Parenting and Entrepreneurship

In the spirit of using blogging to try out new ideas, I wanted to share some thoughts about the relationship between parenting and entrepreneurship (in the Austrian sense).

As I've argued before, "hyper-parenting" is a real problem among sections of the middle and upper-middle class in the US.  These are parents who are so involved in their kids' lives that they don't allow them to fail or develop resilience or perserverence skills.  It is the core of the argument that we are raising a "Nation of Wimps."

What many developmental psychologists argue is that the ideal parenting strategy is to raise your kids in ways that make them "feel safe in taking risks."  That might seem contradictory, but the idea is that kids need to know that they can take risks by exploring new things or people and that they will both reap the rewards of doing so and bear the costs of doing so, at least short of something catastrophic.  The idea of "feeling safe in taking risks" is what true psychological attachment is about, rather than the very mistaken notion of "attachment" that is in vogue with "attachment parenting," which is just another name for the over-involved parenting that is the problem.

Well-attached children feel safe in exploring the world because they know that they can always return to the "secure base" of their parent(s).  The psychologist John Bowlby, who invented the concept, used the metaphor of an invisible elastic band that can be stretched further and further as children develop.  "Hyper-parenting" replaces the elastic band with handcuffs and prevents children from developing the risk-taking independence that is necessary to navigate the adult world. It destroys the benefits of true attachment by substituting a false version.

It has always seemed to me that well-attached children will be much more able to exercise entrepreneurship than those who have been hyper-parented.  They are used to exploring the world and exercising their own judgment, and understand the relationship between risk and reward.  And if their parents allow them to fail and to feel the consequences of that failure (again, short of severe injury and the like), they also understand that failure is one of the great motivators for succeeding and for learning.  Constantly shielding our kids from taking risks and possibly experiencing failure will be likely to lead to adults who are similarly risk-averse and who cannot understand why failure is a part of learning and growing.

This raises two sets of questions:

1. Is there a relationship between changes in parenting along these lines and our increasing tolerance for bailing out failed companies?  Is this part of a broader cultural shift that has at least some of its roots in how children are raised?  Do parenting philosophies matter for political economy in this way?  Will children raised not understanding that failure has value for personal improvement also not see the social function of losses and economic failure? 

2.  How important is it to a classical liberal order that children be raised in ways that encourage entrepreneur-like independence?  Aside from the more narrow questions of policy, can a liberal order function with risk-averse citizens who are less likely to sieze entrepreneurial opportunities?  Is this part of the broader role that the family has in transmitting the rules and values of the Great Society?  What, if anything, can we do if parents are failing in that task?

I do not have answers to these questions, but I think they are ones we need to grapple with (and that I will be grappling with in my book).

Comments

[Robert A. Sprague]

You have come across a very interesting cultural phenomena. Our leaders (and their advisors) have probably been raised as "whimps" and turned their inbred paranoia into a "nanny state" atmosphere that erodes rights and freedoms over time. Unlike our founding fathers or even more recent generations we have become a bunch of "whimps" willing to give up our rights for the slightest bit of promised security (financial or otherwise), thus apathy sets in. The first step in solving an illness is diagnosing and or recognising it. So, we have effectively brought to light the possible problem and now we must further analyze and then begin treatment ASAP. I am under the impression that we must elect an Austrian economist or a student of said school to the Presidency or our economy might never be righted.

[Dave Prychitko]

I really don't care so much for the analogies (though "bailout" does have a lot of meaning when kids blow money and keep coming back for more).

Any, Kenneth Boulding said it best, and it's something we've done a little at the margin:

Raise your kids using the principle of Creative Neglect.

[Bob Murphy]

Shameless plug: In the below post I discuss the economics of potty training.

http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2008/09/economics-of-potty-training.html

[Dave Prychitko]

Let me say this: my wife and I have been changing diapers for SIXTEEN AND A HALF years.

Four kids, some of them late to potty train (esp. our youngest with Down Syndrome) so, outside a couple months off here and there, SIXTEEN YEARS.

When I mention that to my students I have to add, "No, we don't have a sixteen year old still in diapers."

Anyway, Boulding applies here, too:

He said "No wonder Marx always talked about alienation: the child's first achievement on the toilet gets flushed down the drain."

