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Hi there, and welcome to the Parenting Without Power Struggles. Podcast. I'm your host, Susan Stiffelman, a marriage and family therapist educator, and the author of Parenting Without Power Struggles and Parenting With Presence. In this podcast, we dive into real parenting struggles, real solutions, all rooted in attachment theory and neuroscience, mindfulness, and decades of clinical experience. You're gonna find conversations here with experts like Dan Siegel and Janet Lansbury, Mona Delahooke, Tina Bryson, Ned Hallowell, plus Q and A episodes where I tackle your biggest parenting challenges, and we know that they exist. All of us have our challenges from time to time.

If you wanna go deeper and get more help, visit susanstiffelman.com. I have a free newsletter and lots of master classes on everything from meltdowns and anxiety to chores and sibling rivalry. Now let's get started.

Today I wanna talk about an article I read by Derek Thompson called The death of partying in the USA and why it matters. So some of you might be thinking, great, the fewer parties, the better. I'm an introvert, or I'm glad my kids aren't partying so much because the subtitle is, young Americans Today spend 70% less time attending or hosting parties that they did at the beginning of the 21st century.

Why? So? This is just a fabulous. Article that is highlighting a trend, which is that we are becoming more and more isolated. The author is referring to another article written in the Atlantic by Ellen Cushing and us, an essay saying Americans need to party more. And the research that she unearthed suggested that just 4.1% of Americans said that they had attended or hosted a party or a ceremony on a typical weekend.

In 2023, which is like one in 23 households attending social events, and the author of this article talks about how face-to-face socializing has plummeted in the last 20 years by 20%, and for unmarried men and people younger than 25, it's closer to 35%, and this is at a time when Americans are.

Experiencing more and more anxiety and mental distress. They're spending more and more time alone than more than any other time actually in recorded history. So why does this matter to me as a person who's supporting parents, people raising the next generation? I think it's vital that we look at the increasing isolation that we're.

Not only experiencing ourselves as adults, but that our kids are experiencing as well. In an article that I'm putting together for my upcoming newsletter, I found that. Just 25% of children regularly engage in face-to-face place with other kids. There was a UK national survey, and this is part of a trend toward more solitary screen-based childhoods.

So we know that social is isolation, has implications for risks. Like premature death, and in fact, loneliness is associated with risk levels that are comparable to smoking and obesity. So what can be done? Why does this matter? It matters because we are human. Beings, we are interrelated. We are social creatures.

Now, this isn't to say that some of us might not be more introverts or introverted, and we might prefer our own company or the company of those in our immediate circle. Nothing wrong with that. I can totally relate. Sometimes it takes a lot for me to get out the door and be with others. There's a little bit of a, a nudge that I need, but I can tell you that when I do, almost without exception, the effort is worth it because there is some part of us, and I believe in most children, there are in most of our kids, that thrives and is nourished by human connection.

That's just how it is. In addition to that, when we move more and more into the comfort of our own immediate little world and our screens that provide endless diversions and a faux type of interrelatedness with others, you're texting or you're online chatting and commenting, and this is of course not the same.

I don't need to elaborate that on that. But when we deny ourselves and our kids the simplicity and. All the accompanying benefits that come when our screens are put away and we're just talking with someone, or we're telling a joke, or we're laughing, or we're making a meal together, or we're taking a walk, or we're noticing a beautiful bird, or commenting on what's going on in our lives in a way that feels comfortable, whether it's very intimate or superficial.

We get something very important from that, and that isn't gonna change. We are wired this way. And so regardless of how easy it's become to feel like you have some semblance of connection with others because you know you're connected online. It just isn't the same. So I'm on my soapbox right now. Hope it's okay if you don't wanna be with people.

Please maintain the whatever's working for you. But when we're hearing things like the typical female pet owner spends more time actively engaged with her pet than she spends in face-to-face contact with friends of her own species, which is again from Derek Thompson's article. My goodness, that's.

Lovely for the pets, and it may be very comforting and wonderful for those who are pet lovers, but we still need some contact with others and I. The trend is disheartening. I think as we look at the types of contact that we had in earlier years, a hundred years ago, there were drop-in visits on Sundays, people had tea with each other.

