← The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 671: The Mental Health of Young People Has Cratered | Hara Estroff Marano, A Nation of Wimps
01:02:17
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Oh, it's a beautiful world Ain't nothing on screen that's ever gonna be this view oh, it's a beautiful world and I just want to share with I just want to share with you this beautiful world Such a beautiful.
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Before we begin, I want to say thank you for being here. The 1000 Hours Outside podcast exists because of people like you kids, parents, grandparents, educators, and thoughtful humans who sense that something important is at stake in how childhood is unfolding and who are willing to slow down and choose a more grounded way forward. Today's conversation matters deeply. You are about to hear from Hera Estraff Morano, longtime editor at Psychology Today and author of A Nation of Wimps. This episode puts words to what so many parents are feeling but haven't been able to fully articulate yet. The mental health of young people didn't collapse overnight, and it didn't start with smartphones. The answer isn't more pressure, more optimization, or tighter control. The answer is play. In a world that feels increasingly uncertain socially, technologically, economically, play is not frivolous, it is preparation. It builds mental flexibility, resilience, creativity and the ability to adapt when life doesn't follow a script. And that is exactly why the 1000 hours outside journey is more important now than ever. So before we jump in, I want to invite you into a few practical tools that can genuinely change the culture of your home this year. First, our free 20261000 hours outside tracker sheets are available now. These trackers are simple but powerful. They help you to prioritize play along the way.
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They help your kids see progress, help.
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Parents model, balance and turn ordinary outdoor time into something worth celebrating. You can download them today@1000hours outside.com SL trackers. Second, if you want more structure without over structuring, our 2026 kickoff pack is available right now inside the 1000 Hours Outside bundle. It includes monthly adventure prompts, picture book prompts, hiking ideas, seasonal rhythms, and more thoughtfully created to support playful low screen childhoods. This bundle is available through January 12th and it's one of those once a year moments we don't want families to miss. You'll find the link waiting in the show notes and if paper trackers aren't your thing, our 1000 hours outside app is available on iOS and Android. It is our family run app that is consistently top ranked and right now it is on sale for just $25 for the entire year, which is about $2.08 a month. To support better mental health, more movement, more real connection, and as you'll hear from Hera. The ability to be ready for the unexpected. One last thing before we begin. If this podcast has encouraged your family in any way, leaving a review or sharing an episode with a friend or family member is one of the most meaningful ways you can support this work. This message spreads from person to person because of you. All right, let's get into this important conversation.
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1000 Hours Outside podcast.
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My name is Jenny Urch. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and I have just read a book that I love so unbelievably much, so much. I took so many notes. It's called A Nation of Wimps, the High Cost of invasive parenting from 2008. And it is more applicable today than it probably was then.
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Hera Estraff Marano, welcome.
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Pleasure to be here.
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Okay. This book is. Wow.
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Wow.
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I've actually, I'm going to tell you something. I've. It's never happened before. I have interviewed. I don't know, it's like 650 interviews. Most of them have books. So it's probably 500 books that I've read. And I got half, like, halfway through your book, halfway through your book, and I already had 11 pages of notes.
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I'm honored.
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I mean, this is.
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Wow.
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And the wording. The wording is so impactful to me. Can you give us a little bit of your backstory on where your interest in this invasive parenting and how it's affecting kids, where that came from? Sure.
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And it is an interesting story. And the story continues, actually. So I'm an editor at Psychology Today magazine, and in 2001, I started a newsletter for Psychology Today. In addition to my work on the magazine, I started a newsletter on depression. And in early 2002, I got wind through, I don't know, some discussion. Maybe it was in the Chronicle of Higher Education or, or some publication like that that there was an increase in anxiety among students on college campuses. And I thought that was very interesting because anxiety and depression are fellow travelers. So I immediately made the assumption, which turned out to be extremely wrong. That, oh, this must. Because I'm based in New York and hear the pressure parents are under and kids are under about getting into college. I immediately made the assumption that this must be all those northeastern kids vying to get into Harvard. What I did was I called Harvard and I was immediately connected with the head of the student health center who happened at the time to be also head of the mental health center. He was a psychiatrist and ran the whole show. He told me, no, this is a phenomenon occurring across all schools, everywhere in the country. And I said, how do you know? Which is the question that distinguishes science and scientific enterprises from all other enterprises. We care about how people know things. It's important. So I said, how do you know? And he said, well, because I'm in touch with thousands of other heads of student mental health centers. And he allowed me to ask a question of all of them that he put out to his network. And I literally woke up the next morning to 500 responses from heads of campus mental health centers. Wow, they were just fascinating. I was just totally overwhelmed. I put out a copy of my newsletter called with big headline Crisis on the Campus, documenting for, for the first time the declining mental health of the younger generation as they were appearing on college campuses. And by the way, college students were actually better protected than non college students. They had more resources to draw on. So this was just a phenomenon that cut across everyone of a certain age group. So this is before smartphones. Okay, just make a note of this. This is 2002. We had phones, but we didn't have smartphones. So it was really, in a way, just the beginning. And so I wrote this article, Crisis on the Campus got picked up, made headlines all over the country and I began really tracking this. This became a channel of information coming to me. And then I re reported the story in 2004. How are things now? Two years later, and things had only gotten worse. And I reported on how they were getting worse. And I then began asking myself, well, why is this happening? Why is the mental health of younger people declining? The reporting for that story became an article in Psychology Today called A Nation of Wimps. And it looked at the changing role of parents and how they raise their kids and are involved in their kids lives and put forth a lot of ideas about what was happening and why. And then the article, I was dragooned into doing a book and did even more research over the next two years to do the book. And I'm still following it because we all know that the mental health has just cratered of Young people. And it has not been helped by social media.