[Steve Horwitz]

The great day of parental freedom is when the diaper bag gets put away for good.

Of course, now we have a puppy...

And this whole conversation would be prohibited under the Boettke Blog Enforcement Code. ;)

[Patrick]

To what extent is the rise in over-protective-parenting correlated with a general rise in wealth?

To what extent are we subsidizing certain kinds of risk and penalizing others? We seem to be intent on reducing the risk of risky capital investments (homes, colleges) while at the same time making it more difficult to start small businesses.

[Mike]

To what extent are changes in parenting styles related to possible changes in the reasons people have children.

I'd argue that in less wealthy societies, children were looked at as investments who could provide for the parents when they were old or infirm.

in modern societies, children seem to be more like expensive consumer goods.

[Steve Horwitz]

I think that's exactly right Mike - kids are much more about the *parents'* wants and needs for self-actualization, rather than about the kids per se.

[tamarchansky]

Bravo!This is (literally) the 700 billion dollar question.The answer is yes (there is a connection)! I am a child psychologist, in my just released book, Freeing Your Child from Negative Thinking: Powerful, Practical Strategies to Build a Lifetime of Resilience, Flexibility and Happiness, I devote an entire chapter to the subject of failure, losing and disappointment because kids don't know how to cope with it, and parents are often afraid to let them.

We have an opportunity with the economic crash to learn something from the failures, but I fear that instead the government is "overparenting"-- kissing the banks on the head and saying everything is fine. We are missing the opportunity to show our kids that plans fail and we can rebuild with a different model that works better.... instead we will pass on the bill for this to our children....

To look at an excerpt, the interested reader can check out
www.freeingyourchild.com

[Brian Pitt]

Great Post!

"Is there a relationship between changes in parenting along these lines and our increasing tolerance for bailing out failed companies?"

I am confident that there is a positive relationship between the two. How will you attempt to answer these questions? I am looking forward to your answers to these questions.

[Steve Horwitz]

I'm not sure I'm going to try to answer THAT specific question Brian, although I certainly will raise it. It would be an interesting question for a separate longer-term project though... maybe even for a sociologist. ;)

[Eric Sundwall]

Teaching them to hunt with a bow will be very handy in a few years . . . Just fish with them for fun.

[slowblogger]

I recently became interested in Austrian economics, because I share some key perspectives. And, as a non-academic, I feel more comfortable with its literary style.

I agree with the post. I (and other Koreans) have admired American parents' raising children to become independent. But maybe it is changing? More broadly, I think that the more people are entrepreneurial, the better free market works.

Let's say there is no school in a small town. In an entrepreneurial culture, it is likely that someone take this as an opportunity and build a school (or something that can work as a school like e-learning). But when people are not entrepreneurial, they may view this only as a problem and ask the government to address it.

It may be wiser for free-market advocates to speak to normal people about entrepreneurship (in an easy and entertaining way), rather than against anti-market opinion leaders. The free market should not look like an anti-anti-market philosophy.

[Brian Baugus]

I am researching along these lines although more narrowly focused on home schooling. My research shows that home school parents are very entreprenuerial and their kids tend to be so as well. How that all plays into this discussion may or may not be interesting but I believe I definitely see something in the way kids are brought up and their willingness to be explorers, innovators and risk takers.

[Rafe Champion]

A few thoughts - the influence standing behind Bowlby was Ian D Suttie who tragically died in 1935 as his first book was coming off the press. His premature death was one of the great intellectual disasters of modern times because, with Karl and Charlotte Buhler he had the ideas to challenge the dominance of Freud and the behaviorists, both at the level of testable theories and at the level of metapsychology. Buhler's career effectively ended in his prime when the Nazis drove him out of Vienna in 1938. For Suttie the critical transition in life was becoming independent of the mother and the transition has to be just right, not forced (giving the impression of rejection) nor delayed (suffocating).

A thumbnail on Suttie. http://www.the-rathouse.com/Revivalist4/Suttie_FAQ.html

On child-raising for independence and achievement, McClelland of "The Achieving Society" suggested that children need to be given appropriately challenging tasks and responsibilities, with the right mix of support and encouragement so they learn how to win and lose, to succeed and fail. The same message comes from the Coveys (Habits of Effective People etc), jobs to be done with accountability. Check out Maslow on "self-actualizing" people as well.

