Achtung Baby

by Sara Zaske

  The anti-authoritarian kinderläden movement had its share of critics, and today, the parenting norm has moved more to the middle. Regardless, super strict, authoritarian parenting is widely rejected in today’s Germany. For example, in 2000, Germany outlawed corporal punishment of children entirely: spanking a child is considered a crime, whether in school or at home. In the United States, the practice is still allowed at home in all fifty states, and nineteen still allow corporal punishment in schools.

  In Germany, the legal and cultural shift has made corporal punishment all but a thing of the past. In a 2009 Allensbach Institute poll, only 7 percent of young Germans, ages sixteen to twenty-nine, reported being spanked by their parents. In contrast, a 2013 Harris Poll found that 87 percent of Americans were spanked as children, and 67 percent of current parents said they have spanked their own children—even though extensive research shows that corporal punishment not only doesn’t work to get children to comply with their parents’ rules but is also linked to a range of long-term problems, including increased aggression, anti-social behavior, and mental-health and cognitive problems. This is according to an analysis of fifty years of research on the subject, which experts from the University of Texas and the University of Michigan published in the Journal of Family Psychology in 2016. So despite the lingering “strict” stereotype, today’s German parents take a gentler approach to raising their children than their American peers do.

  The current German approach to parenting is by no means uniform, and it is complicated by regional differences, especially between the East and West. While under communist rule, East German educators and parents emphasized the values of relatedness, group conformity, and responsibility to their community, as opposed to parents in the West who prized developing children’s autonomy, according to a comparison study of child-rearing goals published in the International Journal of Adolescence and Youth in 2012.

  Germany’s reunification in 1989 brought the values of the whole country closer to the West’s model, but many attitudes from the East still persist, creating a culture that stresses both independence and responsibility to others. Nowhere was this parenting mix more apparent than in the once-divided city of Berlin, and my little family unwittingly landed right in the heart of it.

  I knew precious little about German history before we arrived in Berlin. I mistakenly thought that this country, as part of the developed Western world, would have a similar parenting culture to my own. To be honest, I didn’t have much self-awareness of my own cultural norms when it comes to being a parent.

  Like many modern American mothers, I was constantly searching for that elusive balance between work and family. I wanted to have children but hoped to continue a writing career. I had also internalized the impossible cultural expectations of the ideal, self-sacrificing mom who places her children above all else.

  I wanted to raise my children to be strong, independent, free individuals—all very American values. Yet I tended to use paradoxical parenting practices: constantly correcting my children, overemphasizing their academic achievement, and closely supervising them to ensure their safety. Moving to Germany made me realize how American these practices were—and how misguided.

  I remember a moment when I was running through the streets of Berlin, chasing after my two kids, who were both on bikes and going much too fast for my liking. I shouted at them. “Achtung, kids!” Which I intended to mean “Be careful!” My children eventually stopped, looking more worried about my reaction than what they had been doing. As I struggled to catch my breath and detail my rules around bikes and speed, I realized how awfully hard I was trying to control them. I had rarely heard a German parent or teacher shout “Achtung” at children, a term usually reserved for strong danger. They have greater trust in their children’s ability to look out for themselves. In the face of this difference, I started to question my need for constant vigilance. What was I so worried about? Why was I so anxious when they were not?

  The Culture of Control

  I had always considered myself a relaxed parent, but living in Berlin showed me how much I had absorbed of the modern American parenting style. Many U.S. adults who were born before 1980 grew up with a great deal more freedom than children do today. We walked to school alone and played outside until it got dark. We had hours of free time and could roam our neighborhoods with only peers for company.

  Things have changed drastically in the past few decades, and many Americans believe that primary-school-age children need constant supervision. Some call this “overparenting” or “helicopter parenting,” but these terms only touch on the larger nature of the problem. What Americans are doing to our children is much more dangerous and pervasive.

  We’ve created a culture of control. In the name of safety and academic achievement, we have stripped kids of fundamental rights and freedoms: the freedom to move, to be alone for even a few minutes, to take risks, to play, to think for themselves—and it’s not just parents who are doing this. It’s culture-wide. It’s the schools, which have cut or minimized recess or free play and control children’s time even at home by assigning hours of homework. It’s the intense sports teams and extracurricular activities that fill up children’s evenings and weekends. It’s our exaggerated media that makes it seem like a child can be abducted by a stranger at any time—when in reality such kidnappings are extremely rare.

  Mostly the culture of control is created by average people: our neighbors, friends, relatives, and even complete strangers who feel compelled to shame parents or even call the police if a child is left alone for a few minutes. These actions go way beyond “helicoptering.” The helicopters have landed. The army is on the ground, and our children are surrounded by people trying to control them.

