If you’ve been following this blog, you’ve probably noticed the section, “Childfree and Beyond Books.” It’s a growing collection of books that I’ve either read or seen excellent reviews from a variety of topic areas, including childfree (of course), relationships, psychology, sociology, and sustainability.
The most recent addition to the collection: The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement by Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell. It’s a disturbing yet riveting discussion about how narcissism in “normal” people is on the rise in our country and why. Reading it I couldn’t help think of my most recent posts on the selfish issue…
Twenge and Campbell talk about identify five causes of rising narcissism in American culture:
– the “self esteem movement” of the 70s has gone too far and has led to an over-focus on self-admiration
–celebrity glorification (obsession with people who are obsessed with themselves, being famous and rich) and how the media encourages it
–how the internet works as a platform for self-admiration and attention seeking (and how easily it lets one be someone s/he’s not)
–pre-great recession easy credit (being able to borrow money easily has allowed people to present an inflated picture of their own success to themselves and others)
– “parent involvement” has been taken to the extreme to now child-centered, over-involved parenting, leading to over indulged, self-entitled kids
This last one made me wonder about what people wrote in regarding how parents can be selfish. How much has this recent real people narcissism phenomenon influenced parents’ self-centeredness when it comes their kids? Pre 1970s, before this phenom began to gestate, did we see less of the kinds of things people talk about as selfish parental acts? The phenom seems a part of what has been termed these days as kids being “projects to perfect” as a way to make parents look and feel good.
When it comes to the perception that the childfree are selfish, I have been attributing much of it to pronatalistic thinking, which puts parenthood on a pedestal over and above all else. Upon reading this book, I also ponder how much of growing narcissistic tendencies in the average person does not contribute to the perception – more people are already more self-involved, so it would be even easier to see people with no kids as “it’s all about me.”
In any case, this book is a worthwhile, yet scary read. If the trend continues, it will contribute to further cultural, social and economic demise….
Have you read this book or books like it? Do you see this phenomenon out there? What does it look like in parents and not?
September 8th, 2010 at 4:52 am
I feel it’s different for women and men… Women who choose not to have children are often seen as selfish and “not normal”. Men, on the other hand, can be seen as “not wanting to grow up”…
Women are expected to live for others and never for themselves. It has been so for many many years… I think it’s time that changed but many women seem to find a role and purpose and an identity in living for and through their children… Personally, I believe that is unhealthy. You have to take care of youself to be able to take care of somebody else. And what do children want? Has anybody bothered to ask them and really listen? I never wanted my mother to sacrifice herself for me. I wanted her to be happy, then I was happy too!
(It is hard though when men don’t help with raising the kids… Mothers are often “forced” to sacrifice themselves because the dad disappears…)
I’m aware that having kids is a sacrifice and you can’t have it all of course. What I mean here is when you take care of others and totally neglect yourself (and not even realise it…) What does that teach to children when they see their mothers having no life? This is one of the reasons I don’t want to have kids, I don’t want to end up like my mother! I love her with all my heart but I don’t want to live and die as she did. I want to do all the things she never could just like her mother and all the women before that…
I just want to live my life. Women are not supposed to “just live” their lives… But now we can make a choice having children or not and that scares people!
September 8th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Artemis, thanks for the thoughts! It is interesting that some women don’t want kids so they don’t end up like their mother, and others Become mothers to try and do it the way they wished their mother had done it–to do it better, etc.–at the root, do motherhood to heal their pasts….~L
September 8th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
I just wanted to add to the point you’ve both made- I’ve heard parents say to people who don’t want kids, “You must have had a bad childhood”, as the reason why they’ve made this choice… I’ve also heard this very reason given as to why some parents wanted kids so badly, they wanted to give their children the childhood they never had. Seems to me they want to relive their childhood through their children, I’ve always found this interesting.
September 9th, 2010 at 10:57 am
Well said–the want to relive their childhood through their children–in parents’ responses to last month’s on-the-ground question, they even said they thought that that is selfish on parents’ part! ~L
September 9th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
I am still trying to get my head around Facebook and Twitter. I have an account with both, but I am not comfortable with the narcissistic nature of them. As a child I was taught it was wrong to “brag” or “talk too much about yourself”. Not so for modern day kids from the pictures and comments I see there. It frightens me and I worry for the future.
My niece was brought up in a modern parenting way – no capital punishment, good balance of school and extra curricular activities, loads of encouragement, extra tutoring, car at 17, living out of home allowance whilst studying, university fees paid for. My sister has created a rod for her back and will be working hard well into her late 50′s to pay for this and her other three kids as well. I sat down and had my first adult conversation with my now 19 year old niece for the first time (they live some distance away). She was overconfident, had an answer for everything and was very much a “smarty”, not to mention dismissive of me. She is actually a very bright girl and I was shocked at her attitude. In my sisters push for her daughters success she forgot about teaching her humility.
