The most e-mailed article on the New York Times website yesterday was “For Some Parents, Shouting is the New Spanking”. Like most trend pieces in the Thursday Style section, it’s heavy on the generalization and aimed squarely at the Times’s readership of affluent white helicopter parents. According to reporter Hilary Stout:
…today’s pregnancy-flaunting, soccer-cheering, organic-snack-proffering generation of parents would never spank their children. We congratulate our toddlers for blowing their nose (“Good job!”), we friend our teenagers (literally and virtually), we spend hours teaching our elementary-school offspring how to understand their feelings. But, incongruously and with regularity, this is a generation that yells.
That behavior may be the norm in affluent, Times-reading enclaves, but it’s certainly not how a whole generation of Americans parent their children. Besides, parents have been yelling at their kids since time immemorial–that’s hardly new news. In classic Times-ian fashion, Stout starts out by pouring it on thick with the generalizing, then blithely assumes her own generalizations are facts worthy of reportage.
It’s also significant that 100% of the parents quoted in the article are moms, and they all feel guilty about yelling at their kids. Is this because only moms yell? Or only moms should feel guilty about yelling? Do dads get to indulge in guilt-free yelling? We may never know–dads were apparently not interviewed, nor were parents who yell without guilt. It was your typically poorly researched, un-nuanced Times trend piece–a sweeping generalization that’s really just a narrow view for a narrow readership.
I grew up in a highly educated, affluent white family–although we were loyal to the Washington Post, not the Times–but my parents did not helicopter me to death, and they definitely were not of the so-called “generation that yells.” MamaSharper believed in the “loving disciplinarian” approach, both with the two kids she raised and the thousands she educated. She didn’t have to scream–a tone change and glare was almost always enough to snap us back into line (on very rare occasions, she might also deploy a swat on the bottom, but always without yelling). BigStepdaddy yelled at us maybe once or twice. Each time it was so unusual–and so LOUD–that my sister and I automatically burst into tears, which immediately made him feel terrible.
At my other home–DaddySharper’s house–there was also not much shouting, even when dealing with my three little brothers. While I understand that powder-keg, flash of white-hot fury that bratty kids can cause–believe me, I understand it–it doesn’t always mean one will wind up melting down like the guilt-ridden yuppies the article describes. My parents didn’t express anger or frustration by shouting, so neither did we.
My family seems to be the exception, though. My childhood friends were all yelled at–particularly my non-white friends, who came from cultures where parental authority is strongly, and loudly, enforced. Even in my own family, my cousin–a devoted SAHM– has told me more than once that she struggles not to shout at her (usually very well-behaved) daughters. Still, she does it more often than she’d like and feels guilty about it. She blames her upbringing for her tendency to shout: “My dad used to yell at us all the time, and when I yell at my girls, I can almost hear my dad in my head. I was yelled at as a kid, so I yell at my kids. I hate it.”
According to the Times:
Psychologists and psychiatrists generally say yelling should be avoided. It’s at best ineffective (the more you do it the more the child tunes it out) and at worse damaging to a child’s sense of well-being and self-esteem.
“We are so accustomed to this that we just think parents get carried away and that it’s not harmful,” said one of the study’s lead authors, Murray A. Straus, a sociologist who is a director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. “But it affects a child. If someone yelled at you at work, you’d find that pretty jarring. We don’t apply that standard to children.”
Having been raised in a no-yell environment, I didn’t learn to tune it out, and now as an adult, yellling instantly evokes a strong negative reaction in me. I always perceive yelling as hostile and aggressive, and it immediately triggers my fight-or-flight response.
When I first worked for the boss from hell, her frequent shrieking totally threw me for a loop. I was stunned. WTF? Couldn’t she control herself? When she yelled at me, I shut down. It wasn’t that I was intimidated, I simply was not having any of it. I gave her the icy cold stare of death and, once just walked out of the room. I didn’t care that she signed my paycheck. If my mother didn’t yell at me, this bitch damn sure wasn’t going to have the privilege. It was a textbook hostile workplace, and I didn’t stick around for long.