  Our current parenting culture goes against everything we Americans supposedly believe in as the “home of the free and the brave.” Instead we are instilling the opposite in our children: subjugation and fear. We are inhibiting their ability to grow up. There’s increasing evidence that our young adults are having trouble separating from their parents and that their mental and emotional problems have increased.

  It doesn’t have to be this way. Ironically, Germany, the land once known for authoritarianism, today provides a compelling example for how we might do things differently.

  Why German Parenting Matters

  It is not easy to ignore what happens in Germany. I’ve heard American critics often dismiss successful policies and practices of European countries—for example, universal health care in Denmark or the great education system in Finland—because they have small and relatively uniform populations. You can’t say the same about Germany, a country geographically the size of the state of Montana with more than 82 million people crowded into it. (That’s more people than the population of California, Texas, and New York put together). Germany is also increasingly diverse: 16.4 million people, more than 20 percent of the population, come from an immigrant background.

  Germany is also a world leader—economically and politically—and regularly appears at the top of lists of the most admired countries in the world, even beating the United States. This is an incredible rebound from the country that suffered a crushing defeat in World War II and was universally reviled for the crimes of the Holocaust. Germans have grappled with their Nazi past and actively looked for ways to ensure it never happens again, including changing how they raise and educate their children. If today’s Germans feel it is important to promote their children’s independence, then we Americans might do well to take a hard look at reasons why we do not.

  I don’t intend to hold the entire country up as a uniform model. Germany has a range of regional and cultural differences, and just like people everywhere, German parents have a variety of opinions and parenting styles. However, during the six years I lived in Berlin, I did discover some interesting attitudes and practices that should be useful for American parents.

  A good portion of this book will focus on the city of Berlin, no
t just because the majority of my experiences occurred in that city, but also because the capital city holds a unique position within Germany and, arguably, the world at large. As the epicenter of a reunified country, it represents the melding of the cultures from the former communist-controlled East with the more capitalist, U.S.-aligned West.

  Berlin is not Paris. It is not a fancy place—in some places it’s downright gritty—and half of it seems to be under construction most of the time. As the city’s former mayor Klaus Wowereit once famously quipped: Berlin is “poor but sexy.” Young people, artists, and tech innovators are drawn to the city’s low rents and open culture. Berlin also attracts many families. It is a city in the process of being reborn culturally and literally: while Germany has a low birthrate overall, Berlin is in the midst of a baby boom.

  While some of the attitudes I highlight in this book are specific to Berlin, many of the parenting practices are common throughout the country, such as encouraging young children to walk to school and talking to them honestly about the past. Whether in Berlin or in Munich, in the countryside or in the city, most Germans place a high priority on fostering self-reliance, independence, and responsibility in children. The parents and educators I’ve met backed up those values with real actions, letting children play and learn without constant supervision and correction, trusting them with simple tasks and choices, and giving them plenty of physical and intellectual room to grow into healthy, whole individuals.

  I used to assume that America was the best, most free place to bring up my children, but living in Berlin shattered that notion, and I saw how far we had strayed in our parenting from our values of personal responsibility, self-reliance, and most of all, individual freedom.

  Many American parents believe freedom means we are “free” to raise our children as we see fit, a nice sentiment on the surface, but too often this attitude means depriving children of their freedom. Today it is American parents, not Germans, who are more authoritarian: we constantly supervise our children, and direct their choices in education, activities, and future careers. This parenting style robs children of the ability to develop the attributes we supposedly hold most dear: personal responsibility and self-reliance.

  At first I was surprised to find better ways to raise children to be free, responsible individuals in Germany. In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense. Germans, after all, know something about the dangers of a culture of control. German parents worry too, but they refuse to let fear drive their interactions with their kids. They treat their children as capable beings worthy of trust, and, most important, they respect their children’s rights: to move freely, think for themselves, and ultimately as they grow older, to run their own lives.

  My experiences in Germany made me question whether the many things that pass today in America as parenting “truths” are cultural, not universal. If they are cultural, that means we have the power to change them. I now believe that we Americans should value our children’s rights more highly, not just for the sake of their childhoods but for our future as a democratic society. We cannot claim to value freedom if we raise children who never have a chance to experience it.

  1

  Leaving America

  I never planned on raising my children in a foreign country, and surely not in Germany, a place my ancestors fled many years ago. I always assumed they left for a good reason, and returning to the proverbial fatherland simply was not on my list of things that would help my kids get a good start in life. Looking back, I now see that moving to Germany was one of the best things my husband and I ever did for our kids, even if it was by accident.

  Almost every American has an immigration story. Some are even true. My mostly true immigration story stars a German merchant marine from Prussia named Gustav Zaske. Gustav reportedly walked off his ship in Nova Scotia, Canada, at the end of the nineteenth century. No one knows exactly why he jumped ship, but legend has it that Gustav planned to walk from Nova Scotia all the way to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where one of his relatives lived.