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Right, right. The book is so good. It is imperative. It is an imperative read from 2008. And it does. It just goes to show that this, it, this started long before the cell phones. It started long before Instagram. It is a phenomenal book. It is so thought provoking and so interesting. One of the things that you talk about, or sort of a foundational thing, and I think this is why part, part of the reason why it's still so pertinent today is you relate this to the fear. Parents are afraid.
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Right.
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The world is rapidly changing. It's like the shifting sand. And in 2008 or 2001, 2002, we're dealing with a lot of globalization. Well, this has now stepped up a notch with AI because all of a sudden the parents, especially the ones who.
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Are, have kids that are in college.
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Or nearing college, are like, I don't even know how to guide you because I don't know what the world is going to look like. So you talk about how there's this nervousness about globalization. Parents know the rules have change, changed, and so their solution has been to intensify parenting. And this is what is causing a lot of anxiety and, and struggles for children and for parents. So you talk about, you're really compassionate. You say in the book it's called the Nation of Wimps. It is a really difficult time to be a parent. Even a quarter century ago, there was much more support, social support for healthy parenting. The schools were more progressive and child oriented. There was no academic pressure on kids. Media censorship protected kids. Toy makers looked to parents for direction on toys and the toys had to reflect the parental values. But society no longer protects children and the burden has shifted to parents. Society has changed so rapidly that parents can't look to their own childhoods for guidance or even their own parents. So can you talk about. Because, you know, it's like, this is hard. And some people would say, gosh, it's a really hard time to be a parent. And, and then other people might say, well, come on, like, you know, you got a dishwasher and a washing machine. You've got all of these, you know, new technologies.
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Why is it so hard?
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But I think this is a really key point. First of all, it's this nervousness of this, of the rapid shifting in our world as well as the societal foundational pieces that used to protect children and families that are no longer existing.
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So it's the failure of our culture, government approach is in a way to leave everyone on their own, whether it's health care, but parenting, certainly, yeah, that is not helpful to parents, especially at a time of rapid change. Let's just take one thing. What is your major going to be in college? You have a kid who's in high school wanting to go to college, wondering what to study. A parent can't give guidance anymore to a kid. When I was growing up, my parents would say, well, become a teacher. You can always fall back on that. Well, you know, teachers are not honored in our culture. They do a really big and important job, but they're definitely not supported. And the values of the culture have shifted so that it's really a struggle for teachers. By the way, that's part of the reason why kids aren't thriving, because we may talk about how wonderful childhood is, but we're not actually supporting it when it comes to being on the ground. So a parent can't use their own experience or their own knowledge because of this rapid shift, this dynamic in the culture. Okay, now let's really hang on that word dynamic. We have a really dynamic culture. No one knows what the heck the future is going to bring with AI. You know what, Even the people developing AI don't know how it's going to be received, whether it's going to receive, what the ultimate uses of it are going to be. So there are just all these very many questions there. And there's a ton of anxiety throughout the culture because of this. We're all kind of paused on this brink. There's all this hype coming out of Silicon Valley, and we all know our lives are about to change, but we don't know how. And it's kind of threatening. And just taking one very simple element of life, choice of a major. What is my life? How am I going to direct my life? And what is going to be the source that sustains me over the course of my lifetime? Can't answer that question anymore. Should I go into law? Well, I don't know, because is AI going to take away the jobs of 90% of the lawyers? All of this we don't know. We do know the plumbers are in a pretty good place, and electricians, so probably in a pretty good place. So there is just a ton of anxiety. And unfortunately, so I understand all the anxiety, unfortunately, parents are not shielding their children from the anxiety and they're actually transmitting their own anxiety to their children and they're doing other things that boost the anxiety of their children. And I'll just give one example. Play. Playing. Play Is so incredibly important. And this is probably very counterintuitive, but when you want to prepare people for uncertainty and for the future, Parents have been reacting by doubling down, taking away everything they think is extraneous, that is play, and slotting their children for success either on the playing field or academically, and building portfolios of extracurricular activities that'll help them get into college. But in fact, it's play that actually prepares people for the future, and particularly an uncertain future. Why? How does play do it? Well, play builds mental flexibility. When you think about play, you know there's no goal. You're just in the moment. Things happening that you have to respond to in the moment, it's usually very pleasurable because you're with peers or others. The uncertainty adds to the thrill. Am I going to be tagged? Am I going to tag someone else? So play actually turns on neurons in the brain that allow focus and attention. Now, I know toys don't come with this branding, but in fact, that is what happens when children play, Especially when they're playing with other people in physically active ways, Running around doing all the things that parents today think are unimportant. This is what I call nature's spitball, because it really turns out to be what prepares brains for the type of life that we have today. It not only builds the neurons and the circuitry that create allow focus and attention, but it builds in mental flexibility. You have to be prepared in the moment, react in the moment. And this is great training at every level, from the physical to the neural for people.
