JUST PUBLISHED: Parenting in the age of anxiety: how to raise resilient kids in a worried world

What’s the most important job you can ever have?

It’s a job with no qualifications, no training and no interview. You will not apply for it through LinkedIn. It doesn’t come with a salary—quite the opposite, in fact. You pay dearly for the privilege, and once you start, you can never retire. Do it well and no one will thank you; get it wrong and you will be criticised, sometimes harshly, by your own ‘clients’. You will probably begin with a partner, but in the end you are largely on your own. Nothing can prepare you for what it will do to you emotionally. And despite everything you learn along the way, you are unlikely ever to put it on your CV.

Yes. The job is parenting.

As the father of five children—now aged between twenty-five and fifty-one—I have huge sympathy for the growing number of young adults deciding not to have children, or to stop at one. If I were twenty-three again, I doubt I would rush into parenthood with the same eagerness I did in the early 1970s. Back then I had something that protected me: innocence. There’s very little of that around today, sadly.

I married at twenty-one. I was callow, optimistic, broke and inexperienced, with no qualifications to speak of—just energy and determination. My wife hadn’t been to university either, but we both worked. We could afford a home. We could start a family. That naivety turned out to be an asset. It stopped me overthinking everything that might go wrong—with my marriage, my children, my future. And in the end, most of it worked out. Mostly. Of my five children, I have close relationships with three. Three out of five. Not terrible. Not perfect either.

I was also lucky. Born in the north of England in 1949, I benefited from the NHS, the welfare state, free education and plentiful jobs. I grew up without social media, without the internet, without constant global alarm. I never went to war. The most military action I saw was two months in the Boy Scouts! I remember the first package holidays to Spain. I remember getting our first black-and-white television at eight years old. I was born at the right time, in the right place.

Can today’s children say the same?

Many cannot. Childhood innocence has been replaced by awareness, pressure and anxiety. By sixteen, all I cared about was playing the guitar with my friends—it was the 1960s, I was born in Liverpool, and The Beatles were everywhere. No one trolled me. No one compared my body, my grades or my popularity to thousands of others online. Climate catastrophe was not a daily headline. I did my homework—when there was any—and played outside. I failed my 11-plus and shrugged. University barely crossed my mind. Most of my friends were working by sixteen.

Today’s children live very different lives. We now inhabit an Age of Anxiety—and we are raising the Anxious Child.

Children are growing up too fast. Concentration is fragile. Depression, anger and emotional dysregulation are increasingly common. One driver is relentless pressure to succeed. Across the world, education systems have become unforgiving treadmills. Even in parts of South East Asia, children endure hours of schoolwork, private tuition, weekend classes and exam stress. Childhood is treated as an investment with anxiety replacing play. Anxious parents create anxious children.

It’s no surprise, then, that many young people are regularly absenting themselves from the school, or dropping out altogether. In China, the ‘lying flat’ movement reflects disengagement from a system that feels stacked against them. In Japan, around 1.5 million young people are now classed as hikikomori, withdrawing almost entirely from society. Suicide is the leading cause of death among South Korean adolescents. In Vietnam, one in five young people is diagnosed with a mental health condition. In the UK, around one in five children has a probable mental health disorder. In the US, one in five high school students seriously considered suicide last year.

This is the context in which parents are trying to do their best. Parenting has never been easy, but today it requires more emotional awareness, restraint and courage than ever before. If we want less anxious children, we must start by becoming less anxious parents.

Based on my own successes and failures, here are some tips for parenting in the Age of Anxiety.

• Anxious, angry parents tend to raise anxious, angry children. The world may be chaotic, but home should be a place of calm, love and honest communication.
• Once your child has a smartphone, innocence starts leaking away. Delay it as long as you can. When it arrives, supervise it. Treat the device like a stranger in the house.
• Talk to your child about everything—sex, relationships, consent, drugs, social media, body image. Start earlier than you think you need to.
• Your child is not there to fulfil your unrealised ambitions. Do not push them to ‘be the best’. Talk about different kinds of success and stress that happiness matters more than status or wealth.
• Your child has their own developing identity. Give them space to discover who they are, including around gender and sexuality. You guide—you do not decide.
• Education matters, but it is not a cure-all. Children need time to play, exercise, socialise and experience nature. Over-scheduling kills joy.
• Do not constantly criticise. It does not motivate; it damages.
• Equally, do not constantly praise. Getting things wrong matters. Praise effort, learning and resilience—not perfection.
• Time is your most precious resource. Protect it. Spend one-to-one time with your child without distractions.
• Physical affection matters, especially from fathers. Hug them. Be tactile. Show love, not just say it.
• Do not hide the world from your child. Overprotection creates adults ill-equipped for reality. Share information honestly and calmly.
• Encourage critical thinking. Do not force ideologies—religious or otherwise. Invite discussion. Admit when you do not know the answer.
• Make sure your child knows you are always there. Say it. Mean it.
• Model emotional intelligence and empathy. Children learn this by watching you.
• Be aware of your own prejudices. Children either inherit them—or reject you because of them.
• Encourage reading—real books. Talk about them together. Make reading normal.
• Encourage creativity for joy, not achievement: music, writing, art.
• Get children moving. Walking, running, playing—physical activity supports mental health.
• Do not promise what you cannot deliver. Trust matters more than treats.
• Do not aim to be a perfect parent or raise a perfect child. Aim for love, patience and honesty.
• Parenting must evolve. Total control works for babies, not adults. By 18, you should be moving towards a Parent-Pal relationship.
• The greatest gift you can give your child is not money or property but self-love. If they enter adulthood with that, you have done your job.