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this website how hyperparenting trap. It also shows how it hurts the kids.

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Among different types of parenting styles, hyper-parenting has become a bigger trend in the past few years as life in general has become more competitive. According to Exploring Your Mind, hyper-parenting is the result of an educational model that is mainly seen in affluent societies.

The article says that the trend emerged in the United States, where competitiveness prevails. Parents in the US feel strong pressure to make sure their children are successful in life, so strong that some parents go so far as to reserve a spot in an elite preschool even before the child is born, and just a little later on start to secure a place in an Ivy League university.

quotes Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, who graduated from Cornell University and Harvard University medical school, who says that hyper-parenting keeps children away from the fun things in life.

This type of parent often worries about their child's life when there is actually nothing to worry about.

Meanwhile, Dr. Terri Apter, a psychologist, writer and former senior tutor at Newnham College, Cambridge, was quoted as saying that parents have to maximize the potential of their children from an early age so that they will not become disappointed in the future.

The Education and Culture Ministry's Forum Sahabat Keluarga (Family's Best Friend Forum) lists six negative effects of hyper-parenting.
Children grow to be socially awkward
Nurul Mufidah and Muhammad Rifqi, in their research titled "Hyper-parenting effects toward child's personality in Stephen King's novel Carrie ", point out a number of hyper-parenting's negative effects. Children who have been nurtured by those parents may have low self-confidence, become less independent, give up easily, and feel anxious and scared of their outside world. "They may also become socially awkward," wrote the researchers.
Emotionally rigid and difficult to control
The two researchers also write that hyper-parenting may cause children to become emotionally rigid and difficult to control. A child who is also burdened with many rules and tasks will have his or her energy drained, which may affect health.
Lower physical activity
Ian Janssen from the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, Queen's University Canada, conducted a survey towards 724 North American parents of 7 to 12 year olds. The survey assessed the parents' engagement in various hyper-parenting styles (helicopter, little emperor, tiger mom and concerted cultivation) and their children's frequency of playing outdoors, walking or bicycling and playing organized sports.

Hyper-parenting styles, the survey found, are associated with lower physical activity among 7 to 12 year olds, whereas according to the World Health Organization ( WHO), children and youths aged 5 to 17 should accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous daily physical activity.

The required physical activity is important to improve cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, bone health and cardiovascular and metabolic health biomarkers.

Read also: Parenting is never easy and this is what I've learned so far
Overly obedient and prone to depression
Parents' habit of directing their children can create youths that are too obedient and thus unable to develop their talents and potential. Many tasks from parents and rules that limit their activity may potentially pressure them and lead to depression.
Becoming an easy target for bullying
Stanford Dean and Julie Lythcott-Haims in the book How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success wrote that children who are not given enough freedom by their parents can become easy targets for bullying, whether at school or in the neighborhood.

Bullying happens when a child fails to communicate well with his or her peers. Meanwhile, rules and tasks that are given by [hyper-parenting] parents may preoccupy the child. It slowly pulls the child away from his or her social circle, causing a negative effect on his or her communication with peers.
Prone to diseases
Hyper-parenting is also associated with limitations for children in enjoying outdoor activities. Hyper-parented children are often not allowed to play in nature as parents are worried that the place is too dirty. On the other hand, research published in Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found that children who live in a relatively sterile environment are more prone to allergies and asthma.

Dr. Todd A. Mahr, who specializes in allergy and immunology and pediatrics, said parents may think their children need to be healthy, so they overly protect children from dirt, dust and fungi. However, dirt is part of a child's immune system development. When parents create a sterile environment for children, they may in fact be making the children more susceptible to diseases. (mut)

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Among different types of parenting styles, hyper-parenting has become a bigger trend in the past few years as life in general has become more competitive. According to Exploring Your Mind, hyper-parenting is the result of an educational model that is mainly seen in affluent societies.