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I want to read some of these. This book is one of the best I've ever read. A great deal of play has been taken out of childhood. Over 40,000 schools no longer even have recess. But play is actually critical to healthy development. It sharpens and limbers intelligence, your way with words. I just love this book. Here it is the only activity, the only one that directly prepares people for dealing with life's unpredictability. Delay play and you delay adulthood. You talk about how the importance of play is counterintuitive. It looks like a waste of time because it's not goal oriented or goal directed. That's the very essence of play. It's not goal directed and adults were goal directed. So we trivialize play. But you talk about how that by not having a goal, that makes you become the type of person that can have goals down the road. You talked about how it actually sharpens intellectual skills. Children's play fosters decision making, memory, thinking, speed of mental processing. Play Is the true preparation for adulthood. And the ambiguous. Okay, let's talk about this. And but here's a statement. So I've got all these notes here and I like, I mark in red all the ones that are really important, but then in blue I have these. You just have such a way with words that, you know, I'm like, oh, I haven't heard it that way before.
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Okay.
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Ambiguity is vastly underrated. So what you're talking about is we're really trying to, you know, in general, as a society, we are over structuring these childhoods. And you talk about how that's bad for the parent too. They, you know, the kid doesn't have free time. Also, because the kid has no free time, neither does the adult. They're driving the kid from thing to thing. This isn't really good for anyone. So we're trying to like fill in all the gaps and do this. And here's the homework and here's this extracurricular. It's all adult directed. And you say ambiguity, man. We need to have some ambiguity. It's vastly underrated, right?
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Just think about situations that are ambiguous. You really have to bring a lot of mental skills to figure out what is going on, what possibilities are, and you have to be open and test them as you go. Ambiguity really is a circumstance that is helpful to sharpening brains and developing mental acuity and the ability to pierce ambiguity. All of these things, I have to confess, they're counterintuitive. But the thing is, with so much parental anxiety about the future of their kids, they can't relax enough to see this. And that's part of the problem. If they were to just chill out, and I don't mean with gummies and things like that, but if they were to really chill out and just relax, they'd be able to think through some of the issues.
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The new year always feels like a reset for me. Not just for schedules and routines, but for our home too. I want our space to feel calm, functional and ready for the season ahead. Essentially the opposite of what it feels like over the holidays. With a stream of parties and gatherings, family visits that are fun and meaningful, but also add to the craziness. And honestly, Wayfair makes that so easy. If you're refreshing bedding, upgrading towels, organizing kids rooms, or finally tackling storage, Wayfair really does have everything in one place. I love being able to shop for practical things like mattresses, bathroom storage and kitchen essentials and add in those finishing touches that make a home feel cared for. This season I'm focusing on simple, cozy updates. We are refreshing bedding and adding a few accent pillows and mirrors to our living space. Nothing over the top, just pieces that.
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Updates to work, from home setup to storage solutions for all the outdoor gear that somehow always piles up. Get organized, refreshed and back on track this new year. For way less head to Wayfair.com right.
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Wayfair Every Style, Every Home this show.
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Is sponsored by BetterHelp. This new year does not require a new you. Maybe it just requires a less burden to you. For me, one of the things I'm constantly working to let go of is the pressure to do everything perfectly. To have the right answers, to do the perfect podcast interview, to never feel behind and yes, even hit our own 1000 hours outside goal each year. And the truth is, that kind of pressure can get heavy. And I'm sure you have similar scenarios in your own life that you can relate to. Therapy can help you understand what you're caring and understand why you your motivations, your relationships and your emotions from an unbiased outside perspective. That's why I appreciate Better Help. Their therapists are fully licensed in the US and work under a strict code of conduct. Better Help also does the hard part upfront, like matching you with a therapist based on a short questionnaire so you can focus on what actually matters, your goals, and if it's not the right fit, you can switch therapists anytime. With over 30,000 therapists and more than 5 million people served worldwide, BetterHelp has an average 4.9 out of 5 rating across 1.7 million client reviews. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10 off@betterhelp.com 1000 hours that's B E T T E R H E L P.com 1000 hours some weeks I just don't have the.
