What if the very way we parent today—hovering, curating, protecting—is destroying our children's ability to grow up? Nancy McDermott's journey from Park Slope mom to parenting culture expert reveals how the family transformed from a sturdy institution into a fragile vehicle for self-fulfillment. As gentle parenting fails another generation and schools strip away parental authority, McDermott exposes how the 1970s divorce revolution created a traumatized generation now raising kids in perpetual fear. From birthday party invitations that require including everyone to teens who can't handle disappointment, this conversation reveals why modern parenting makes everyone miserable—and how we might find our way back.
About Nancy McDermott
Nancy McDermott is an author, writer, and researcher specializing in American parenting culture. She is Director of Genspect USA, editor of Genspect's Inspecting Gender Substack, and an affiliate of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. Author of The Problem with Parenting: How Raising Children Is Changing Across America (Praeger, 2020), she earned the moniker "voice of reason" as former head and advisor to Park Slope Parents, one of America's largest online parenting communities. A mother of two sons, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she first witnessed the intensity of modern parenting culture among the "Type A driven people" who "couldn't throw a rock without hitting a journalist or someone who'd won an Oscar."
The Institution That Disappeared
McDermott pinpoints the 1970s as the breaking point when the family ceased being an institution and became "a vehicle for self-fulfillment." This wasn't just evolution—it was revolution. The bourgeois family, which had successfully balanced "individualism with social responsibility" and transmitted cultural values across generations, suddenly couldn't survive in a world where "the authentic self" became the highest good. Now parents must reinvent parenting with each generation—from attachment parenting to gentle parenting—always the same intensity, just "different wrapping."
Fire Hydrant Syndrome and the Pressure Cooker
In a neighborhood where children's interests become parental obsessions, McDermott's son's fascination with fire hydrants and exit signs triggered concern. "Do you think you should have him evaluated?" neighbors asked. For Halloween, while other kids dressed as superheroes, her son went as an exit sign. The sleepless nights wondering if she'd done right by refusing evaluation reveal the suffocating pressure parents face. Years later, old Brooklyn friends still tell her: "I really admire you that you didn't get your son evaluated"—a chilling reminder of how normalized pathologizing childhood has become.
The Birthday Party That Broke Childhood
When McDermott's school mandated that birthday party invitations must include every child in class—to prevent anyone feeling disappointment—she saw modern parenting's fatal flaw. Parents were "so afraid of the disappointment that this child would feel," but really "it wasn't about the child." These parents were feeling their own unprocessed pain: "I haven't gotten the invitation to the birthday party." This emotional enmeshment, what researchers call "matrescence," reveals parents who can't separate their emotions from their children's experiences, creating a generation that never learns to handle life's inevitable setbacks.
The Divorce Revolution's Hidden Casualties
McDermott exposes the "unrecognized trauma" of the 1970s divorce revolution through haunting examples—like Andre Dubois III's memoir describing how "his mom had to go out to work. His brother and his brother's teacher are having an affair... nobody's there." When she asked people who were children during that era about their parents' divorce, "more than one person just broke down in tears because nobody had ever asked them what it was like." Today's intensive parenting is an overcorrection by a generation desperate to give their kids "the childhood I didn't have."
From Raising Children to "Parenting" Them
"We used to talk about 'raising' children. Now we talk about parenting them." McDermott identifies this linguistic shift as symptomatic of a deeper crisis. Parenting has become "an activity" rather than "a state of being," complete with expert classes, including—incredibly—"grandparenting classes." When grandparents report "they won't let me be with the baby until I take the grandparenting class," we see how thoroughly modern culture has rejected generational wisdom. "You knew what you're doing. You still know what you're doing. You've developed this lifetime of instincts."
Technology: The Sugar-Coated Escape
McDermott's own family's slide into device dependency mirrors millions of households. "It was a slow creep, very like putting on weight. You don't really see it coming." When children retreat to their rooms as teenagers, technology fills the void where family connection once lived. Her younger son's discovery of Thomas the Tank Engine YouTube videos—complete with his own channel narrating "very rare Thomas" toys—shows how children find their own digital worlds. But "online is not the same" as real connection. "Kids need other kids," not screens.
The Authority Crisis
California's laws allowing schools to socially transition six-year-olds without parental knowledge represents the ultimate erosion of parental authority. But McDermott sees a deeper problem: parents have internalized their own inadequacy. "We're second guessing ourselves all the time." The distinction between being authoritative versus authoritarian has been lost. "Sometimes you just need to say you're going to bed now... And the kid says why? And you said because I said so. And that's what authority is." Without it, "children need their parents to have authority over them. They need to understand that their parents will protect them."
The Future Rejected
At Wharton Business School, young women now say they don't want families—not because they can't have them, but because "I saw what it's like for my parents and it was awful. They weren't happy all the time." McDermott calls out the tragedy: when raising kids becomes so intense that parents are miserable, why would the next generation choose it? Some claim they can "do so much more good" working for NGOs than raising their own "selfish" biological children. The family as an institution faces extinction by exhaustion.
Hope in The Giver Quartet
McDermott's recommendation of Lois Lowry's "The Giver Quartet" isn't just about good reading—it's a roadmap. The books depict a society with "no history," where children reaching puberty take "mood suppressants," and "birth mothers in the birthing center" never see children assigned to "ideal parents." Sound familiar? "It is what's happening," McDermott confirms, "but there is hope." The quartet shows both our dystopian trajectory and possible redemption through reconnecting with what we've lost.
Follow Nancy McDermott
Book: The Problem with Parenting: How Raising Children Is Changing Across America
X: @NMcDNY
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