The Parenting Treadmill: On Keeping Up in the School Gate Stakes

Parents often arrive at the school gate expecting to have left the social hierarchies of adolescence behind. What you may find instead are the in-groups and out-groups of an earlier life. The people who are included and the people who are not. The subtle signals about whose children are invited to which birthday parties, whose names are mentioned in which conversations, and who is, and who is not, part of the inner circle of a particular school community.

The stakes feel different from adolescence, because now it is not just about you. It is about your child(ren). And that raises the anxiety to a different level.

 

The machinery of the competitive parenting landscape

In affluent areas, the parenting landscape tends to organise itself around a particular set of investments: the right school, secured through entrance exam, interview, or the right postcode. The right activities, chosen not only for the child(ren)'s interest but perhaps also for what they signal. The enrichment schedule that communicates a particular kind of parental involvement, seriousness and ambition.

These choices are rarely made in a vacuum. You may find that they are made in a context of comparison, whether conscious or not, with what other parents in the same social circle are doing. The choice of school is also a social choice, determining which peer group your family moves into and which you leave behind. The activity schedule is also a statement about your values, priorities, and resources. Choices may not be purely about the child(ren), even when we genuinely believe that they are.

 

When it stops being about the child

The difficulty is not necessarily ambition for children. Wanting the best for your child(ren) is understandable and within reason it is entirely appropriate. The difficulty is when the investment in a child's trajectory shifts to becoming more a function of your own parental anxiety, social positioning, or the perceived need to keep pace with a peer group, rather than with what your child(ren) may actually need or want.

Children in these environments tend to be sensitive to the difference. Children being pushed towards excellence for their own sake tend to experience that differently from being pushed toward excellence as evidence of metric of teh family's social standing. The latter tends to produce a particular kind of pressure that both parents and children carry without fully understanding where it is coming from.

 

The social economy of parenting circles

You will already know that there is a social economy at work in competitive parenting circles. Inclusion and exclusion operate through playdates, birthday parties, shared holidays, school gate conversations. Being part of the right group can feel like it matters not only for social reasons but for the whole family's social experience, friendships, and position within the school community.

If you feel on the outside of this social economy as a parent, you may experience it as a form of social anxiety or rejection that you did not anticipate having to manage. If you are a parent who is on the inside, you may find that the cost of staying inside (the time, money, energy, or compromise of your own values and preferences), is higher than you expected it might be.

 

Staying true to what you actually want

The questions that tend to help are: “what do I actually want for my child(ren)?” or "What does our family value, enjoy, and choose to nurture?" Not what the peer group is doing, not what looks right from the outside. What do you genuinely believe your children need, and what kind of childhood do you actually want them to have?

Answering these questions honestly tends to require some distance from the comparison culture. This is difficult to achieve when you are inside it. It also tends to require a degree of willingness to be different, to make choices that do not necessarily align with what others are doing, and to tolerate the social discomfort that may accompany that.

 

What therapy can offer

Therapy for parents navigating this landscape is not about you being told what choices to make for your children. It is about creating a space to examine what is actually driving the choices that you are making, and what the anxiety underneath the parenting treadmill is actually about. Often it is not primarily about your child(ren) at all. It may be about your own personal or inherited relationship with status, belonging, acceptance, rejection, and perhaps the fear of being left behind.

Understanding these elements and reflecting on your own childhood, tends to make the choices that follow clearer and more authentically aligned with what truly actually matters for you and for your child(ren).

If the parenting landscape in your world has started to feel more like competition than community, therapy may be a welcomed space to pause and explore.

Dr Erin Reid is a counselling psychologist offering online therapy to individuals, couples, adolescents, and families across the UK and internationally, and 'Walk and Talk' therapy in Northwest London green spaces. Visit drerinreid.com to find out more.