This is not one of the short ephemeral essays I promised; I'll return to that after this. I've attempted to write an essay on agency for months and gave up. And then I had another idea.
I need to get this out of my head, so I'm going to close my eyes, think of England, and send.
The COVID epidemic isn’t far from memory, and those of us who believe in science waited impatiently for each new vaccination to help ward off the most recent evolution of the COVID variant. As time went on, rather than making a vaccine for each new strain of COVID, the pharmaceutical companies created polyvalent vaccines to deal with the rapid evolution of a COVID-causing virus.
I need to get this out of my head, so I'm going to close my eyes, think of England, and send.
The COVID epidemic isn’t far from memory, and those of us who believe in science waited impatiently for each new vaccination to help ward off the most recent evolution of the COVID variant. As time went on, rather than making a vaccine for each new strain of COVID, the pharmaceutical companies created polyvalent vaccines to deal with the rapid evolution of a COVID-causing virus.
In recent years, Big Tech has brought us an endless series of personal agency-killing viruses: social media, YouTube, Google, AI, smartphones, Netflix, porn, Amazon—we’re surrounded by interests that want to dominate our attention. We’re surrounded by interests that want to influence how we spend our money, what we eat, how we’re entertained, and how we vote. And we don’t have a pharmaceutical-like polyvalent solution to deal with Silicon Valley viruses.
We could pass laws that put restrictions on these influences, that is, we could if these tech companies didn’t own Congress. We could take away phones from students while they’re attending school, but how would we deal with an epidemic of phantom limb pain? We could require age limits on Websites, but who gets to decide what’s inappropriate for everyone’s children? And, anyway, motivated young people find a way to route around restrictions.
COVID vaccines did not eliminate infection. They made infection less likely or the effects less severe. We need similar immunizations for the pernicious influences brought to us by Big Tech. And as with the COVID vaccines, they need to be polyvalent to fend off the move-fast-and-break-things strategy of Silicon Valley’s financial interests. For better or worse, these immunizations won’t come from the outside as they did with vaccines.
Sigmund Freud was wrong about many things, but he was right about one: we carry our childhoods with us. If we’re determined, occasionally we can chain our childhood wounds to the bed frame and sneak out the back door for some respite, but our childhood is always the troll under the bridge ready to pounce on our emotions.
If there’s an intervention that will foster agency in our children, agency that leaves them less emotionally vulnerable, it won’t come from trigger warnings, safe spaces, or an emotional support animal. They’re going to have to carry their agency with them, perhaps in their back pocket right next to their iPhone.
I’ve witnessed two general approaches to parenting: raise your children the way you were raised or raise your children the way you wished you were raised. The way you wish you were raised is often that you were given increased agency, that rather than controlling your decisions, your parents gave you latitude.
Too often (or most often), we spend our entire adult lives trying to retrieve what was suppressed during childhood. We change college majors, we change careers, we change locations, we change our politics, we change friends, we change love mates, we change therapists, all in pursuit of the self we think we could have been, given the freedom to explore, given the freedom to not pursue approval from our parents and cultural influences.
Alternately, we could raise children to maximize their agency and minimize a future of regrets and therapy bills.
Easy for me to say
I’m going to quote from a previous article:
Bria Bloom recently posted an essay of her witnessing an interaction between a mother and the mother’s (about) ten-year-old daughter. The mother is playing with her daughter’s hair, treating it as if it belonged to a doll, while ignoring her daughter’s repeated requests to stop. Daughter and mother both persist, until her mother finally stops and calls her daughter a brat.
If you stop reading Bria’s essay at this point, you’d probably think nothing of the incident—children and parents will be children and parents. But if you read further, Bria makes an unexpected connection: the insistent (pardon) manhandling of the daughter, despite her protests, is inadvertently training the daughter to accept that her body is not her own; that without consent, she should allow her body to be invaded by another’s behavior.
Bria’s interpretation startled me. When the above “training” is practiced by a sexual predator, it’s called something really creepy, “grooming,” getting a child used to accepting physical invasion—sexual invasion.
Notice how subtle this inadvertent grooming takes place. The mother was being playful, but by rejecting her daughter’s wishes, she satisfied her needs regardless of her daughter’s wishes. What does that remind you of?