Children have been told that they can have it all and that anything is possible. But what happens when it’s not?
September 9th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Your phrase “projects to perfect” struck me as particularly relevant in the age of social networking sites like facebook. Everyone in your feed is competing in some way for your attention. Either their updates or their profile picture is calculated to be cute, interesting, meaningful. Look at my cute pet! My latest crush in a tropical location! Marvel at my kids incredible adorableness! And the pictures are often really great, and the people in them look happy, and everyone gushes in the comments.
Yet sometimes I know better. These are my friends. The pictures might look perfect, but stand in stark contrast to the private messages, the un-public, un-pretty part of your life that you don’t show people. -This- lovely lady is in an unhappy marriage. -That- one talks to me of ‘torturing herself’ by traveling extensively with young children. I’m pretty sure she didn’t consider it torture before she had two kids.
I don’t think it’s wrong to want to have an interesting life. Sure, I tweak my updates for maximum humor and entertainment factor. I take pictures of drool-worthy mountain vistas and frosty drinks on the beach and make sure they feature prominently and regularly on my feed. If there are more pictures of my prettier friends in my albums that might not be simply coincidence.
However, this is -my- life, and -my- personal data. How does that change when you add other people (who are not yet old enough to interact on their own) to the mix? I don’t think this issue has been sufficiently examined. I suppose it will simply become a matter of course. Kids now often have a digital footprint before they are even born. Hey, want to look at our cute ultrasounds? I knew you would.
September 10th, 2010 at 11:05 am
HI Heather,
It’s called rude awakening. Twenger and Campbell also talk about how many kids are also taught that just showing up e.g. to class, practice is good enough. That should earn them the trophy etc., not hard work. You get it all and don’t have to work for it. That too is a huge disservice to kids when they get into the real world….~L
September 10th, 2010 at 11:16 am
Hi HJM–Social networking does sure let people put the image out there they want everyone to see. I do like the fact you can use FB in a number of ways–gets the word out about issues you are following, events related to your work, and can be an educational tool. I try to use families of two fb page in this way, and also a way to connect cf people. I know many people use social networking in ways that are not driven by the seelf-admiration thing, but it often sure does not seem like it!
September 12th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Hi again,
I just wanted to say, what I meant with my comment was not that I don’t want to have children because of a rough childhood but because I don’t have any good exampels of motherhood (and 1000 other reasons…). I’ve only seen motherhood viktimising women and I don’t want that for myself. I just mentioned my mother as an exemple…
I too have noticed that many people have children to “fix” their own childhood. I wonder if that ever works though…
September 14th, 2010 at 9:56 am
Choosing children or not may reflect all sorts of expectations, issues and latent longings of the parents. In my case waiting until 35 then reversing our decision to to be childless did not involve much soul searching—I recall it as embracing another spontaneous chapter in our then interesting, dynamic lives. We stopped at one because one satisfied the itch, and we also recocognized that we became different to each other with the new arrival. Our relationship changed permanently. The golden dynamic we had shared ended and we split 5 years after his birth. Don’t think having a child caused it, but it did reveal issues we didn’t know we had when we made the decision, which in turn destroyed our romance. On the other hand each of us would still put having and raising our son ahead of all other life experiences—even at the cost of killing our intense love and ending a promising marriage. Paradox and wonder.
September 15th, 2010 at 11:51 am
It is interesting to me that this book doesn’t even suggest that fostering narcissism is a necessary and unavoidable aspect of capitalism. If your list is complete and your summary accurate.
I grant that I am an anarchist but I have debated some of the most conservative people I’ve ever met on this very topic. “Capitalism requires and demands narcissism” has literally never been a point of contention. Every single time…stipulated.
People who really love, I mean reeeeaaaaalllly love, capitalism tend to be Randian. Ayn Rand’s whole philosophy (Objectivism) centers around espousing the morality and greatness of pure self-interest.
Her disciples included Alan Greenspan. That’s the guy who basically presided over our economy until very recently and for about 20 years. He subscribed to the belief that narcissism is an ideal state of mind.
Though the opposite is often and explicitly stated, our (the U.S.’s) whole society is based on the idea that narcissism is a good thing. Every commercial you watch (the most conservative estimate I have found puts your commercial diet at 150 per day) is, in some subtle way, trying to teach you this lesson.
There is no way these authors are unaware of what I’m talking about. They chose to ignore it. This book is clearly an exercise in pure conjecture. I get that. But it is still pointedly dishonest.
September 15th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Hi Gwen, Thanks for the great point. I gave a brief summary they have in their book–there is lots more detail. While they do not have a chapter or the like on capitalism directly, the authors do deal with the powerful influences of materialism and consumerism on narcissism. ~L