Many young people are obsessed with the need to be perfect. For example, high school and college students might demand perfection with respect to their bodies or athletic performances. Most commonly, they feel they must get perfect grades. Anything less makes them miserable. Researchers have found that perfectionism has grown in recent decades and produces considerable distress in about 25 to 30 percent of high school students.
What has caused this problem? Many social scientists point to social media, where young people try to present ideal images of themselves. This does seem to be a contributing factor. But the drive for perfection increased before social media became so popular with the young. The rise in perfectionism coincided with something else: the growth of the standards movement in education.
This movement began in the late 1970s and sounded its call to action in a 1983 federal report, “A Nation at Risk.” The report said that if our schools didn’t raise their academic standards, our students wouldn’t be prepared for the increasingly technological workplace, and our country would lose its economic pre-eminence.
Noting that “history is not kind to idlers,” the report warned parents that their children must pour themselves into their schoolwork. Otherwise, they wouldn’t enjoy a productive future.
Political leaders and educational policy-makers agreed that our nation’s future was at risk, and our schools steadily increased academic demands. Today, even kindergartens and some preschools are largely academic. Many kindergartens assign homework, which becomes substantial in elementary schools.
As a developmental psychologist focusing on childhood and adolescence, I have talked to numerous parents and have found that they share the standards movement’s anxiety about the future. Most often, they are haunted by what might happen if their children don’t gain admission to a competitive college. As one parent said about her 14-year-old son, “I don’t want him to wind up a fruit delivery man.”
Such anxiety can strongly contribute to young people’s perfectionism. Parents cannot avoid transmitting their worries to their young, who are then consumed by the fear of falling short. They must be perfect.
On the internet, parents discuss perfectionism in their 4 and 5-year-olds and those in elementary school. Their youngsters cannot tolerate making mistakes. There is little research on the problem at these young ages, but I suspect that parents’ anxieties about their children’s future success play a role.
How can we reduce perfectionism? Mental health professionals recommend specific strategies. For example, they advise adults to shift youngsters’ focus from their errors to their progress. I would like to offer, instead, a perspective on human development.
This perspective, which originated in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, holds that it’s not only a young person’s future that matters. Equally important is their current happiness. Adults therefore need to give them time and opportunities for activities they find joyful and fulfilling.
To better appreciate these pleasures, we might think about the activities we enjoyed as children and teens. Our memories are probably richest if we began to grow up in the 1970s — before our educational system turned the years of youth into an academic grind.
We might recall that we liked some school subjects, but it’s also likely that we loved to play, sit around and tell jokes, build things, explore nature, and care for animals. We probably fell in love and, relaxing outdoors, pondered questions like “What lies beyond the sky?” Such experiences primarily occurred outside school, in our free time, and came to us naturally. They were motivated by our interests and desires in our present lives — not skills and knowledge grown-ups said we would appreciate when we were adults.
Despite its current preoccupation with academic achievement, American culture has traditionally had a soft spot for youngsters who find fulfillment outside school. The classic example is Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. He is a boy between the ages of 12 and 14 who fends for himself on the edges of society. He attends school for a while, and comes to tolerate it somewhat, playing hooky when he can’t stand it.
Huck finds true contentment when he rides down the river on a raft with Jim, an enslaved man seeking freedom. Traveling by night and hiding during the day, he tells us, “It’s lovely to live on a raft.” The two frequently just lie back and enjoy the river’s stillness, which creates a soothing quiet in them. Huck says they didn’t talk in loud voices, “and it warn’t often that we laughed — only a little kind of a low chuckle.”
Even when they are ashore, they spend hours “lazying around, listening to the stillness.” At other times, they engage in discussions. “We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened.”
In the opinion of standards advocates, Huck and Jim’s “lazying around” is precisely what is wrong today. But their feeling for the river, and the calm it produces in them, is valuable. Considerable research indicates that such experiences contribute to emotional well-being and the ability to concentrate.
I wish adults would give the young time to live a bit like Huck, enjoying life in the moment, free from pressures to achieve. I realize that this seems unrealistic. People will think, “This might have been possible in Huck’s day, but not today.”
But there are steps people can take. A parent might suggest that a teenager forgo an Advanced Placement class, which she would take only to polish her college applications, and enroll in an art class she will love. School officials might look for opportunities for students to relax and enjoy nature. Teachers might reduce homework.
Specific initiatives will vary. The important thing is to think about young people’s interests and well-being in their present lives.
Bill Crain is professor emeritus of psychology at the City College of New York and a part-time Montauk resident.