James Pedersen - The Rise of the Millennial Parents: Parenting Yesterday and Today

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pedersen, James, 1971

The rise of the millennial parents : parenting yesterday and today / James Pedersen.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-4758-0536-9 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4758-0538-3 (electronic)

1. Parenting--United States. 2. Parenting--United States--History. I. Title.

HQ755.9.P43 2013

306.8740973--dc23

2013035368

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to my two daughters, Emily and Veronica, and my wife, Faith. They are a constant inspiration to me and keep me focused on the most important thing in life: family. I would like to also thank my parents, Neil and Regina, as well as my step-parents, Dennis and Rosemary, for their continued guidance and support.

I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge all of my former students, parents, and fellow educators who I have worked with over the last two decades. I have been very fortunate to have had many rewarding experiences and interacted with a great number of talented people. I appreciate my time as an educator and look forward to many more years of finding new and innovative ways to helping improve our educational system and help our children prepare for the future.

I am nearing my twentieth year in education and have found this time to be the most extremely interesting and truly rewarding experience in my life. In the last two decades, I have worked as a teachers aide, a high school English teacher, a middle school tutor, a college professor, an assistant principal, and finally, a high school principal. These years have been countless experiences with students, parents, and community members that have all been rewarding. In full disclosure, there have been some great times but there have also been some very trying times, especially when you lose students to disease, violence, or other tragedies, where I doubted myself and wondered if I should continue.

Despite the frustrations that occur with teaching and being an administrator as well as the negative turn that the media has taken on the professions, I am still proud of my choice. I surround myself with dedicated professionals who know the vital role they play in helping prepare students for the future and who take this obligation very seriously. I believe that our profession is also unique in that each September is an exciting opportunity for new beginnings and new endeavors that are not afforded in other professions.

Teachers have always been expected to do more with less. In fact, resourcefulness is probably part of the very fiber of excellent educators. But never before, in my generation nor the generations that preceded mine, have educators experienced more of their students coming from such different backgrounds being raised in such different ways. This is not all a result, as some might think, of additional cultural immigration to America. In fact, many of the styles that will be outlined here are mostly uniquely American.

Throughout the book I sometimes will make references to interactions with parents that I have had sometime during my career. The purposes of these anecdotes are used purely for illustrative purposes and in all cases I have sufficiently modified them so as to ensure total anonymity of the parents as well as my students, many of whom are adults themselves now, as well as parents of their own children.

It would be counterproductive, as well as downright foolish, to discuss the importance of building partnerships with parents and then go and expose some sensitive information that had been shared with me from my past. Parents expect teachers and administrators to be professionals who will keep their personal information confidential. Only under certain circumstances is information shared so that the teacher can better understand unique family dynamics and situations to develop strategies to address these issues.

I have had the experience of hearing some things from parents over the years that were deeply disturbing and extremely sad. Over the course of a career in education, a teacher or an administrator comes in contact with literally thousands of people including students, parents, siblings, relatives, and community members.

So, to all of my former students, parents, and colleagues, as well as my current ones for that matter, rest assured. All of the examples I have used in this book have been based on actual experiences from my time as an educator, but former students and parents will be hard pressed to find themselves in these pages. And that was entirely intentional.

In addition to my own experiences, I have also relied on discussion and conversations with other colleagues about the role of parenting in regards to todays educational climate. These professionals span from early childhood all the way to the college level. Although there are obvious differences in interacting with students from different grade levels, when it comes to parent-teacher relations, reoccurring themes always seem to surface. Although not the focus of this book, my college colleagues are experiencing more and more parental involvement than ever before. The colleges continue to hold their standards and continue to refuse releasing information concerning grades and other such things, but sometimes I think it will only be a matter of time before we may see a variation of parent conference night at the college level.

The intent of this book is not to endorse one particular style of parenting as more effective or less effective than another one. Indeed, the idea behind the purpose of this book came from a genuine need and desire to gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of parenthood in todays culture. If, as educators, there is supposed to be a partnership between home and school, it would especially benefit teachers and other professionals to understand how diverse parenting has actually become. In addition to experiences from the classroom, resources such as news articles, blogs, Internet posts, research studies, and books from other professionals have been used in the writing of this book.

This book is designed to help parents and educators understand one another more and improve the communication between both groups. It has not been created for any specific grade level or age, but rather is written for a general audience so that all may benefit from it. Although each grade level poses some unique challenges, the information contained here is merely provided as a guide to provide insight into the many different parenting styles that are prevalent.