There were cider tastings and help after someone had given birth and people visited each other. I remember a few years ago I had a friend. In Los Angeles and I texted, and this isn't the only time, but I still remember 'cause it was at the peak of Downton Abbey. And I texted and I said, Hey, we're not too far away.

Can we drop by? And we literally just dropped by for a visit. There was no need for them to prepare. They hadn't cleaned their house. I think maybe they made a cup of tea and it was one of the most wonderful visits and. Social experiences 'cause it had a discreet beginning, middle, and end. It maybe lasted an hour and a half and no big plans had to be made.

It was just, Hey, I'm near you. I'm nearby and I'd love to visit with you and check in these kinds of things when we especially take our kids along. Let's drop by on our neighbor. Let's go see if so-and-so is home. Again, they feed something in our spirit. The other day I was invited to attend a recipe share, and it was so much fun.

Everyone made something that they like and they printed out a copy of the recipe and then. Our host had a long table and everyone put their dish on the table. There were maybe 10, 12 people there with the copy of the recipe so that if you liked the food, you could take a photo of it and reproduce it, and everyone brought their own plate.

Utensils, their own serving dish, their own tea towel, so that after the meal every, it was basically no trace left behind the host's house was just as it was when we arrived, we all told a little bit about the dish and how we made it or where we found it, and then we sat outside and at a long table and we enjoyed the food and they had set up a prompt, a bowl with little slips of paper.

You could pull something from to just say a little bit about yourself. What's the best thing that happened to you this week? Or what's something difficult that you, and a challenge that you've overcome? And by the end, there was a real sense of community and connection. Everyone felt so filled up, not just with the food, but with a company.

I know that this is important. I know that it's also hard to do. Everyone is so busy. The demands of life are unrelenting and constant. Again, you may be someone who just doesn't like to be around people that much, or you may have a child who's that way. So I'm not suggesting that there's a one size fits all for this, but I do believe that we are.

Responsible for raising the next generation of leaders and teachers and firefighters and accountants and bank tellers, and all the jobs and roles that our children will fulfill. So much of the success of that is in the ability to have empathy for others, to connect with others, to listen, to share, to be a little vulnerable when it's appropriate, and I think that we're at risk of losing some of that, of course with screens instead of our kids coming home and being outside and playing with each other and roaming from house to house.

This is now the kids come home and they're online, and you all have to, each person has to decide what the right amount is for our children to enjoy the many wonderful offerings of the online world. But it's interesting to note that between 1965 and 1995. Our typical Americans leisure time actually grew by about 300 hours a year, and it looks like we've spent.

Almost all of that time watching more tv. By the eighties, people said television was their primary source of entertainment and that they were less likely to engage in almost every other form of social interaction, which is dinner parties, club meetings, visiting friends, picnics, giving blood less has that's dropped, giving blood, sending fewer greeting cards.

All of this is suggesting that. It's not just about smartphones, but it's about the possibility that our online digital worlds are giving us the. Artificial sense that we are connected with others. That's it for the soapbox. I just wanted to share because when I read something that really fires me up and speaks to me, I like sharing it and so that's why I have a newsletter and that's why I have a podcast to some degree.

Of course, we address real parenting problems here and you're welcome to submit a concern of your own, but. I do hope that maybe I've given you a little food for thought in terms of bringing a little bit more connection into the life of your family. Whether it's having a recipe share, a potluck, a movie night, a meeting in the park, if you don't wanna have people over to your house and having an evening picnic on a Friday night or.

Or a Saturday, just bringing more human connection to your life and to the life of your children. Not only because it's great for all the reasons I've indicated, but also because it makes parenting feel less isolated and parents do report. Unprecedented drops in a feeling of being supported or having people that they could turn to for help.

And this is how you create it. This is how you cultivate it. So I hope I've given you something to think about. As always, if you're enjoying the podcast, please leave a rating, a review, share with a friend. It helps so much for us to reach others. And if you have a thought about a topic that you'd like me to cover, please.

Write me at support@susanstiffelman.com. Of course, you can visit that website and see all the things that we offer there, including classes and memberships and free support and guidance. Lots of support there for you to be a real live human. I know there's so much material out there digitally and on. Now ai, but I don't think that we can ever replace human to human contact or support.

So that's why I'm here and I look forward to staying in touch. Remember, no matter how busy life gets, look for those moments of sweetness and joy. Stay well, take care and I'll see you next time.