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Time or the brain space for real meal planning.
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I want to eat healthier. I care about what we're putting in our bodies.
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Now, admittedly play, and especially outdoor play, it isn't popular. I mean, you can walk through a suburb and the streets are just dead silent. When I was growing up, kids are out on the street playing baseball. I have to say I raised two children in New York City.
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City.
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I happened to have lived on a street that was not a through street. So I was always delighted to see kids out in the street playing some just spontaneous game of stickball or whatever they were throwing around or kicking or what have you. So when you don't see that and when that's not happening, it really becomes hard to get something going. And ironically, you can't just say to your kid, hey, go outdoors and play because there's no one out there. Parents have to quietly engineer something to engineer the circumstances, not engineer the entire situation and monitor it. But they do have to engineer. Maybe they can get together, call up a bunch of other parents and say, hey, let's make sure all the kids are in this park or over here or gathering here at four in the afternoon or something like that.
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Yeah, I had a parent say, just stay after school for a little bit. Everyone stays after school for an hour and a half and you bring some snacks in the, you know, the moms can sit on the sides or the dads or they. One parent can be there or no parents and the kids just stay after and they play at the school playground. There's a lot of ways you can do it and it actually helps you feel better than as a parent. I want to rewrite.
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You wrote.
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Oh, it's such a good book. It's called the Nation of Wimps. By its very ambiguous nature, this play, it gives brains a workout. You say play is the perfect preparation for life in the 21st century. The very essence of play is to exercise and excite, expand human variability and flexibility. We play because we can. We play because we need to. We play because it gives us a shot at keeping up with the world of unpredictably changing environments. Given the accelerating rate of cultural change, who can foretell what the world is going to be like in 10 years? Now that's even gotten shorter. Who can tell what it's going to be like in three years? I mean, we're kind of at that spot.
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Okay.
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Play makes us. Us Nimble. This is such a good book. Your wording is so good. Play makes us nimble. Neurobiologically, mentally, behaviorally capable of adapting to a rapidly evolving world. Play cajoles us toward our human potential. Okay, let's talk about this. I love this. This is one of my phrases in blue. Play preserves alternatives, all the possibilities. Our nervous system tends to otherwise prune away as we specialize. So can you talk about that? How play preserves. It just preserves alternatives and opportunities and the other things that would normally be in your brain.
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Right. So this is really interesting, putting together sort of neuro and cultural information at the same time. So on our path to adulthood, we lose brain cells. All is not lost because one of the things that's happening is pruning. And in the course of pruning, this underlies expertise. You become good at a narrower field of information. Usually that's the pattern. If you live long enough, you might have a wider field of information. But basically, pruning is a normal neural process of removing what isn't used, what isn't necessary. But what play does and that happens, that's a normal biological phenomenon, what play does. Because you're always ready for the unexpected and you meet the demands of it, and it's thrilling to do so. That's why play is so much fun. It's all the surprise and the unexpected. Even if you get tagged and you lose, you're still dealing with all the possibilities because you never know which path you're going to have to activate at any single moment. So play preserves alternatives. It allows us to. It gives us the template for thinking in alternatives. And God knows that's what we need when we're in difficult situations.
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Yes, yes. The template for thinking and alternatives. You say play is all but Dead. You use this phrase, academic fundament mentalism, that we're just losing the richness of human nature and curiosity. And you say play is under assault. Starting in preschool, desks and worksheets are increasingly replacing books and make believe. Okay, then you say this, what play there is has been corrupted. Can you talk about how something like a physical education class, which those are even getting canceled too? But that doesn't, that doesn't count as this true play.
