One of my last posts on Reddit was related to this. I frequented the r/teachers sub because I’m a teacher. But I hated that sub. So many burnout educators blaming parents, and only parents, for their students’ poor behavior. There was always a thread about “why are kids so poorly behave nowadays!?” The main complaint about parents was the letting smartphones raise their kids. But like you said, they miss the point entirely.
To paraphrase myself, there is a clear through line that links poor parenting skills to economic precarity and social atomization. Parenting takes a lot of physical and emotional energy. If you’re overworked, under-employed, worried about the next paycheck, uncertain about the future, or whatever AND you have a precision engineered, scientifically perfected, rectangular instrument of distraction in your pocket at all times it’s no wonder to me kids’ social/emotional needs are being neglected. Overworked parents in ages past might turn to the bottle. Now we’re all overworked and our liquor cabinets fit in the palm of our hands.
Liberal teachers love to complain that parents are too entitled now. Parents want teachers and schools to solve their kids’ problems, prepare them for the future, protect them from the scary real world, to raise their kids, blah blah blah. Teachers complain, but continue to show up to school day after day because they’re stuck in the same precarity as the parents. But even they know, deep down, that it shouldn’t be this hard to raise children. They just can’t figure out why it’s so hard.