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This website explains how youth sports prevent stress, and boos self-esteem. This website is perfect for a counter claim

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Organized, well-structured youth sports and on-going physical activities can provide many benefits for children and adolescents. Positive experiences that sports and an active lifestyle bring play an important role in a young person's life.

At University of Missouri Health Care, our adolescent medicine team encourages all children to participate in sports or other regular physical activity. Physical exercise is good for the mind, body and spirit. Team sports help teach adolescents accountability, dedication, leadership and other skills.

Many athletes do better academically

Playing a sport requires a lot of time and energy. Some people may think this would distract student-athletes from schoolwork. However, the opposite is true. Sports require memorization, repetition and learning - skillsets that are directly relevant to class work. Also, the determination and goal-setting skills a sport requires can be transferred to the classroom.

Sports teach teamwork and problem-solving skills

Fighting for a common goal with a group of players and coaches teaches you how to build teamwork and effectively communicate to solve problems. This experience is helpful when encountering problems at work or at home.

Physical health benefits of sports

Clearly, sports can help you reach your fitness goals and maintain a healthy weight. However, they also encourage healthy decision-making such as not smoking and not drinking. Sports also have hidden health benefits such as lowering the chance of osteoporosis or breast cancer later in life.

Sports boost self-esteem

Watching your hard work pay off and achieving your goals develops self-confidence. Achieving a sport or fitness goal encourages you to achieve other goals you set. This is a rewarding and exciting learning process.

Reduce pressure and stress with sports

Exercising is a natural way to loosen up and let go of stress. You can also make new friends who can be there for you as a support system. When you feel under pressure or stressed, call up a teammate, head to the gym to talk and play it out.

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At MU Health Care, we encourage all children to participate in sports or other regular physical activity. Learn why sports benefit adolescents.

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one of the many anxiety in sports examples

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picture of parent screaming at kid playing soccer

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picture of parent screaming at kid playing soccer

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how kids are being harassed by their couches and parents on an d off the field.

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anxiety in america in teens
picture 2018

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anxiety in america in teens
picture 2018

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shows the stress is hurting kids

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website for if school sports are too stressful

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website for if school sports are too stressful

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this website how balancing school and sports is very difficult and how it can cause stress

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Sport psychologists have used a variety of approaches to measure the levels of stress experienced by young athletes. Several studies used telemetry (sending a radio signal to a receiver) to record children's physiological responses in different sport situations. These studies have shown that high levels of arousal can occur. For example, heart rates averaging nearly 170 beats-per-minute have been recorded in male Little League Baseball players while they were at bat.

Another approach has been to ask young athletes to fill out questionnaires assessing how anxious they are at a particular moment. In a series of studies conducted at UCLA, Drs. Tara Scanlan and Michael Passer obtained anxiety ratings from boys and girls immediately before and after soccer matches. They found that most children reported rather low levels of anxiety at both points in time. However, about 20% of the kids reported high levels of stress before the game, and many of them reported high anxiety after games that their teams had lost.
How stressful are sports compared with other activities in which children participate?
To answer this important question, Drs. Julie Simon and Rainer Martens obtained anxiety ratings from 9- to 14-year-old boys before they performed in different activities, including individual and team sports, school tests, and playing an instrument in a music contest. The researchers found that none of the sports they studied aroused as much anxiety as music solos. Moreover, wrestling was the only sport that was more anxiety-arousing than classroom tests in school. Of the various sports studied, individual sports caused the highest levels of pre-event anxiety. But, like the UCLA researchers, Simon and Martens reported that some of the young athletes experienced extremely high levels of stress before competing, regardless of the sport.
So what's the verdict? Are youth sports too stressful?
Taken together, research results suggest that sport participation is not exceedingly stressful for most children, especially in comparison with other activities in which children have their performance evaluated. But it is equally clear that the sport setting is capable of producing high levels of stress for many of the 68 million youngsters who play sports in the United States. If, as some authorities have emphasized, only 5-10% of the participants experience excessive stress, this would involve a huge number of children and adolescents. Instead of finding athletic competition enjoyable and challenging, these young athletes undoubtedly endure anxiety and discomfort, which can have harmful psychological, behavioral, and health-related effects.
How can you tell if a young athlete is overly stressed?
A little nervousness before competition is a perfectly normal part of athletic competition. On the other hand, extremely high levels of stress can destroy enjoyment and performance. Warning signs of excessive stress include the following:

Disturbed sleep patterns.