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So, you know, at every level, play is being corrupted. And I'll. I'll tell you sort of chronologically my path through this. I. So I wrote the article A Nation of Wimps. And immediately after writing it, I got an invitation to be the speaker on Faculty Day at a college in the Midwest whose name is synonymous with athletics. It's just very well known. I spoke at a number of colleges, but this was my very first invitation to speak at Faculty Day. The athletic director of the school was, along with the heads of the business school, the law school, the provost of the university, all of the faculty were there. And the athletic director was actually the first person to engage me in conversation after my talk. Because he was feeling this phenomenon didn't quite articulate all of the aspects of it, but how it presented itself to him was. Imagine the gall of parents trying to manage him and his job. And this is just happened. This is spread throughout. And everyone else, all other coaches, umpires, athletic directors have had the same experience. But what happened to him was that parents in California would call him and tell him how to do his job. Dad would call him and say, you didn't play my son enough in your last game. You've got to give him 20 minutes in the next game. And he was just flooded with all this parental management of his job. This is the athletic director of a major, major university. I mean, the goal to try and tell him how to do his job, he actually had to come up. He came up with a way of. He came up with the rule. And the rule was that if you're a parent, he would only talk to the kids. And he would say to the kids, if a parent calls me, you're benched. Period. Categorically. That was his way of doing it. The next place I spoke. This begat a 10 year trajectory of speaking all over the country and even beyond the borders about this phenomenon. But the next place I spoke was a private school, a very fancy private school in Los Angeles that was well funded enough to put on two major theatrical productions in the spring and two in the fall. So they had four major theatrical productions casting students in their place. So let's just take the high school of this school and once again, the theater director, who certainly knew how to do his job and knew how to cast people and, you know, knew the literary or musical possibilities of what he was doing, would get calls from parents saying, you didn't give my kid a big enough role. Parents were just jumping in on this. And he too had to develop a way of keeping the parents at bay. So this could become a situation that was only among the kids. And let's face her. At some point, all of us have to learn that, yeah, you know, our voice is good enough for a chorus, but it may not be good enough for the lead role. And these are kind of the truths of life that parents were not willing to face. And I don't think it's necessarily because they were so narcissistic, although there is that element in the culture. But I think it's because parents just don't want any sense that their kid is not a star because that would mean that they're not on track to get into the best school. I don't think, given what we know, it's great if you can get into Harvard, it's great if you can get into Columbia, it's great if you can get into Caldec. But I don't think these are life defining situations. People can be highly creative and something that play fosters, by the way. And if you talk to any creative person, you'll find out that play is definitely one of the major elements in their creativity. But the skills that are needed for the 21st century and dealing with uncertainty and creating a viable, flexible path through life. You don't have to go to Harvard to do it.
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E
And you talk about, you have to have some of these experiences that are not perfect. You wrote kids need to learn that you need to feel bad. Sometimes we learn through experience and we learn especially through bad experiences. Through disappointment and failure, we learn how to cope. We learn what we can cope with. You write learning hinges on the surprise of getting things wrong. Failure is information. It's a signal to try something else. So you say, well, we have a desire as parents that our kids have a risk free world, a universe that is etched in black and white with discomfort and uncertainty removed. You say that desire is very childish. Uncertainty is a part of life.
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As.
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C
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Fresh start in our homeschool.
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It's that reset moment after the holidays where you're refining what worked, letting go of what didn't and finding your rhythm again. Oh, and also you actually know what day it is again, as opposed to being in that holiday induced fog where time and space seem to just meld into nothing and everything all at once. One thing we've learned over the years.
- [39:38]
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Is how important it is to meet.
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C
Each child exactly where they are. That's why IXL fits so naturally into our homeschool life. It adapts to each learner so one child can review last year's skills while another jumps ahead without pressure, comparison or busy work. I love how effortless it is as a parent. Everything is organized by grade and by topic, so I'm not digging through resources or reinventing the wheel. And the real time feedback is huge. Kids learn from mistakes immediately and the progress report that give clarity and confidence. As a guide, IXL covers math, language arts, science and social studies from pre K all the way through 12th grade and it grows right along with your Child. It is flexible, proven and trusted by millions of families. Make an impact in your child's learning.
- [40:16]
E
Get IXL now and 1000 Hours.
- [40:19]
C
Outside listeners can get an exclusive 20% off their IXL membership when they sign up today at www.ixl.com 1000hours. Visit ixl.com 1000hours to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price.
- [40:36]
F
Uncertainty is a part of life. And what happens. I see this really very frequently, and you probably do too, in various ways. You encounter young people who have not really had any major disappointments. And what happens is that minor disappointments, things that we might scratch our heads at, become major disappointments for them because they haven't had the experience when young of knowing that they could fail or that something didn't go their way and that life continues just fine. You try something else, you do something different. So what happens is that kids who don't get to experience disappointment, they fall off their bike. No, you don't have to rush in with the band aid. Let the kid figure out what to do and get back on the bike. Don't turn it into a major event. A child gains tremendous inner strength knowing that they could can deal with and overcome disappointment. But when they don't have the opportunity to do that, they become rigid and inflexible. And then they grow up and a minor event becomes a major disaster. They're thrown by it.
- [42:15]
E
Yeah. I mean, you talk a lot in the book about perfectionism. It is such a good book. Another piece of it that you say, like, you know, you had a. A young person who said, let our life is our planned out for us. There's parental pressure for a life plan, but we don't know what we want. We don't know who we are. We don't know what success is. Nothing is left to chance. And you wrote, I was like, this is such a good phrase. Era. We are engineering all the serendipity and spontaneity out of the human experience. And I cannot count really how many conversations I've had with people. And I'm sure you have as well.
- [42:49]
C
Well, they'll.
- [42:49]
E
They'll say this one thing. This one thing someone said to me, this one thing I read changed the whole course of my life. You know, this for me, it was like the fact that I was really struggling as a young mom with my young children, and getting outdoors changed the whole experience. And I was a math teacher, and now I'm an author. Like, my parents couldn't have engineered this. So taking out that Spontaneity and the serendipity of the human experience.