McClelland claimed that you can predict surges of enterprise if you check out the contents of childrens books a few decades before. Kids who read books about heroes and achievement will tend to get the message. A lady in the US, Jennifer Bouani, is deliberately writing books about entrepreneurs for children (heads up from the Mises list).
http://www.boujepublishing.com/author.htm

My spouse and the Rathouse webmistress also does childrens books, lately "Two Tough Teddies" and "Two Bad Teddies". http://www.kilmenyniland.com/illustration/TwoToughTeddies.html

Next, "Two Entrepreneurial Teddies" but the publishers lean to political correctness so it might not be accepted.

[Mike]

Is anyone familiar with Mac Bledsoe (yes, Drew's father)? He's a fomer teacher who created a program called "Parenting with Dignity."

Supposedly, it aims at teaching parents to let their children make their own decisions, and bear the consequences, from an early age.

John Stossel did a piece on the program years ago on 20/20, and I was really impressed. Bledsoe is, I think, an evangelical Christian, but I didn't notice anything explcitily evangelical about the program.

[Passerby]

Read "The Nurture Assumption" by Judith Harris.

[Parent of Four]

This is an interesting concept. However, I don't think parenting has much to do with entrepreneurship at all. When Buffett was combing Europe for family owned businesses a year or so ago I heard on the radio that family owned businesses rarely last more than couple of generations. Being an entrepreneur seems to be a personality trait. In fact, I think that the act of entrepreneurship is somewhat rebellious in itself.

[Jeff Coffey]

One of the things that I've noticed as a professional in a creative service field is that my success depends on my ability to deliver creative and innovative ideas for my clients. As a result, I'm constantly searching for new techniques, insights, etc... that will help me achieve this.

As a parent of a five year old daughter, it is obvious to me that she has those skills "built-in." I assume I did as well when I was younger. Now, later in life, I'm finding that re-discovering those skills is paramount to my ability to remain competitive in the job market.

So, as a parent, I'm struggling with the question of how to raise my kids in a way that their creativity and curiosity is intact when my job as a parent is complete. Tough question, but I think critical for parents of the latest generations.

Central to this, and why I find your post so interesting, is that embracing failure is critical to generating new ideas. To have a few good ideas requires many, many, many more that go into the garbage can. Those unwilling to fail will limit themselves from generating new ideas to begin with. Further, those who learn to accept, learn, and grow from failure will have the best chance of succeeding.

I don't think there are any easy answers here. My instincts as a parent go directly against what may best serve my kids. As a parent, I need to re-wire my brain and develop some new tactics for raising my kids in a manner that will serve them best as adults in a global marketplace.

I'm going to continue thinking about these ideas and post a thought or two at my blog:

http://www.thepursuitoftinkering.com

[Jeff Coffey]

One of the things that I've noticed as a professional in a creative service field is that my success depends on my ability to deliver creative and innovative ideas for my clients. As a result, I'm constantly searching for new techniques, insights, etc... that will help me achieve this.

As a parent of a five year old daughter, it is obvious to me that she has those skills "built-in." I assume I did as well when I was younger. Now, later in life, I'm finding that re-discovering those skills is paramount to my ability to remain competitive in the job market.

So, as a parent, I'm struggling with the question of how to raise my kids in a way that their creativity and curiosity is intact when my job as a parent is complete. Tough question, but I think critical for parents of the latest generations.

Central to this, and why I find your post so interesting, is that embracing failure is critical to generating new ideas. To have a few good ideas requires many, many, many more that go into the garbage can. Those unwilling to fail will limit themselves from generating new ideas to begin with. Further, those who learn to accept, learn, and grow from failure will have the best chance of succeeding.

I don't think there are any easy answers here. My instincts as a parent go directly against what may best serve my kids. As a parent, I need to re-wire my brain and develop some new tactics for raising my kids in a manner that will serve them best as adults in a global marketplace.

I'm going to continue thinking about these ideas and post a thought or two at my blog:

http://www.thepursuitoftinkering.com

[Pat Peterson]

Good points. I also recommend www.loveandlogic.com for pro-freedom minded parents.