I hope to point out that early denials of agency can be innocent and even loving, but the experience of being manhandled (sorry) is felt regardless of good intentions. Influence largely takes place below one’s awareness.
Now carry this denial of agency to the countless experiences children are subjected to—“for their own good”—and your child is being conditioned to being swayed by all the “influencers” on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit. Add to the above social media influences, school cliques and campus culture. Let’s not forget our most recent addition, chatty large language models such as ChatGPT.
How to foster agency
Blah, blah, blah. Even if I agree with you, what can I do? How can I guard my children’s agency?
As I implied above, not taking away agency has a lot to do with what you don’t do. As a parent or any adult authority, stifling your agency-killing behavior is hard and takes practice. It takes, initially at least, awareness of your habits and motivations and awareness of your effect on children.
But before I go on, I’ll add that, as you practice restraint with those whom you have authority over, you are increasing your agency. How we treat our children in-turn bounces back to us. We see the effects on them and feel good rather than the too-common feelings among parents of regret and guilt.
As a bonus to ourselves and others, we might even develop more restraint in trying to control the behavior of our mates and coworkers. As a second bonus, we become better models for our children and possibly better models for family members and friends.
How-to
You don’t need me
—Professor Robert Suczek
—Professor Robert Suczek
I had a therapy supervisor who fit my personality perfectly. Perhaps he saw that I was allergic to authority.
You don’t need me was Suczek’s guiding principle in working with clients. He treated them as individuals who were competent but had lost confidence and needed to be reminded of their competence so they could take back their agency.
Following the Suczek principle, it would be paradoxical for me to create a how-to manual on how to raise your children. But I’ll offer suggestions specifically around agency based on my experience as a parent and family therapist.
My wife and I kept our kids home from school and allowed them as much agency as felt safe in accordance with their age. Most parents have neither the inclination nor the practical situation to homeschool, but there are other ways to foster agency.
In any conflict with authorities, we didn’t take the side of the institution. When necessary, we took our child’s side by being a problem-solver. You have to be here and get along with authorities who may be unreasonable. How can we deal with this conflict in a way that will bring you less stress?
The problem-solving mindset helped our kids deal with any situation, but more importantly, gave them a tool for the long run.
You don’t need to be a parent to growing children or a parent at all to foster the agency of others. You can be an older sibling, aunt or uncle, grandparent, teacher, boss, or an individual someone looks up to.
Raise your children to maximize their agency and minimize a future of regrets and therapy bills. Raise your children to maximize their agency and they will not worship the shallow “influencers” on social media. They will be less prone to a life of anxiety and depression. They will not join a cult or support authoritarian politicians. They will be less likely to regret their choice of careers or their choice of mates.
If you think it’s too late because your offspring are 15 and 17, remember, people attend therapy to retrieve their agency well into adulthood. It’s never too late to foster agency. If you attempt to shut off influences aimed at your older teenagers, what happens when they leave home without your shield? Don’t eliminate, vaccinate.
Notes
- Science happens whether or not you believe in it. If you don’t believe in gravity, you still couldn’t break the high jump record. (To change your world by disbelief in science would make a novel superhero series.)
- Latitude is not neglect.
- I use the term “homeschool” because it’s the common label. But there was very little school in our version. The self-directed education model is mostly accurate.
- No matter how you raise your children, nothing is guaranteed; there are many influences in children’s lives that parents can’t control. However, children raised with agency will have better resilience no matter what they encounter.
Resources
The Gardener and the Carpenter, Alison Gopnik Emeritus professor, UC Berkeley, is a developmental psychologist, and the above book is the best book on raising your children with agency (though she never uses that term). While the carpenter crafts to a desired end product, the gardener nurtures with love and protection.
Peter Gray writes a column in Psychology Today and writes a newsletter. Peter Gray is a research psychologist at Boston College. He’s the co-founder of the Alliance for Self-Directed Education, which assists homeschoolers and the homeschooling curious with resources.
Bria Bloom’s newsletter. Bria’s focus is on the emotional life of children. She illustrates with her experiences raising her children to keep their agency intact.