s like the princess and the pea. A little tiny thing that they encounter on campus now becomes intolerably painful.”
Jonathan Haidt, Co-Author
Glass vs. Plastic
Wow! What a unique insight that plastic does not break as easily as glass! But the conclusion Jonathan Haidt draws from this observation shatters my heart. It calls to mind the German word engherzigkeit, which describes having a “narrow heart,” a terrible put-down. It suggests that kids who get hurt or shatter impose on their parents, who now must clean up the mess, or on society, which must now deal with delicate snowflakes. Instead, Haidt says, all of them should be more like plastic.
Let’s look more deeply into this comparison: we drink out of plastic cups (like those ubiquitous red Solo cups at college parties) when we know people won’t be careful – who cares if you drop them? We don't want to be bothered with dealing with glass that needs washing and other careful handling. We throw plastic cups away after we quickly consume whatever it contains. But is a cup’s antifragility its virtue, or is the fact that we don’t trust some people with glass an incrimination of them?
In my life I have learned to enjoy a good meal (one that took someone time and energy to cook) off a porcelain plate with exactly the right wine poured into crystal glasses; the environment enhances the experience of a meal. And then afterwards, cleaning the glasses by hand with proper care and storing them in the proper place is a cherished ritual associated with that celebrated meal.
This is how I think of my child, as a beautiful piece of crystal. Glass is not merely fragile. It does not shatter when handled with care and respect, when it is valued. Glass does not rust or melt or bend, and it’s durable enough to last generations. It only shatters when you disrespectfully drop it or put a hammer to it. If you are too careless and klutzy or can’t be bothered to handle something valuable and worth cherishing gently, then maybe you should go for antifragile plastic.
When my glass kid went to college, she faced some adversity. She didn’t shatter. She grew up with parents who recognized her value and showed her what it was like to be treated with respect, so she sought out friendships and connections with people and groups who treated her that way. She knew what it was like to be able to rely on someone for assistance or protection, so she knew how to ask for help when she really needed it. And not just from me! She was self-assured enough to seek help from other resources as well. That is what makes someone resilient — knowing when they need help and having the confidence to ask for it — not getting hurt over and over again.
What an awful way of treating children: you want the antifragile child so that it does not break, rather than protecting a glass child who should be rightfully cherished and treated with care.
About the Immune System…
Haidt also makes a comparison to the immune system, that a child has to be exposed to a pathogen to later be protected. Well, maybe he should read up on how that works. For one thing, breastfeeding mothers provide their children with ready-made antibodies in the first few months of life. It’s not necessary (and in fact, it’s dangerous) to expose newborns to any pathogens for them to develop that protection.
Then the child gets immunizations, which teaches the immune system who is the enemy and gives it a chance to build a defense in advance of the real attack. The pathogens in immunizations are “attenuated” which means they are made less dangerous. And still, we take extra care of the child if he or she has a hard time after an immunization. Just like a caring parent would nurse an older child back to health after they come down with an illness from a non-attenuated pathogen.
In Haidt’s model, there is no consideration of attenuation or of care. He suggests that when a child is exposed to full-blown social abuse, the child will automatically mount the right defense and inevitably mature and build resilience. Yes, that can happen, but so often it does not. It can also end with great lasting injuries, scars, and even the death of the child.
The professor is right about exposure in principle, but to encourage resilience, those social pathogens must be attenuated by parental involvement and modeling. It is NOT beneficial to “let kids be kids'' and mistreat each other. Adults have to create an environment where they model harmonious social interactions and where they are involved enough in the life of their children to notice and intervene when the going gets tough for the kid. The concept of antifragility conveys more the idea of letting kids have at it, and letting the ones who break, break, then blaming them for breaking because they’re “too sensitive.”
The only thing that pre-breaking a child accomplishes is making that child accustomed to pain and brokenness. I wonder if Haidt knows the saying, “hurt people hurt people.” The more likely outcome of allowing kids to be bullied and harmed is that they will become bullies themselves. When parents refuse to intervene in their children’s lives in order to “expose” them and make them more resilient, the more likely outcome is that those kids will grow up to become adults who assume everyone will abandon or neglect them, don’t know how to effectively ask for support, and become caught in helplessness. They may come away from their childhood feeling ignored, dismissed, and not valuable. In short, they feel like plastic.
-E