Physical maladies like headaches, upset stomach, or skin problems.

Consistent inability to perform as well in competition as during practices.

Desire to avoid the sport situation or to quit.

When these kinds of symptoms appear, parents should intervene and attempt to help their kids to cope with sport-related anxiety.
How can you help to combat sport-related anxiety in young athletes?

The Mastery Approach to Parenting in Sports is a research-based video that emphasizes skill development, achieving personal and team success, giving maximum effort, and having fun. It includes a segment that's designed to assist parents in teaching coping skills to their kids.

To access the video, go to the Youth Enrichment in Sports website.

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Sport psychologists have used a variety of approaches to measure the levels of stress experienced by young athletes. Several studies used telemetry (sending a radio signal to a receiver) to record children's physiological responses in different sport situations. These studies have shown that high levels of arousal can occur.

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this website explains how to recover and/or prevent a burnout from happening. Also shows the signs of burnout also.

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Burnout is a state of mental and physical exhaustion that can zap the joy out of your career, friendships, and family interactions. Continual exposure to stressful situations, like caring for an ill family member, working long hours, or witnessing upsetting news related to politics and school safety can lead to this stress condition.

Burnout, however, isn't always easy to spot. With that in mind, we've put together a guide to help you identify the signs of burnout, as well as ways to prevent it.

Interested in helping friends, family members, or co-workers who may be experiencing this stressful state? We've also included a list of our favorite burnout intervention tips and tricks.

Coined by the psychologist, Herbert Freudenberger in the 1970s, burnout describes a severe stress condition that leads to severe physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion.

Much worse than ordinary fatigue, burnout makes it challenging for people to cope with stress and handle day-to-day responsibilities.

People experiencing burnout often feel like they have nothing left to give and may dread getting out of bed each morning. They may even adopt a pessimistic outlook toward life and feel hopeless.

Burnout doesn't go away on its own and, if left untreated, it can lead to serious physical and psychological illnesses like depression, heart disease, and diabetes.

Anyone who's continually exposed to high levels of stress can experience burnout. Helping professionals, such as first responders, doctors, and nurses are especially vulnerable to this health condition.

Along with career-induced burnout, people caring for children can also have this type of extreme exhaustion. A recent study found that, just like doctors and business executives, mothers and fathers can also burn out.

Personality characteristics like needing to be in control, perfectionism, and being "Type A" can also increase your risk of burnout.

Worried that you may be experiencing burnout but unsure of the signs? We've compiled a list of symptoms that you can use as a guide.

Exhaustion. Feeling physically and emotionally depleted. Physical symptoms may include headaches, stomachaches, and appetite or sleeping changes.

Isolation. People with burnout tend to feel overwhelmed. As a result, they may stop socializing and confiding in friends, family members, and co-workers.

Escape fantasies. Dissatisfied with the never-ending demands of their jobs, people with burnout may fantasize about running away or going on a solo-vacation. In extreme cases, they may turn to drugs, alcohol, or food as a way to numb their emotional pain.

Irritability. Burnout can cause people to lose their cool with friends, co-workers, and family members more easily. Coping with normal stressors like preparing for a work meeting, driving kids to school, and tending to household tasks also may start to feel insurmountable, especially when things don't go as planned.

Frequent illnesses. Burnout, like other long-term stress, can lower your immune system, making you more susceptible to colds, the flu, and insomnia. Burnout can also lead to mental health concerns like depression and anxiety.

Unlike a cold or the flu, burnout doesn't hit all at once.

