Gentle (civic) parenting

A civic version of the millennial parenting construct we know so well

There has never been a truer sentiment about parenting than this: I do not know how parents did it before the information age.

I get that the ability to compare yourself to other parents wasn’t as readily available as it is now was a good thing, but unless you completely rejected socializing your kid, there had to be IRL sizing up going on. Which actually sounds less toxic in a way, because no one could stage how perfect their parenting was, unlike the present ability to filter parenthood through a seemingly rosy Instagram lens.

I do not know how our parents did it.

Take Dr. Becky for example. If my kid (or yours, it could be any of ours OK!) is in a hitting phase, all I have to do is go to my Good Inside app and find the course modules that focus specifically on hitting. When I was undoubtedly hitting my preschool cohorts back in 1986-87, my parents would have had to dust off a 500-page parenting book, or worse, go to the library, find the parenting section (if there was one?) and muddle through a table of contents or, god forbid, an index to find the pages on hitting (because indeed, it may not have been neatly covered in a single chapter).

We are living in a golden age of parenting where information is readily available, but it’s a rose and a thorn. It’s largely how I feel about being able to find out anything that’s happening in the world in real time. I don’t know if I’m happier or more well-adjusted. Does being well-informed automatically mean being happier? I know the answer to that is no.

Since I was faithfully writing this Substack, my son has become a person. It feels like he went from sippy cups to getting his driver’s license. He’s almost four and suddenly beginning to understand things that I was only abstractly writing about, like compassion, and kindness, and tolerance. It is freaking me out.

Tomorrow, I start a project that I believe in wholeheartedly and wouldn’t have been ready for were it not for the two women I’ve signed on to do it with. Stay tuned for more, but I will leave you with this: if millennial parents can jump on the gentle parenting bandwagon, and then (as we all do) naturally find the rhythm of what does and doesn’t work for you or your child, then the idea of “civic parenting” — what I’ve tried to explore over the last 2+ years since I started Civic EQ — is an equally worthwhile endeavor for millennial parents to try on. It won’t all be for you, but the parts that will, will land in just the right way.

More very soon,

x Sarah