- [43:14]
B
Experience.
- [43:15]
E
So that's a whole other piece of it as well. You wrote, uncertainty is simply a part of life, the most challenging part of life, the part of life that encourages exploration. So this is good. This is good for the book, is so good. So you have to be able to allow your kids to deal with uncertainty. You have to be able to deal with uncertainty. I want to talk about this, this line, oh, this was so deep and so thought provoking. So you're talking about how parents are now relying on their children to. Basically, they're living life through their children. You know, one mom says, this is my second chance in life. Children are extensions of the parent's sense of self. They're kind of like trophies. And you write, the cost of turning tots into trophies is high. You called it this, a new kind of child labor. It's good.
- [44:05]
F
Yeah. So I. This is something I've been thinking about for a long time. One aspect of this is think historically. Traditionally, children reflect the status of their parents. Your parent is, say you're living in England and your parent is in the peerage. You're regarded as a privileged person. What's happened is that sort of the engines of status have gone into reverse. So now you have parents taking their meaning from their children's achievements. So a child getting into an Ivy League school is something for a parent to brag about, and that raises their status among the adult peers. But you see this wherever you go, that parents bask in the achievements of their children rather than just keep an even keel and have reasonable expectations about what their kids do and their kids being well rounded. So there's been this really strange reversal of how parents think about themselves, and it's based much more on their children's achievements. And that becomes a huge topic of conversations. And I don't remember whether I recounted in the book or not, but I remember standing on a. On a street corner waiting for a light to change. And it was actually right near a major private school in New York City. I have to say it's one that my kids attended. And a couple of other parents met up, encountered each other, apparently, who hadn't seen each other in a long time. And one person asked, what are your kids doing now? And the parents said, we go to Harvard. And I was just so struck by that that we go to Harvard. There was this fusion of identity. And you could see the parent taking the identity of the kid going to Harvard. And that's why kids would Talk about dropping the H bomb. I go to Harvard and I'm using Harvard as a metaphor for any status related school. Not just Harvard, but the whole Ivy League and all the other really top rated schools. I'm assuming University of Michigan is now among them as well, because it's certainly one of the top public research, world renowned research universities. Great school.
- [47:18]
E
Yeah, it is, it is. But, but what is our motivation here? And use this new kind of child labor? You say today's parents are imposing on their kids a violence of expectations in sharp contrast to eras past. And this is what's important to know. This is not how it always was. And that's tricky because you grew up in your own little bubble of your own generation and so you don't necessarily know. No, it didn't used to be like this. In sharp contrast to eras past, parents have shifted their primary concern from the child's long range health and welfare to their own narcissistic fulfillment through the child's current achievement. You use the phrase death grip parenting. Using children as adult status markers comes at a high cost to children. The mother child relationship can be so intense because it's fulfilling lots of needs for the mother. But the professionalism of parenthood used to be regarded as a flaw. So things have just really shifted. You write the world has shifted on our watch and that this has even become like a religion. It's the only source of transcendent meaning. So something to be aware of and, and to really think through that when you shove more things into your kids, the phrase you use is this is the antithesis of child development. So this is such an important read. It's so important. Okay, I want to talk about another one that was really interesting. So talking about risk. So parents are trying to engineer. Right. And in a way schools are too. You talk about the education system and how this is rather outdated or you know, you say American schools were designed essentially for the industrial age and have not been overhauled for the information age. 150 years ago, the goal was to subdue do human nature so that people could mine the machines, not to turn creativity loose. Okay, and, and I you bring up this point about homework. It's like there's so much homework. Well, yeah, because now there's more to know. And you wrote, but possibly no amount of homework would ever be sufficient enough and that schools are reshaping parenting into this intrusive activity because of all the homework. And the parent has to be on top of the homework. So a lot of interesting things here about, about Education. So pick up the book. It's called the Nation of Wimps. But when you're talking about, okay, we're trying to like, engineer, we want it to be perfect and we don't want to have any risks and we don't want the kid to get kidnapped and so they can't play outside.
- [49:40]
F
Let me interpret and say, you know, one thing that I find so striking is that school, many schools, I don't know whether it's all of them, but many schools require parents, parents to sign their kids homework. So here, let's discuss for a second what happens in situations like this.
- [50:04]
E
Okay?