Psychologists Herbert Freudenberger and Gail North have outlined the syndrome:

1. Excessive drive/ambition. Common for people starting a new job or undertaking a novel task, too much ambition can lead to burnout.

2. Pushing yourself to work harder. Ambition pushes you to work harder.

3. Neglecting your own needs. You begin to sacrifice self-care like sleep, exercise, and eating well.

4. Displacement of conflict. Instead of acknowledging that you're pushing yourself to the max, you blame your boss, the demands of your job, or colleagues for your troubles.

5. No time for nonwork-related needs. You begin to withdraw from family and friends. Social invitations to parties, movies, and dinner dates start to feel burdensome, instead of enjoyable.

6. Denial. Impatience with those around you mounts. Instead of taking responsibility for your behaviors, you blame others, seeing them as incompetent, lazy, and overbearing.

7. Withdrawal. You begin to withdraw from family and friends. Social invitations to parties, movies, and dinner dates start to feel burdensome, instead of enjoyable.

8. Behavioral changes. Those on the road to burnout may become more aggressive and snap at loved ones for no reason.

9. Depersonalization. Feeling detached from your life and your ability to control your life.

10. Inner emptiness or anxiety. Feeling empty or anxious. You may turn to thrill seeking behaviors to cope with this emotion, such as substance use, gambling, or overeating.

11. Depression. Life loses its meaning and you begin to feel hopeless.

12. Mental or physical collapse. This can impact your ability to cope. Mental health or medical attention may be necessary.

Stress may be unavoidable, but burnout is preventable. Following these steps may help you thwart stress from getting the best of you:
Exercise
Not only is exercise good for our physical health, but it can also give us an emotional boost.

Stretched for time? You don't need to spend hours at the gym to reap these benefits. Mini-workouts and short walks are convenient ways to make exercise a daily habit.
Eat a balanced diet
Eating a healthy diet filled with omega-3 fatty acids can be a natural antidepressant. Adding foods rich in omega-3s like flaxseed oil, walnuts, and fish may help give your mood a boost.
Practice good sleep habits
Our bodies need time to rest and reset, which is why healthy sleep habits are essential for our well-being.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, avoiding caffeine before bedtime, establishing a relaxing bedtime ritual, and banning smartphones from the bedroom can help promote sound sleep hygiene.
Ask for help
During stressful times, it's important to reach out for help. If asking for assistance feels difficult, consider developing a self-care "check-in" with close friends and family members so that you can take care of each other during trying times.

How can you help someone experiencing burnout? While you can't take away someone's stress, offering support can help lighten their emotional load.
Listen
Before jumping into "fixing" mode, offer to listen to your friend or family member's difficulties.

Having someone to talk to can make a world of difference. Often people need someone to witness their stress and suffering, and listening can go a long way.
Validate feelings and concerns
When friends and family members are feeling the effects of burnout, saying It doesn't sound that bad or I'm sure things will get better - while meant to offer reassurance - can feel invalidating if someone is really feeling low and hopeless.

Instead, offer validation by saying, "You've been working so hard, I can understand why you feel depleted."
Offer specific types of help
Individuals who are burnt out are often too tired to think of ways that others can help them. Instead of asking, "How can I help?" offer to drop off a meal, pick up dry cleaning, or do a load of laundry.
Kind gestures
Sending flowers, a thoughtful text message, or a written card can remind friends and family members that they're not alone.

Because they're often working long hours, people with burnout can feel lonely and underappreciated. But small gestures of kindness can be nurturing.
Research resources
If friends or family members need additional support, like childcare, a house cleaner, or a psychotherapist, offer to research and crowdsource for specific resources to help ease the stress.

Being exposed to continual stress can cause us to burnout. Feelings of exhaustion, anxiety, and isolating from friends and family members can be some of the signs. However, eating a balanced diet, regular exercise, and getting a good night's sleep may prevent this stressed state.

Worried about friends and family members who may be burnt out? Listening to their concerns, validating their emotions, and offering specific types of support can help lighten the load.