  Something happened on the way: he took a wrong turn and ended up near Zilwaukee, Michigan. There he met a five-foot-tall, red-haired beauty named Anna Schulz, also a German immigrant. He fell in love and married her, and they had a son, who became my great-grandfather. Gustav never did make it to Milwaukee.

  The moral of this story, I had always assumed, is that you don’t always end up where you planned to go. But another good lesson might be that love will take one look at your plans and laugh and laugh.

  My Milwaukee was San Francisco. I had wanted to run away to California ever since I was a ten-year-old girl growing up in the deep snows near Buffalo, New York. After attending college at the University of Michigan (also super cold), I finally took off for California, driving across the entire country.

  I found a job in a bookstore in Oakland because I imagined that working with books would somehow inspire me. I also figured it would be an easy job, leaving me plenty of time and energy to write. Working a real retail job killed that dreamy notion quick.

  I started to avoid the constantly ringing phone and the customers who had less of a clue about how to find what they wanted than a German immigrant walking across Canada. I spent more and more time in the warehouse, talking with a handsome Hispanic stock boy named Zac, who made me laugh. Zac wasn’t working in a bookstore for inspiration. He was trying to figure out how to make a living in the expensive Bay Area with only a high school degree. He’d taken a few community college classes, which he had paid for himself, and I remember telling him one fateful day, “You know you should just do it: take out loans and go to school full-time. Get your degree.”

  And he listened to me! Which, I must say, was an extremely attractive thing to do, and I eventually married him for this and his many other attractive qualities. However, some ten years later, Zac had not one degree but two and was about to get his third, a PhD. He had also scored an interview for his first job as a full scientist—in Germany. The position was at a research institute in the northeast of the country, ironically also in the area once known as Prussia that my ancestor Gustav had fled so many years before.

  When Zac landed in Germany for his interview, he sent me an email. “Everyone here looks like your dad!” he wrote.

  It was funny and true, but this wasn’t part of my plan! Even if northern Germans resembled my relatives, I didn’t have any special attachment to the country. Like many German Americans, our family had been disconnected from their homeland for a long time.

  German Americans are the “silent minority,” as The Economist once called us. We are also the largest. (This is true if you don’t lump all Americans descended from Spanish-speaking immigrants into one Hispanic category.) Still, at 45.5 million, according to 2015 census estimates, Americans who claim German ancestry outnumber all other groups, even the sizable number of Americans who have English or Irish heritage.

  While Germans were here from the founding of colonial America, the real boom came later. My ancestors were part of the more than 5.6 million Germans who arrived between 1820 and 1924, according to U.S. immigration figures. These German immigrants have been credited for introducing America to everything from beer to the Christmas tree to kindergarten.

  But the American public turned against German Americans at the start of World War I. Hundreds were tried and convicted on trumped-up charges, others were tarred and feathered, and some were killed outright by mobs—and this was before the Second World War, an event which only increased suspicion toward German Americans.

  Given this climate, it is not surprising that many people stopped identifying as German. They abandoned outward signs of their culture and stopped speaking the language—I know Gustav’s son, my great-grandfather, did. By the time I was growing up, the only signs left that my family was German were small things—a dish of red cabbage at big family meals and the older folks who said gesundheit when someone sneezed. So the fact that the grandparents of my grandparents came from Germany would not hel
p me at all if I went back to my ancestral homeland some 160 years later.

  The German institute offered Zac the job and included some funds to help us move. We waited to discuss this big decision until he came back to the States. I definitely wasn’t all set to pack up our life and go.

  At that time, we were living in a college town in Oregon, where we had moved primarily for Zac’s studies but also so we could afford to start a family. In California, I had finally found work writing, as a journalist. I even made it to a big daily paper in San Francisco, but it was a job more impressive in name than in salary. In Oregon, I found a solid job writing for a nonprofit. With my salary, Zac’s graduate stipend, and the lower cost of living, we had managed to buy a small house. We also now had a little girl, Sophia.

  After Sophia was born, we started juggling family and work like so many American parents. I stayed home with the baby for the three months of maternity leave I was allowed, and Zac took off as much time from his studies as he could. Still, at four months, we had to put Sophia into part-time child care. I’d then use my lunch hour to pick her up, bring her home, nurse her, and get some form of lunch into my own mouth before rushing back to work. Either Zac or my mother, who had moved nearby, took care of Sophia in the afternoons.

  For Zac, it wasn’t much easier. On the afternoons that he had Sophia, he would wake up before five a.m. so he could get in some hours at the lab before rushing home to meet us at noon. More than once, he had to bring Sophia to a meeting. In the evenings, he would be up late studying and writing at home. It was a tough routine, but we made it work.