It irritates me that the Times article skates around the obvious fact that habitual yelling creates a toxic environment, and is often a form of psychological abuse. Parents inflict it on children, spouses inflict it on one another. It’s always felt wrong to me. To be fair, some people are just loud by nature and yell excitedly about everything. I tend not to seek out those people, but I’ve learned to recalibrate my responses to them so I don’t cringe when they up the volume.
Despite all its quotes from shrinks and child experts, the author of the Times piece doesn’t conclude that we shouldn’t yell at children. But I can testify that not yelling teaches children how to handle situations without losing control. If you model calm and restraint for your kids, they will be calmer and better behaved. If this sounds suspiciously Zen, believe me, I’m about the least Zen person you’ll meet. But reading this article reminded me again that my parents did me a huge favor by not yelling at me. I’m convinced that because of it, I have better self-control, and kinder, healthier interpersonal relationships. I also think it’s very unlikely that I’ll ever be part of “the generation that yells.”
Oh, for God’s sake.
If you discipline your kid in a way that makes it clear that you mean it, and you follow through with the consequences you explain will result from bad behavior, this whole cycle of yelling louder and louder about the same thing can stop.
People say it’s hard to say no to your kids. Bull. You’re the adult. Stand up and act like one. It’s better for you, for them and for society when you do. If you’re worried about the kid not liking you, you want a pet, not a child.
@MM: Amen. I don’t know why this is so fucking hard for some people.
It’s spawned a whole universe of TV shows in which professional nannies/shrinks teach parents how not to be dominated by their own little kids.
The only time I got yelled at was when I was a teen, and my mom and I would go at it hammer-and-tongs. I probably instigated most of the yelling. And yes, it only ups the ante.
It’s something that I think about with my students. Yelling is inappropriate, period, but being clear about expectations and firm and dead-calm when they aren’t met is WAY more effective.
I will say this — MM rarely yelled when my brother and I were kids and my father yelled on a fairly regular basis (or at least raised his voice). As far as I remember (and MM should feel free to correct this), this worked well when I was very small, moderately when I was ~tween age (as I learned mostly to not do stuff he didn’t like around him — minor stuff like eating too much candy), and terribly once I was a teenager and had stopped respecting yelling because I found it to be more an indicator of his lack of self-control than my bad behavior.
Whereas MM held very closely to the rules of Peaceful Conflict Resolution that she taught to us as a volunteer in our elementary school. That’s generally how I do things now, and I find it works amazingly well.
[...] from my duties, my family, and my blog-family, too. I don’t like it one bit. And while I don’t advocate yelling, I have been daydreaming of elegant comeuppances and razor-sharp letters of [...]
My mom was a yeller. I was really terrified of her growing up. I tend to think that was a good thing/bad thing. And like PhDork, I got in some EPIC screaming matches with her as a teenager. We have a really good relationship now though.
I don’t mind if a person is a yell-er if that is the way they communicate, but cannot abide being yelled at or cursed at by someone who is inappropriately angry at me.
It seems people have lost their sense of perspective on things, is your kid spilling something on the carpet really worthy of the same caliber of response as them toddling toward on-coming traffic? Is not getting the lunch order right worthy of the same reaction as fouling up a million dollar deal?
I didn’t mean “your kid,” I only have opinions on hypothetical kids, of course.
PhDork says:
October 23, 2009 at 11:43 am
The only time I got yelled at was when I was a teen, and my mom and I would go at it hammer-and-tongs. I probably instigated most of the yelling. And yes, it only ups the ante.
That was me and my mum. We were totally incapable of rational discussion until we calmed down. Neither of my parents shouted, but I’m pretty sure I turned out ok.
I grew up in a small working class town in the South. I received spankings. I was yelled at. I certainly wasn’t an exception in my hometown. In fact, I can’t think of many children who weren’t spanked or yelled at and, for the most part, those kids turned out just fine. (Education is an issue, but I think that’s because education isn’t valued where I’m from…not because kids were spanked.)
Despite the numerous lectures I’ve received from others about how my parents “abused” me, about how my parents are rage balls and psychopaths for “hitting children,” and about all the psychological problems I must have (note: I don’t have any of them) as a result of the things my parents did to poor pitiful me when I was a kid, it really doesn’t change the fact that my parents raised healthy, happy, well-adjusted kids.