- [50:05]
F
This is how to raise kids who are not responsible. It's a recipe for taking a sense of responsibility away from kids. So, okay, you don't do your homework and you go to school. Normal situation, you don't do your homework, you go to school, you kind of shrink in your chair, you feel shame, you feel embarrassed, you don't want to be called on because you didn't do your homework. So you're doing everything in your power to avoid being seen by your teacher and you get called on and you feel like an absolute total jerk. You feel shame and embarrassment. And guess what? That becomes a spur to reminding you to do your homework. It may take a few tries, but sooner or later it becomes the spur to feel good by doing what is being asked of you. So it helps create responsible people. Now you're taking all of the responsibility off the child to okay, mom, dad, please sign my homework. And so the child has no, there's no structure, there's no room left for the child to develop the internal, internal mechanisms of responsibility. And we're doing a terrible disservice to them as well as putting a burden on parents, which is totally unfair because it's not their schooling and it's not their homework. And I just want to mention something relevant to the earlier conversation about parents not having a life of their own. It used to be that parents had a social life of their own. They had friends, they went to parties. Now the social life of parents is built around their children. And so the whole focus has become children, what they do on weekends. Let's gather at the home of the parents of a child's friend. And there's so much more bringing of the children into social situations. By the way, there are some benefits to that if it's done right, but there's no more sense that adulthood is a special time and you get special privileges of being an adult. So you can see why if all the Fun is, if all the rewards are about childhood, why would anyone want to leave it? You know, we've got a crisis in our culture of kids not entering adulthood until they're 30 or 40.
- [53:14]
E
Yes, yes, you talk about that. This is in the. In the. Within the first five chapters, I took 11 pages of notes this extended adolescence. I talked to an author, and she said, how are we presenting adulthood? Are we presenting it as a big bore where all you do is sit along the sidelines and hope your kid scores a goal? You know, she's like, who wants to get go there? Like, exactly that. Yes. And so, yeah, these things are critically important.
- [53:40]
F
Yeah. I mean, I remember going to parties. We didn't take the kids, we got babysitters.
- [53:48]
E
It gives them something to look forward to.
- [53:49]
B
Yeah.
- [53:50]
F
And my book kicks off with an anecdote that just is so true. This was actually around holiday time, sort of a little closer to the holidays. But I was coming into my building. I guess I was coming home from work one day or something, walking down the block towards my building, and I saw coming from the opposite direction a young woman whom I had known who had grown up in the building, eventually married and gone off to live elsewhere with her husband, raising a family. And she was visiting her own parents who lived in the building and was visiting them for the holidays. And she. We entered the building at the same time and she mentioned something about her daughter and said, I've just been at the hospital. Oh. She came down the street limping, wearing one of those boots. Something had happened to her foot or her leg. As we walked in the building, I said hello to her and she said, oh, my. I've been in the waiting room at X hospital for two and a half hours. I've never been away from my daughter so long. And I was just flabbergasted. Yeah. And I said, you know, your mom knows something about raising kids. I mean, after all, you know, she was the living proof of it. And she was just terrified that she had to leave her child for two and a half hours she hadn't seen. She said, this is the longest I've ever gone without seeing my daughter. And her kid was like three years old. And that was just shocking to me. You know, it sounds like a nothing incident, but when you think about it, it's just shocking. You don't have a social life or you're. You're inseparable from your child at 3 years old. I mean, that. That's a little bit on the extreme side. You know, kids learn to walk around age one. And that allows you to move more and ultimately what happens. It's the beginning of the widening of the circles of your life. And you're meant to play not just with your be, not just with your parents, but to be with grandparents and other relatives and guess what? Friends, Other people. Peers.
- [56:39]
E
Yeah. You talk in this book about parental. Parental separation anxiety and you say separation is absolutely necessary for normal development. Without separation, the child has no need to learn how to. To use whatever they have inside of them. They're unable to exercise mental imagery. They're forever on a short psychological leash. Early interference with this primary system for development introduces deep disturbances in children. In an emergency, the only coping tool you have is to call mom and dad. And that impedes development both cognitively and emotionally. You have no defense against emotional distress when something goes wrong in life. And you have no ability to take risks because you don't have the inner resources to call on to calm you in situations of uncertainty. So this is really important to understand here. You say there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the task of parenting. Parenting is not an engineering task. It is an endurance task. It requires patience and a high tolerance for boredom. That was a quote from someone else. There were so many resources in the book. I mean, it's just. I mean, just thing after thing. Efficiency is inimical to child rearing. I mean, it's just. Wow. Wow. It is 13 chapters. I took 11 pages of notes just on the first five and we've barely scratched the surface here. Like, you talk about our education system, you talk about adhd, you talk about how sometimes we are.
- [58:04]
B
I want to read the wording.
- [58:05]
E
It's like we're chemically thwarting the drive to play. You talk about self regulation, you talk about being impulsive. Play actively stimulates the development of self regulation. The more we teach through worksheets, the more we undermine self regulation. I'm going to end with this quote and then I have one final question. 30 years. Every parent should read this book. In 2026. It's 13 chapters. If you like, committed to read one chapter a month, it would change your life. 30 years of psychological research indicates that play is the crucible for learning and critical for social skills, which are critical for success in school. Playful learning increases attention, motivation, academic skills, social development and health. Yet we are at an impasse where tutoring for two year olds is the reality and play is down. We can either turn out robots or creative problem solvers. Play is fighting for its life against the encroachment of Workbooks and other forms of achievement pressure. Play is the engine of human development. What a book. Also, that's only five chapters. I have never had so many notes where I was like, if I keep taking notes, I'm going to have 25 pages page of notes. We're not even have any time. And even still, even still, Hera, we just scratched the surface. This is the book. And even more dire today, with AI.