Burnout can be avoided by making self-care part of your daily routine. Even if you're working long hours, studying for exams, or taking care of young children, remember to sprinkle some joy into each day.

Try going for a walk, talking to a friend, or watching an enjoyable program on television. Small self-care gestures like these can stop stress from turning into something more serious, like burnout.
Juli Fraga is a licensed psychologist based in San Francisco, California. She graduated with a PsyD from University of Northern Colorado and attended a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley. Passionate about women's health, she approaches all her sessions with warmth, honesty, and compassion. See what she's up to on .

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Burnout is a state of mental and physical exhaustion that can zap the joy out of your career, friendships, and family interactions. Burnout isn't always easy to spot. With that in mind, we've put together a guide to help you identify the signs of burnout, ways to prevent it, and how to help friends and family.

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This website also shows how to avoid burn out in sports

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Personal Health

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Credit Credit Caroline Gamon

Few would dispute the value to children of participating in sports, organized or otherwise. Being physically active and engaged in friendly competition is widely acknowledged to be good for children's physical, mental and social well-being. It can foster discipline, cooperation and camaraderie as well as a good time.

When I was growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s and '50s, we were free to play games and sports that we chose or devised. We picked teams, made the rules and enforced them ourselves. No officials monitored our activities and no adults oversaw or commented on how well or poorly we played. Sure, there were occasional spats, but we learned how to resolve them on our own and get back to having fun.

But the concept of free play has since yielded to adult-controlled games and hopes for glory among many of today's parents. The way youth sports is promoted in many parts of the country these days can be anything but good for the children who engage in them, according to leading experts who described their findings at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons in March.

Today, adults are most often the organizers and enforcers of youth sports, and too often they get in the way of their children's best interests, these experts say.

Many parents encourage specialization in a given sport in which their children, often at very young ages, seem to show an interest or aptitude. Notions of college scholarships or professional glory often dance in the backs - or fronts - of parental minds, with some uprooting the entire family to give their kids a leg up.

As Dr. Charles A. Popkin, pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Columbia University Medical Center, said at the meeting, "Sadly, what parents want and what parents hope to gain from their children's participation in youth sports is often at a significant extreme to what the kids actually want."

"Healthy competition is becoming unhealthy," the orthopedics organization maintains. "More and more young athletes under the age of 12 are focusing on just one sport, and training year-round." The American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine defines specialization in youth sports "as engaging in a sport for at least three seasons a year at the exclusion of other sports."

Too often, Dr. Popkin and his associates at Columbia and medical centers elsewhere find themselves treating the fallout from early sports specialization when the participants develop overuse injuries.

Dr. Mininder S. Kocher, pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Children's Hospital Boston and another of the conference's speakers, told me, "I've been doing Tommy John surgery" - an elbow reconstruction procedure often associated with professional baseball players - "on more and more kids" who damaged their arms by pitching for too many hours in too many games and practices.

In a prospective study of nearly 12,000 youngsters with highly accurate histories of sports-related injuries, Dr. Kocher and colleagues found that early specialization in baseball, cheerleading and gymnastics increased the risk of injury among boys, and specialization in running, swimming, soccer and volleyball, as well as cheerleading and gymnastics, increased the injury risk among girls.

The injuries, reported by their mothers, all of whom are registered nurses, included stress fractures, tendinitis and knee injuries like tears of the anterior cruciate ligament, or A.C.L., that require surgical repair.

"Intense and repetitive training can lead to pediatric trauma and may require surgery to young shoulders, knees, elbows and wrists," the orthopedic surgeons' organization reported. It noted that in children whose bodies are still growing and developing, excessive training in a single sport does not give them enough time to heal properly.

Dr. Kocher said in an interview that children who grow up in the northern United States are more likely to become major league baseball players than kids from the South because they can't play their sport year-round and are less likely to be injured.

But even when not injured, youngsters pressured to become star athletes often burn out and drop out, sometimes from sports altogether, Dr. Kocher said.

