Tocquevillian Parenting

Apparently American infants find themselves unwillingly pressured into an intellectual rat race. Toddlers would be more laissez-faire about their social lives if only those helicopter parents would fly away. Ok, I’m being a bit hyperbolic. But according to a new study produced by the School of Family Studies at the University of Connecticut, parents in the United States are much more likely than our European counterparts to describe our young children as “intelligent.” Meanwhile, the Spanish emphasize that their children are “easy,” and Swedes call their kids “happy.”

Olga Kahzan at the Atlantic uses these findings to speculate that Americans may be overly industrious. Or maybe it’s because American maternity leave isn’t as generous as it is in Europe. You can almost hear the “If only we were European” chorus beginning. But Kahzan concedes that she doesn’t really know why American’s are obsessed with intelligence.

So before we pack it up and relocate to the more culturally-astute Scandinavia,  I’ll also do a little of my own speculating.

Sure, there’s a population kids who really are overprogrammed and overstressed in pursuit of an elite kindergarten that will open the door to the Ivies. But these offspring of what Charles Murray calls the “cognitive elite” are in the distinct minority. Most of us must mean something far less presumptuous when we talk about “intelligence.”

Obviously there’s something to be said for being happy and easy-going and well-adjusted. Parents should keep that in mind, cut back on the cello lessons, and send kids outside.

But, from my own experience, I don’t think average Americans are confusing their “intelligent” 3 year old with the Second Coming of Mozart.

As Tocqueville observed in Democracy in America, “[T]here is no other country in the world where, proportionately to population, there are so few ignorant and so few learned individuals as in America.” That still rings true today. We’re a culture content with our averageness. We pride ourselves on a mean of practicality. And practicality breeds entrepreneurialism, creativity, and the common sense needed for self-government.

I wonder if talking about “intelligence” in small children is actually our way of pointing out that our kids are practical and experimental.

The other day, my hairdresser bragged to me how her son was “intelligent” because he loved fixing alarm clocks. I describe the 7-year-old I babysit as “intelligent” because he has excellent social skills and humorous insights into what the other neighborhood kids are up to.