- [59:27]
C
Here, it's really here.
- [59:28]
E
People are already losing their jobs. It's already here. So you want to be reminded that play is the true preparation for adulthood. And especially in a shifting age. We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside? Outside.
- [59:43]
F
Oh, my gosh. Favorite memory from childhood that was outside. You know, almost all my memories from childhood are outside. And we lived outside much more. Okay, so this one's a little dicey. All right, but okay, so I grew up on a street that bordered woods. Even though this was highly suburban, there was a streak of woods that extended for probably a mile. And all I had to do was go across the street, down a short distance, dead end, and be in the woods. And not just me, but all of my friends, we would. Especially when we were around 15, we would gather around a certain rock in the woods where, yes, I am sorry to report, we learned to smoke. And we thought we were so cool. Of course, we discontinued some smoking, almost all of us, but we gathered together, large group, and we hid our packages of Marlboros in a crevice in the rock and thought that no one would know. And of course, we went home and our breath stank of cigarettes. But this was. But this is something important. This was kids developing a peer group, learning how to relate to each other. The smoking was incidental and it was infrequent and it was ultimately abandoned. But we were learning how to relate to each other. We were actually relating to each other, by the way. We were also physical because we were outdoors moving around. And the joke is that we were not, as you know, we thought we were being secretive, but it was so clear, obviously to our family. But the point is, we had our own gathering place, and that's important. And it was free of adults. And that's how we learn to navigate. That's one of the ways we learn to navigate the world by ourselves and gain confidence in our ability to do so.
- [62:31]
E
What a book. What a book. What an. What a joy to get to talk with you about it. It is called A Nation of Wimps. The High Cost of Invasive Parenting. One of the best I've ever read. I thought, Harry, that I'd read all the good ones. I had not. I had not. I had missed yours and it is just remarkably good. And you are an incredible writer writing about things that could not be more important in this day and age.
- [62:55]
B
Thank you so much for your time.
- [62:56]
E
Thank you for writing it. The book is called A Nation of Wimps the High Cost of Invasive Parenting.
- [63:01]
F
Thank you. It was a pleasure to be on and I just love your enthusiasm. Thank you.
- [63:08]
B
As we wrap up today, I want to say thank you for listening and for caring about what truly shapes children and into capable, flexible, healthy adults. If you learned anything from this episode, I'd love for you to share it with a friend. Every podcast app makes it easy and that personal share is how this message continues to travel. And if you never left a review, I read every single one. They're super encouraging and they help the right people find this show. Here's one that came in since the New year, it says, I cannot believe I haven't found this podcast sooner, but now that I have, I'm so grateful. Jenny is phenomenal. Thank you. She's authentic, well researched, and very inspiring. Not only is her own 1000 hours outside organization wonderful work in the world.
- [63:46]
C
But she serves as a bridge to.
- [63:48]
B
So many others who are in service to children, families and educators. As an early childhood educator, outdoor educator, and entrepreneur myself, the content and conversations are so beneficial for my own learning. But as a parent of a six and four year old, I'm so crazy grateful my family has this weekly wisdom at this point in our lives. I don't know how she does it, but thank you so much for these weekly episodes. Episodes. Lastly, I'm a very spiritual person and my family's faith is deeply rooted in nature. But I haven't cracked open a Bible since my teenage years with my grandmother and many of these conversations are now cracking open different parts of my faith in new and surprising ways.
- [64:23]
E
Thank you.
- [64:24]
B
All right, try and top that. Truly, the reviews mean so much and they really do help the show with the ratings and helping other people to find them. So if you're up for it, some of them are a lot shorter. They just say I like it or something like that. Anything that you leave works. Don't forget, go download that free 20261000 hours outside tracker sheet. Join us inside the 1000 hours outside app, which is available now. It's on sale for just 25 for the entire year. And don't miss the 2026 kickoff pack inside the 1000 Hours Outside Mega Bundle, available through January 12th. You will find all of the links waiting for you in the show. Notes thank you for spending this time with me. Until next time. May you find extraordinary moments on ordinary paths.
- [65:07]
A
Get outside, open your eyes Feel that sunshine kissing your skin? Throw your worries out to the wind? Climb some trees, Skin your knees Feel that grass on your feet again? Get out there and take it in? Oh, it's a beautiful world? Ain't nothing on the screen that's ever gonna beat this view? Oh, it's a beautiful world? And I just want to share with? I just want to share with you this beautiful world? Such a beautiful.