I just get tired of the way upper middle class white people police how other people parent their children, or arguing that if parents do certain things, it means their children are automatically going to have an array of social and emotional problems. Particularly when a large body of the “evidence” put forward by the parenting police is based on this sort of logic: “Because my parents did x and y, I turned out z. Therefore, for parents who did NOT-x and NOT-y, their children can NOT turn out z.” Not only does this sort of statement make a lot of false assumptions about parenting, it’s also just poor logic.
Anyhow. While I’m sure I wouldn’t like the NY Times piece if I read it–because yuppies blathering on about good parenting have long since ceased to do anything for me but stimulate my eye roll reflex–I can’t say I felt much better about this post, which made a lot of the same logical errors. How did you put it? Oh, yeah, “blithely assumes her own generalizations are facts worthy of reportage.”
Less of this, please.
@Katie: I think you’re doing exactly what you’re accusing others of doing. Because, despite spankings and being screamed at, you turned out to be happy and well-adjusted, that doesn’t mean that (1) those are useful or desirable behaviors to encourage in other parents or that (2)that’s the kind of social exchange we want to see as acceptable in our society.
Are you really saying that screaming arguments are a constructive way to communicate? Or that hitting children is an effective technique for either discipline or learning? If so, I have to differ with you. People do what they’re taught, and we have quite enough violence in this culture already, verbal and otherwise.
I also see that you’re making assumptions about the race and class of the people who post here. I’m not sure on what basis you’re making that assumption.
I was both yelled at and given the silent treatment. I never knew which would hit me or when. It was psychologically damaging to me and I still have a difficult time when people yell. When and if they turn it on me, I tend to go cold rather than yell back.
My husband yells a lot at our teenager while I do not. I don’t think the yelling is at all effective, although when my son does push to my anger point, he knows it and usually backs down. On the other hand, he just yells back at his father.
At the end of the day, both my husband and I think we’ve got the right of it. Time will tell, I suppose.
I always think of Supernanny and even Cesar Milan when these discussions come up.
Neither yelling nor spanking really teaches children anything. Both accomplish the parents’ goals from time to time, but not because they impart important lessons.
Verbally and physically lashing out is usually counterproductive, and yet so many people think they are the only options when it comes to “discipline.”
Thank you BeckySharper for this post. It’s like reading my mind out about the subject. And to MischiefManager, I like your thoughts too. I’m a grade school teacher, and during summer breaks, the teachers must attend the required conferences, to upgrade us with regards to our relationships with the students and parents as well. In one of the sessions, it was mentioned that yelling to children does them no good but rather affects their behavior in school and at home. Almost always, they respond negatively when yelled at.
@Katie: This post is about my experiences NOT being yelled at, and my belief that my parents’ choice not to scream at me made me a happier, healther person. It’s perfectly reasonable for ME to draw conclusions about MY upbringing and why I behave the way I do. I don’t think that’s “making false assumptions about parenting”; I lived those experiences, and I’m qualified to speak about them. Who are you to tell me otherwise?
As for generalizing, NOWHERE in this post do I say (or even imply) that “all children who were yelled at turn out badly.” For the record, I don’t believe that to be the case at all. As I said in the post, the vast majority of my friends and family were yelled at, but, again NOWHERE did I say or imply that they turned out badly; most of them are terrific, well-adjusted people. In the case where I quote my cousin–well, that’s her own conclusion in her own words.
I think you’re inferring I issued a whole host of judgments that I did not, and you yourself make a great deal of generalizations about what I wrote that a close reading of the text itself would not support.
As for the topic, I absolutely do believe that parents yelling at their kids is generally not effective, and can often be toxic or even abusive. If you don’t agree, that’s your right.
I come from a more yelling type of family, so I have a higher tolerance for it, but I wonder if it’s not so much yelling that is the issue, but the content and consistency of the yelling (or any discipline). Yelling “go to your room” seems preferable to quiet messages that the child is worthless/stupid/ugly.
@Pedimd: That’s a really good point. There are lots of ways to hurt your child, and decibels don’t always mean serious injury. Kids know when real harm is the intention.