"Children who specialize in one sport early in life were found to be the first to quit their sport and ended up having higher inactivity rates as an adult," Dr. Popkin reported, based on findings of the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine.

He emphasized that "parental influence on sports specialization can be profound" and counterproductive if it doesn't mesh with the child's goals and interests. If children are to be successful at a sport, the drive to specialize and succeed must be intrinsic, of their own choosing.

"If they lack an intrinsic drive, if they're not having fun, they'll likely become frustrated and quit," he said. "When parents hire personal trainers and coaches, there's an expectation of success that can create a pressure-cooker scenario and lead to burnout." In a survey of 201 parents of young athletes, 57 percent hoped their children would play in college or professionally, Dr. Popkin reported.

In his study of 303 college athletes, 98 percent currently playing one sport had previously played another organized sport before college. They didn't begin to specialize until they were nearly 15, on average. He noted that Mariano Rivera, considered the best closing pitcher in baseball history, had played soccer, his favorite sport as a youth, before focusing on baseball in his late teens.

"You want kids playing sports through life," Dr. Popkin said. "There are lots of benefits to later sports specialization, at some point in high school. The more sports kids play, the better they learn adaptability. They learn how to learn."

It's also important, he said, for kids to cross-train by doing multiple sports so that "they develop whole-body skills like balance, quickness and core strength" that can enhance their overall athletic ability.

Dr. Popkin said that with the exception of a few individual sports like gymnastics, tennis and fencing, kids do better if they specialize later. In his study of college athletes, only 18 percent reported specializing by age 12. Forty-five percent played multiple sports up to age 16, and there were no early specializers among those who played football, lacrosse or field hockey.

It's a myth, Dr. Popkin said, that athletes who got college athletic scholarships or became professionals in most sports began specializing at early ages. "Early sports specialization is uncommon among N.C.A.A. Division 1 athletes for most team sports," he reported.

His suggestions to parents: "Expose your children to as many activities as possible and support what they like. But if they're doing more hours of a sport a week than their age in years, they're overdoing it.

"A couple of months of the year, encourage them to do something else. If they play soccer, they could switch off to tennis; if they play hockey, they could try the track team. Cross-training helps their bodies and can keep them from burning out."

This is the first of two columns on youth sports safety.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D5 of the New York edition with the headline: How to Avoid Burnout in Youth Sports. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Personal Health Few would dispute the value to children of participating in sports, organized or otherwise. Being physically active and engaged in friendly competition is widely acknowledged to be good for children's physical, mental and social well-being. It can foster discipline, cooperation and camaraderie as well as a good time.

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when parents pressure their kids to much

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These days, residents of different countries often drink the same coffee, buy clothes from the same retailers and use the same social media apps. Globalization has erased many traditional differences around the world. But when it comes to parenting, habits still vary from country to country to a startling degree.
Matthias Doepke is a professor of economics at Northwestern University. Fabrizio Zilibotti is the Tuntex professor of international and developmental economics at Yale University. They are co-authors of "Love, Money and Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids."
In many American circles, "helicopter parents" monitor their children's every move, and outliers who let their kids walk home from the playground on their own risk rebuke by local police. Meanwhile, in Switzerland, even kindergartners walk to school without adult supervision. And Sweden and Germany offer popular "forest kindergartens," where children stay outdoors in nearly all weather, playing and exploring with minimal adult guidance. In those countries, unlike in U.S. classrooms, early literacy and numeracy are not part of the curriculum, even in regular preschools; teachers emphasize play and crafts instead. In China, by contrast, strict parenting is a much-discussed part of national life - and was the subject of a hugely popular television series, " Tiger Mom."

Discussions of differences like these often focus on culture. China's Confucian tradition, for instance, emphasizes respect for elders, which some observers suggest could be one influence on authoritarian parenting. But we have found in our research that varying parenting styles among nations are rooted primarily in economics - specifically, economic inequality. The common denominator in countries where intense, achievement-oriented parenting abounds is a large gap between the rich and the poor. Conversely, where inequality is low and governments provide safety nets, a more relaxed, permissive parenting style holds sway.

