Interview

Eva Millet

Journalist

Eva Millet

The journalist’s recipe for raising children is, above all, based on common sense

‘There’s a tendency today to confuse authority with authoritarianism’ ‘Overprotecting children in no way guarantees the child’s happiness’

We all know that chil­dren do not come with an in­struc­tion man­ual. Moth­er­hood – and fa­ther­hood – lasts a life­time, and every­one ap­proaches the chal­lenge in dif­fer­ent ways. Eva Mil­let has ex­plored the issue of par­ent­hood in depth and is the au­thor of two books on the sub­ject: Hiper­pa­ter­nidad (2016) and Hiperniños (2018).

You say fam­ily life has changed and now re­volves around the chil­dren.
Like many things, the con­cept of hyper-par­ent­ing comes from the US. It is a style of par­ent­ing in which the chil­dren are the max­i­mum cen­tre of their par­ents’ at­ten­tion, in which the chil­dren re­ceive al­most ob­ses­sive at­ten­tion from their par­ents. This pro­duces chil­dren who are not pre­pared for life.
It sounds like a stress­ful way to live.
My in­ten­tion in writ­ing these two books was to reach out to hyper moth­ers and fa­thers, so that they relax and do not throw out every­thing that’s good about tra­di­tional par­ent­ing. Times have changed, but that doesn’t mean that some of the tools from the past can­not also be used today.
Give me some ex­am­ples.
Re­spect for adults is being lost. Adults are not only par­ents, but also teach­ers. There is a ten­dency today to con­fuse au­thor­ity with au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism, so that any dis­agree­ment at home, at school, or in the play­ground is seen as an at­tack. It is wor­ry­ing.
You say hyper-par­ent­ing is a mid­dle class phe­nom­e­non.
That’s where we find more cases; lower class fam­i­lies have other prob­lems to deal with. For any fam­ily, rais­ing chil­dren re­quires a great ef­fort, par­tic­u­larly a fi­nan­cial one. So as­pir­ing to raise per­fect chil­dren adds an extra pres­sure, and the com­pe­ti­tion be­tween par­ents can be­come fe­ro­cious. Achiev­ing per­fec­tion is by de­f­i­n­i­tion ex­pen­sive, and par­ents be­come their chil­dren’s man­agers.
Do we fill our chil­dren’s free time with ac­tiv­i­ties be­cause we are work­ing?
In part we want to com­pen­sate them for the time we are not there, whether it be be­cause we are work­ing or be­cause we are on our phones [she laughs]. On the other hand, many chil­dren could eas­ily be at home but are doing extra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties be­cause their par­ents are wor­ried about them los­ing their place in the com­pe­ti­tion that child­hood is turn­ing into these days, in order to en­sure they will have a bet­ter life as adults.
But there is no guar­an­tee of that.
Ob­vi­ously not. I al­ways point out that there is a part of grow­ing up that is in the hands of fate. You can­not con­trol every­thing your chil­dren do. The hyper par­ent gives im­por­tance to knowl­edge, but for­gets about de­vel­op­ing char­ac­ter, the tool chil­dren need to over­come ob­sta­cles as they grow up.
Is a hyper par­ent some­one who is try­ing to make sure their chil­dren have a bet­ter child­hood than they did?
No, and it is very strange. They weren’t trau­ma­tised as chil­dren, and were likely raised tra­di­tion­ally, with the free­dom to play and ex­per­i­ment. I think it’s more about get­ting car­ried away by a trend based on the idea that they have to do a bet­ter job than their par­ents did. In fact, we are now see­ing a new op­po­site trend ap­pear­ing, slow par­ent­ing, which in­volves rais­ing chil­dren with­out stress or pres­sure.
You often say over­pro­tect­ing is no pro­tec­tion.
All my re­search leads to the same place. Over­pro­tect­ing chil­dren in no way guar­an­tees the child’s hap­pi­ness, which is sup­posed to be the main aim of this type of par­ent­ing. If you do every­thing for your child, if you solve all their prob­lems, if you smooth the way for them every day, then you are send­ing them a clear mes­sage: you can’t do any­thing with­out me, you’re weak, and you are not ca­pa­ble of over­com­ing the chal­lenges you face.
Are hyper-par­ented chil­dren des­tined to be­come hyper par­ents them­selves?
I think so, but it’s not an exact sci­ence. Cu­ri­ously, of my child­hood friends, none of those most likely to be­come hyper par­ents have chil­dren. I can only imag­ine this type of par­ent­ing put them off.
In your book you say over­pro­tec­tive par­ents do not like set­ting lim­its on their chil­dren.
They see it as a per­sonal at­tack. Lim­its and af­fec­tion are the two pil­lars of good par­ent­ing. I have stud­ied this field for 15 years and set­ting lim­its is a con­stant when­ever I speak to ex­perts. Chil­dren with­out lim­its are lost, be­cause they need them to struc­ture their day, and they will be in­dis­pens­able for liv­ing in so­ci­ety when they are grown ups.
The trend in ed­u­ca­tion is for the school to adapt to the needs of pupils.
Yes, but it’s im­pos­si­ble to adapt to the needs of each pupil, and less so when pupils all want to be first, to get per­sonal at­ten­tion. It’s a case of the “me, now” gen­er­a­tion.
And if the par­ents add a need for per­son­alised at­ten­tion to this?
Schools are not hav­ing a good time of it be­cause of hyper-par­ent­ing. For ex­am­ple, there are moth­ers and fa­thers who join the par­ent-teacher as­so­ci­a­tion to make sure the din­ing room doesn’t serve food their chil­dren don’t like. That has ac­tu­ally hap­pened. Teach­ers com­plain that the first ‘no’ some pupils hear is when they start school. Schools teach chil­dren to do every­thing for them­selves and then when they leave, the hyper par­ents wait­ing out­side au­to­mat­i­cally carry their back­packs for them.
It sounds funny but it is also se­ri­ous.
Yes, but it hap­pens. One school even made a music video in which they ap­pealed to par­ents to let their chil­dren carry their own back­packs. There are more ex­am­ples, such as a nurs­ery teacher who told me they’d come across chil­dren who after falling over just lay un­mov­ing on the ground. They re­alised that the rea­son they didn’t get up is be­cause they didn’t know how to do it by them­selves.
Is there a for­mula for good par­ent­ing?
A good start would be for the child to learn when to say “good morn­ing”, “thank you” and “sorry”. It might seem a sim­ple thing, but it’s some­thing that is much less com­mon than you would imag­ine.

in­ter­view

The making of an expert

Born in Barcelona in 1968, Millet obtained a degree in sciences from the UAB. During her long career as a freelance journalist, she has worked in London for The Guardian newspaper and for BBC radio, including a stint as correspondent to Mexico for the latter in the 1990s. She is a frequent contributor to La Vanguardia’s magazine and other newspaper supplements. After having a boy in 2002 and a girl in 2005, Millet began to take an interest in parenting. Writing her first book, Hiperpaternidad, allowed her to explore the phenomenon of parents who are obsessed with their children being the best at everything. In her second book, Hiperniños. Hijos perfectos o hipohijos, Millet reveals the consequences of this type of parenting.

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