Brittany Luce

Regardless of whether or not you're a parent, how much of your decision-making is driven by fear versus shame?

Or a mix of both?

And then you add on top of that the never-ending input from your friends, family, and the media on who you are quote-unquote supposed to be.

And suddenly you're spiraling out over whether or not you're doing you right.

Today on the show, I'm joined by Karen Leick, author of Parents, Media, and Panic Through the Years.

Thank you.

And Cynthia Wong, clinical professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

We're getting into the fear, shame, and moral panic that's driving modern parenting and how those emotions are core to all of our anxieties, whether we're parents or not.

Hello, hello.

I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.

Okay, so I wonder, Cynthia, then on like a psychological level, how do parents' brains interpret threats to their children's health or their children's well-being?

Like, I'm not thinking like an immediate threat, like a, you know, a rabid dog.

You know what I mean?

I think everyone's brain goes into fight or flight and you pick up your kid and you run.

But I wonder about more like perceived threats, like if a parent is seeing on the news that video games will corrupt their child's mind, you know, what leads them to gain new information like that and then maybe to decide?

oh, I need to take video games away from my child or, oh, I need to put my child on an even stricter curfew or, oh, you know, I need to remove all of the, you know, plastic from our home.

I wonder, can fear ever be helpful in parenting?

What's the difference between a healthy fear and an irrational, dangerous fear?

Karen, let's hear from you first on this.

I think we might end up, you know, having better conversations.