That suggests that to reduce the epidemic of hypercompetitive and overinvolved parenting in the United States, simply exhorting people to be more laid back won't work. The only solution is to attack the problem at the root: by combating inequality.

We have experienced some of the differences in parenting cultures firsthand. Matthias Doepke is raising his three boys in Evanston, Ill. There, as in other upper-middle-class enclaves in the United States, it is common to sign up 3-year-olds for classical-music lessons following the Suzuki method, which requires parents to attend all classes and practice frequently with the kids. When his youngest was choosing an instrument, a teacher recommended the viola, on the utilitarian grounds that it's easier to get a viola scholarship to college than a violin scholarship -which people found amazing. It was a different story for Fabrizio Zilibotti, who raised his daughter in Sweden for her first few years. When he signed her up for piano lessons with a demanding Eastern European teacher at age 5, many of his Swedish friends frowned, arguing that kids should not be pushed too hard. (The Dutch, for their part, have a saying that captures the idea that parenting shouldn't be about creating super-achievers: "Just be normal. That's already crazy enough.")

One way to analyze cross-cultural parenting differences like these would be to look at the time that parents spend directly helping their children with various tasks. American parents now spend two hours per week helping kids with their homework; Dutch parents less than half as much. But differences in survey methodology across countries make such comparisons difficult.

Instead, for our investigation, we used beliefs about the values that should be instilled in children as a proxy for parenting styles. That's because strict or laid-back practices flow from ideas about the purposes of parenting. The World Values Survey, which periodically queries thousands of respondents in almost 100 countries about their attitudes on a wide range of matters, includes a question asking parents to select up to five values, from a list of 10, that they regard as most important for rearing children. We placed nations on an intensive-permissive parenting continuum based on their relative rankings of "hard work," "obedience," "imagination" and "independence."

In the United States, about two-thirds of parents include hard work on the list of top values to instill in children; in Sweden, only about 11 percent of parents place hard work that high. This lines up with differences in economic inequality: In the United States, households in the top 20 percent of the income distribution earn on average almost nine times more than households in the bottom 20 percent. In Sweden, the top quintile earns 4.3 times more than the bottom.

China is perhaps the epitome of the high-inequality, high-intensity-parenting nation. Partly confirming the stereotype of the "tiger mom" - a term often applied to Asian American mothers but widely used in China, too - 90 percent of Chinese parents, even more than in the United States, place hard work among the most important values to pass along to children. Our research suggests that's because economic inequality is higher still in China than in the United States: The income ratio between the top and bottom fifth of households exceeds 9.5.

Japan serves as an interesting test for our thesis, since it shares some cultural characteristics with China (both countries are influenced by Buddhist and Confucian traditions), yet it's more economically egalitarian. In Japan, the economic inequality ratio is higher than in Sweden but lower than in China and the United States. Indeed, Japan's parenting attitudes, as reflected in the World Values Survey, are closer to those in culturally remote Germany and the Netherlands than to China's.

Across all postindustrial economies, in fact, we found that the share of parents emphasizing "hard work" lines up remarkably consistently with the degree of economic inequality.

It's easy to see why. If inequality is low and schools in different areas of the country are roughly the same caliber (these two things often go hand in hand, though not always), children's grades won't do much to shape their future material comfort; the kids will enjoy a similar standard of living whether or not they achieve high marks. Parents are more likely to conclude that happiness lies in finding a career suited to one's personality and interests, and encourage creative exploration toward discovering that niche.

But if inequality is high, parents will perceive that their children must outpace their peers to be comfortable in the future. The importance of achievement rises.

Many parents probably find something to like in both approaches to parenting, the hard-driving and the permissive. But the data suggests that people believe they must pick one or the other: Countries that embrace "imagination" as a goal downgrade "hard work," and vice versa.