My husband comes from a stereotypical New York Jewish family in which all conversations are conducted at high volume and every exchange is a confrontation. They don’t mean anything by it, but I find it extremely grating and an assault on both ears and emotions, so I avoid being around them at all costs. Mr MM isn’t quite as bad as they are, but he has always had a different style of relating to our kids than I have. My observation is that kids who are screamed at develop a tolerance for it, which leads to louder yelling, and on and on. I don’t see the point.
In his defense, I should say that Mr MM has many parenting strenghts I don’t have. It tends to balance out in the end, at least in our case. But if you have 2 screamers as parents, I don’t see that as a good thing.
mischiefmanager: “I also see that you’re making assumptions about the race and class of the people who post here. I’m not sure on what basis you’re making that assumption.”
My “assumption” was only about the author, who stated her race and class in her post.
BeckySharper: “This post is about my experiences NOT being yelled at, and my belief that my parents’ choice not to scream at me made me a happier, healther person. It’s perfectly reasonable for ME to draw conclusions about MY upbringing and why I behave the way I do… Who are you to tell me otherwise?”
Because your conclusions aren’t just about *your* upbringing. You said in your post: “But I can testify that not yelling teaches children how to handle situations without losing control. If you model calm and restraint for your kids, they will be calmer and better behaved.” Those statements aren’t about YOUR experiences. That’s you projecting your experiences onto everyone, and assuming because that this is YOUR experience, it will be everyone else’s, too.
Who am I to tell you otherwise? I assume having a comment section means you are interested in hearing the opinions of your readers. If your comment section is only for those who agree with you, I’ll keep in that in mind in the future. However, if you have this section to garner the opinions of all of your readers, you might be interested in knowing when some of your readers have experiences and opinions which differ from your own. These differing experiences might be useful in informing your opinions on the subject you are discussing, particularly when your beliefs on the subject are apparently purely solipsistic. While I do not have any titles or education that make me uniquely qualified to critique your post, I feel I am about as qualified as you are (which is to say, not at all) to share my thoughts on the matter, which come entirely from my own experiences, too.
The gist of my comment is: In this blog post, you did exactly what you criticized the author of the original article for doing–you assumed your experience is generalizable to everyone else. If you don’t actually think that, you should have done a better job of conveying it in your writing.
@Katie: Your reading of the post is deliberately hostile and fairly misinformed.
Your comments also seem unreasonably combative, especially as you lecture her about “you should have done a better job conveying it in your writing” and “less of this, please.” That’s ridiculously high-handed and patronizing.
You seem to have a personal beef with Becky–maybe because of her race and class?
I find that this article did in fact do many of the things that Katie says it did. Quite frankly Swimshark, negating her reading of the article is high-handed and patronizing (especially when you accuse Katie of racism and classism). There were legitimate issues in this article in terms of the author’s use of her life experience as fact. Now if one were to complain about the author being a WASPy yuppie who has no real concept of child-rearing outside of her experience as a child, sure, that would be deliberately hostile and fairly misinformed, but she didn’t. She had a few valid arguments and opinions regarding the piece.
In fact the piece does construct quite the picture of an Other. Those who yell and create toxic environments for their children, and use a common form of abuse in their interactions with their children. Those people whom she avoids association. Those who are unlike her and her family.
Yelling feels wrong to *her*, but that doesn’t mean it is wrong, and she didn’t really convey that understanding in this piece leaving the reader to think that she deliberately didn’t write it because the author thinks and feels that it is wrong.
“But I can testify that not yelling teaches children how to handle situations without losing control.”
This is assuming that every child who isn’t yelled at somehow either inherently has control (essentialism) or gains control through not being yelled at? Straw Man, anyone? One can *testify* for ones self, but not “children” without coming dangerously close to problematic sweeping statements.
My biggest problem with this piece: The phrase “to be fair” never negates generalizations and near-accusations of child abuse. It’s cool to analyze a piece using your own theories of communication and the ways in which they function in the community and interpersonal relationships, but I saw more bias than honest-to-goodness analysis in this article. It was unsettling (and not in the good way).
