This story in the New Yorker, about “over-parenting,” made me think of the possibilities and virtues of Taoist parenting, which I have contemplated here.  This excerpt provides some idea of the problem of overbearing parents:

  Finally comes the Last Judgment: college applications. Admissions
officers, it is said, don’t know what to make of application forms
these days—many of them have so clearly been filled out by someone
other than the applicant. If the parents don’t feel up to the job, they
can turn to IvyWise, a service that, for a fee ranging from three
thousand to forty thousand dollars, gives students a course in
how to get into college. IvyWise’s offerings include “Application Boot
Camp,” on how to complete the forms, and “Essay Writing Workshop,” on
how to get the application essay into “optimal shape for submission.”
Careful parents don’t have to wait for application time, however.
IvyWise will also advise high-school freshmen and sophomores on which
courses and extracurricular activities to choose, so that two or three
years later, when the application process begins, they won’t make the
awful discovery that they have been spending their time on classes and
clubs that will not please admissions committees.

    Parents filling out their child’s college applications…pathetic. And this comes after all sorts of micro-parenting (how’s that for a neologism!), getting down into every detail of a kid’s life.

     While Chuang Tzu and the Tao Te Ching say almost nothing explicit about parenting, the sensibilities of these texts would push against too much adult intervention in the lives of children.   Making that real in modern life is a difficult thing – parents are, after all, responsible for what their children do or do not do.  But as a general proposition it is well worth keeping mind (especially with teenagers!): let them make their own choices, their own mistakes, their own ways.  Yes, we have to try to keep certain bad things from happening, but we cannot make children something they are not or cannot be.  Indeed, passage 51 of the Tao Te Ching might be taken as parenting advice:

Way gives birth to them and Integrity nurtures them.

Matter shapes them
and conditions complete them.

That is why the ten thousand things always
honor Way and treasure Integrity.

Honoring Way and treasuring Integrity
isn’t obedience to command,
it’s occurrence perennially appearing of itself.

Way gives birth to them
and Integrity nurtures them:
it fosters and sustains them,
harbors and succors them,
nourishes and shelters them.

Giving birth without possessing,
animating without subjecting,
fostering without dominating:
that is called dark-enigma Integrity.

     This suggests that parents are almost unnecessary.  Children are born of Way and nurtured by Integrity, the unique characteristics that inhere in them and interact with others in Way.  Of course, just like the idea of wu-wei, or doing nothing, we needn’t take this as absolute.  Perhaps it is not telling us that parents should do nothing when in comes to raising and guiding their children; rather it is suggesting that parents might want to do less in terms of imposing expectations and demands on their kids.  Less can be better.  Or, to refer to the elegant Tao Te Ching text, parents might want to remember: Giving birth without possessing, animating without subjecting, fostering without dominating….