Brittany Luce

What tends to be the impact of parental fears on the rest of society, including those of us like myself who don't have children?

The video game rating system.

Even just thinking about vaccines, COVID-19 vaccines have become a lot more difficult to obtain for many people as a result of vaccine hesitancy among parents who are concerned about the reasons behind their child's autism diagnosis.

To be clear, there is no scientific evidence that vaccines and autism are in any way connected, but that kind of parental fear is what drove that movement to its prominence.

I want to bring some more research about mothers into this.

According to Pew Research, about half of mothers, 51%, say they are the type of parent who tends to be overprotective compared with 38% of fathers.

We also know mothers say they feel that they're judged more harshly for the behavior and presentation of their children.

41% of mothers say they feel judged at least sometimes by other parents in their community compared with 27% of fathers.

Historically, how have these fear campaigns targeted mothers?

I wonder, Cynthia, we're talking a lot about like some of these parenting fears and anxieties that sometimes meet insistent marketing campaigns and can turn into fear-based parenting style that doesn't really work for anybody.

What tends to be the impact on children of parents who act on these pervasive fears?

Yeah.

Ooh, anxiety is the price of caring.

Yeah.

I think a lot of people are going to be taking that to therapy this week.

That's a really good one.

I'm wondering, what do some of these parenting fears, parenting panics reflect about our times?

And even thinking about current parenting panics, what are they reflecting about our times right now?

Karen, I'd love to hear from you on this as well.

Like, what do you think the parenting fears of today or the parenting panics of today are reflecting about our current culture?