I echo: “less of this.” (but not less of this discussion)
I had a friend who had two unruly children, he was an unruly kind of guy himself. He spanked his kids often. It was never a beating, it was not patently physically abusive or brutal. It was a swat or two, but it was the routine.
It was totally ineffective.
They learned that the couple of swats were not particularly horrible, and they learned that a spanking, unlike more cerebral discipline, is over in an instant. Once you get the swat, you are off the hook for that particular crime.
I talked to him about this, and told him, “You have nowhere to go after you spank. You have no more options. What are you going to do, kill them if it doesn’t work?”
My Dad, who I wrote about in another post, was a yeller. He spanked infrequently, and when he did, it was the crossing of a threshold. I knew that was all the farther I could go. It never occured to me that he was out of options at that point. All I new was that -I- was out of options.
With my Mother, it was the word “Damn” coming out of her mouth. Some serious shit was coming down if that happened, and all five of us went for cover. She was over the line, and everybody knew it. It did not happen very often.
My Mother had another tactic: The word “disappointed”. My Mother’s use of the word “disappointed” meant that not only had I not pleased her, but that I would not get her positive attention by doing whatever I had done.
My Grandmother turned her head away, and went silent. There would be no “grandma stuff”, no pleasantries, no affirmation until I had reconsidered my actions.
These two things were devastating and effective, much more so than a spanking or yelling, although my Mother would hesitate to turn it up as far as she needed to, culminating in “Damn”.
When I was raising my daughter, I spanked her once. A single swat. I never had to do it again. Neither of us wanted to cross that threshold again. I was glad. I hated how it felt.
My Grandmother’s tactic worked really well up until my daughter was about 13.
As a teenager, we had raging yelling matches on occasion.
And I will say this: If your teenager wins in a shouting match, it is a bad thing.
You are the parent, you must win, and you must win the FIRST one. Winning is not defined as the best insult, or the most denigrating thing that you can think of to say, or the most dire threat. Winning means turning it up until you can get through, and ONLY that far.
It is my opinion that children need to learn that they have choices, and the most important choice is to engage in behavior that gets them yelled at, OR NOT.
It is a simple lesson that translates into everything in their developing life: There will be either benefits from your actions, or consequences from your actions. They have the power and the choice to decide which it will be.
Praise and affirmation are much more powerful forces in discipline than consequence.
But, that consequence must be known to a degree of absolute certainty to be standing just around the corner. They have the choice, and they can make it freely.
I seldom had to yell at my daughter as she was growing up through childhood and adolescence, because she learned that lesson early.
However, when she became a teenager and began to test me, as all teenagers do (and as I sure as hell tested my parents), I had to win. To win meant volume, until I broke through and got her to listen. If I could get her to -just listen- to what I was trying to get through to her about, the argument would be over. They always ended with “just consider what I have said. Just consider it.” After that, she could decide how she wanted to proceed. It ball was then in her court.
Children want to please their parents. They want to have attention. They will do whatever they have to do to get attention.
They will also f*ck up to whatever extent is required to get a rise out of you. When you see that happening, you have to examine what you are doing, because you are witholding something that they need.
Children need and WANT boundaries. They want to know that you care enough about them to establish and enforce those boundaries.
They WANT you to have positive expectations of them, and they WANT you to pull them up short when they do not try to meet those expectations. Notice I said TRY. An honest, best effort, TRY. The work, the effort, the expenditure of soulful energy must be articulated as having met your expectations. There will be victories, and there will be defeats in their lives; but their best honest effort always meets your expectations.
Sometimes, there is no other way than to turn up the volume to define those boundaries and to articulate what those expectations are.
This can NEVER be a recrimination.
My daughter, once said to me as a teenager after one of these rows, “I hate it when you yell at me”. I said, “I do too. But, the decision is yours.”
I don’t think we ever had a yelling match after that. Oh, we had arguments, but they were not fights.
Last, at some point, you both have to apologize. Not for the situation that caused the fight, not for pressing the issue, not for standing your ground; but for the act of pushing each other over the line.
You have to respect their developing individuality, and they have to understand that you respect them enough to push back.
You might not agree, but it worked. I have a much better relationship with my Daughter than my Dad and I ever had.
I hope that you do too.