Admittedly, the correlation we're describing doesn't prove that economic differences shape parenting styles. It could be, for instance, that cultural aspects drive both parenting and the design of policies and institutions that determine inequality. But the economic explanation looks more persuasive when you see that the relationship between inequality and parenting also holds within countries over time, not just among countries.

Many people who grew up in America in the 1970s remember a low-pressure childhood with a lot more freedom and independence than today's kids enjoy. Data backs up those impressions. In 1969, 41 percent of American children biked or walked to school, a figure that had dropped to about 18 percent by 2014. In 2017, according to the American Time Use Survey, a typical American parent spent close to twice as much time each week interacting with their children as parents did in the late 1970s (almost 28 hours for both parents in 2017, up from 14 hours in 1976). And education-oriented activities grew the fastest.

These changes put a significant burden on parents. The numbers are even more striking when you consider that, in 1976, mothers were far less likely to be in the workforce than in 2017, which means that parents today are working more and doing more hands-on parenting.

Forget about the free-range kids. Children in America still are not safe enough.

I am a die-hard liberal. It ruined my parenting.

Stop telling parents not to coddle children. You would not like the alternative.

Those changes track trends in inequality: In the United States, a household with two college-educated earners in the late 1970s made about $30,000 more (adjusted for inflation) each year than a household with two high-school-educated earners. By 2010, the gap had become a chasm: nearly $60,000 a year.

In most advanced economies, both inequality and the intensity of parenting have been on the rise since the 1980s. And the popularity of intensive parenting has grown the most in countries where inequality has increased the fastest. The exceptions are intriguing, too: Income inequality has declined in Turkey and Spain - and in both countries, the percentage of parents endorsing "hard work" as a crucial value for children has gone down.

When parenting becomes an arms race, the rich have a clear advantage - another problem in countries that embrace the intensive style. Obviously, when you're holding down two or three jobs, you have less time to drill your kids on math, and you may not have access to tutors, test prep and private coaches. It's a vicious circle: Inequality leads to the rise of competitive parenting, which further exacerbates inequality for the next generation. We're seeing that play out in the United States.

You might think that, above a certain income level, there would be diminishing returns for competitive parenting. Once you have an excellent school (probably in an expensive neighborhood), SAT tutors, music lessons and select sports leagues, aren't the boxes of intensive parenting checked off? But American inequality has been particularly pronounced at the top, with larger and larger shares of income going to the top 1 or even 0.1 percent of earners, so even parents near the peak of the income scale feel inequality's pressures. The desire to push children one rung higher is relentless. Indeed, since the 1980s, couples with more money and more education have increased the time and money spent on their children at a much faster rate than others.

Many Americans lament the rise of the hovering, overinvolved parent and the loss of unscheduled free time for young people, but our analysis suggests that simply preaching the virtues of less-frantic child-rearing practices in faraway places will not do much to ease pressure on parents here. We should instead address the causes: We ought to create policies and institutions that push back against rising inequality by offering children paths to success that aren't overly shaped by grades and class rank.

We can look abroad for examples of such measures. They range from free day care, to more equal funding of primary and secondary schools, to investments in vocational training and apprenticeship programs. With the right institutions in place, parenting culture will adjust. Change the economic incentives, and the helicopter parent phenomenon will fade away.

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The greater the income inequality in a country, the likelier parents there are to push their kids to work hard.

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These days, residents of different countries often drink the same coffee, buy clothes from the same retailers and use the same social media apps. Globalization has erased many traditional differences around the world. But when it comes to parenting, habits still vary from country to country to a startling degree.

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This ted talk presents many facts about burn out and hyper parenting which ultimately translates into stress and anxiety

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Changing the game in youth sports: John O'Sullivan at TEDxBend

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shows how many kids as they get older burn out under pressure and quit the sport they used to love

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Avoiding Athlete Burnout in Youth Sports - Craig Sigl

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this shows what burnout can do to you

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Shows how some parents take kid sports to far, and how they scream at them for doing something wrong