The Makers of the Snowflake Generation

When our children were young and would fall, they would look at me to gauge my reaction. If I responded with, “Oh my goodness, are you ok?” they would inevitably start crying. If I told them to shake it off, they’d get up and go about their business. Kids are naturally resilient, but they can become thin-skinned and neurotic if constantly subjected to parental overreaction. A certain amount of benevolent neglect goes a long way. Being thick-skinned and tough-minded are valuable characteristics for children to develop as they learn to navigate this world.

This observation echoes one of the central claims of Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s The Coddling of the American Mind, namely that when we tell students they are unsafe, they internalize the claim and come to believe that the world is a hazardous place where people are constantly out to get them. As a result, students become increasingly fragile and unable to deal with the friction and disappointment of social life. We would do well to remind them that a useful life is marked by struggle, hardship, failure, difficulty, and pain. We can try to insulate ourselves from all that, but we would become genuine good-for-nothings in the process.

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