Parents, It’s OK To Do Less

Oringally posted by Katherine Johnson Martinko for After Babel on January 6 2025

I was a new mother, with a toddler and an infant, when I read a book that changed my view of parenting: The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids, by British writer Tom Hodgkinson.

The title felt like an oxymoron. There was nothing idle about my exhausting new life as a parent. Endless feedings, constant supervision, and shattered sleep left me with barely a moment to myself. But the book showed me that, as children gain independence, idleness isn’t just possible—it’s a goal worth striving for.

Empty hours are a gift. They relieve parents of the constant hustle of going places and doing things, while giving children space for the free play and independent activity that they need. Unscheduled time gives kids a chance to venture outside, find playmates, and concoct elaborate imaginary games that form the basis of the most beneficial sort of play — the foundation of the “play-based childhood” Jon advocates for in The Anxious Generation.

Hodgkinson, who writes with humor and hyperbole, argues that contemporary parenting advice interferes too much in children’s lives. Instead, he champions “finding the fun” by doing less. His Manifesto of the Idle Parent opens with a bold statement: “We reject the idea that parenting requires hard work.” This is followed by, “We pledge to leave our kids alone (that should mean they leave us alone, too)” and “We try not to interfere.”

While I do not agree with everything Hodgkinson says (for example, I’m a big fan of formal education and dislike sleeping in), I love his overall philosophy. Stepping out of the parental rat race, abandoning frenetic overscheduling, and simply letting kids be isn’t just okay, it's profoundly liberating. His philosophy is anti-busyness and pro-boredom, and rooted in the belief that happy, fulfilled parents create happy, thriving kids.

Since discovering The Idle Parent, I’ve written hundreds of parenting columns and my own book, Childhood Unplugged. Over the course of my research (and while raising three sons), I’ve encountered other similar phrases, such as “benign neglect,” “lifeguard parenting,” “Free-Range Parenting,” and “mindful underparenting,” which suggests that there is growing resistance to the pressure-cooker.

Today’s intensive parenting revolves around an ideology where nearly all of a parent’s (usually a mother’s) emotions, time, energy, and money are focused on their children, often at the expense of their own well-being. Though well-meaning, this approach has been shown to cause stress, anxiety, depression, and guilt.

In contrast, parents who reject this model see the parent-child relationship as just that—a relationship, not a project. They embrace comfortable coexistence over “concerted cultivation,” a term coined by sociologist Annette Lareau. And, I would bet, they’re having more fun in the process.

This countercultural parenting style isn’t irresponsible or careless. It doesn’t ignore safety or abandon ambition for kids’ academic and extracurricular success. But it is wary of cramming every hour with activity—no matter how stimulating, educational, or fun it might seem. Instead, it prioritizes curiosity and spontaneity and just letting a day take its natural course.

A Solution to Parental Stress

The Surgeon General’s advisory on parental mental health brought The Idle Parent back to mind. It revealed a startling reality: parental stress has increased substantially over the past decade, with nearly half (48%) of parents reporting that most days feel overwhelmingly stressful, compared to 26% of other adults. Parents face many challenges, from financial strain and time demands to loneliness and concerns about their children’s health and technology use.

Adding to this, mothers now spend 40% more time on primary child care—playing, interacting, providing physical care, and attending extracurricular events—than they did in 1985, increasing from 8.4 hours to 11.8 hours per week. Fathers’ involvement in primary child care has increased 154%, from 2.6 hours per week in 1985 to 6.6 hours in 2022. Meanwhile, both parents are working more hours outside the home.

Time Spent Parenting by Mothers (USA)

Figure 1. Sudden increases in time spent parenting in the 1990s. Ramey, G., & Ramey, V. A. (2009). Graph created by Zach.

The advisory offered nine pages of smart, practical solutions. Yet one glaring omission stood out: the idea of rejecting intensive parenting and simply doing less. There was a fleeting mention that “time-intensive parenting and contemporary expectations around childhood achievement may contribute further to the stressors faced by parents,” but nothing about opting out of (or just stepping back from) the jam-packed, ragged frenzy that defines conventional “good” parenting today.

Instead, parents were advised to prioritize self-care, secure health insurance, and explore mental health care services. While this is valuable advice, it focuses on managing stress rather than addressing its root causes. Doing less won’t solve every challenge, of course, but it could go a long way toward alleviating many of the stressors identified in the report.

The “do less” message is gaining traction, thanks in part to advocates like Lenore Skenazy at Let Grow. Her non-profit promotes greater childhood independence, encouraging parents to let their kids do things on their own that they’ve never done before. Let Grow even offers a printable “free-range kid license” to reassure concerned strangers that the child has permission to explore.

Still, stepping back from actively managing every aspect of a child’s life remains surprisingly unconventional. As a society, we’re gripped by a relentless compulsion to entertain and stimulate our offspring. It’s rooted in understandable concerns about their futures—we want to give them every possible advantage in a hyper-competitive world.

But, ironically, the harder we strive to give kids what we think they need (more practices and games! more rehearsals! more tutoring! more fun!), the less we’re giving kids what they actually need—more unstructured play time, more solitude, more sleep, more in-person time with family and close friends, more leisurely afternoons to read a book or hang out on park swings (you can see these changes in Figure 2 below). The loss of this unsupervised play-based childhood is part of the reason why the mental health of adolescents has declined so steeply in recent decades.

UK Children’s Daily Time Use, 1975-2015

Figure 2. Changes in UK children’s daily time use, based on Mullan (2019). Thanks to Nick Desbarats for making this figure.

Kids of all ages desperately need more idleness in their lives. So do their stressed-out parents. How can we achieve that?

Four Steps Parents Can Take

Step 1. Start by guarding your family’s downtime fiercely.

There is nothing inherently wrong with fun outings or extracurriculars, but do not underestimate the value of a quiet evening at home that ensures adequate time to complete homework, get some exercise, have a good dinner, take a relaxing shower, and get to bed on time.

Step 2. Don’t be afraid of boredom.

Boredom is a crucial ingredient in sparking curiosity. I like to think of it as a healthy source of friction that forces a kid to find something to do. Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian-American psychologist (with the longest name) who studied the concept of the “flow” state, wrote about bored teens: “Only in solitude could those youths develop the creative habits—journaling, doodling, daydreaming—that lead to original work.” Without boredom, it is hard to imagine how we’ll produce the next generation of artists, writers, and scientists.

Boredom teaches patience and resourcefulness, as well as empathy. Darby Saxe wrote that a resting brain is not an idle one: “The mind gets busy when it is left alone to do its own thing—in particular, it tends to think about other people’s minds. If you want to raise empathetic, imaginative children who can figure out how to entertain themselves, don’t keep their brains too occupied.”

That means withholding screen-based entertainment as much as possible. If your kids have ready access to smartphones, tablets, laptops, and video games, then that is very likely what they will do, for as much time as they can do it. So you will really only reap the rewards of idle parenting if you limit access to those devices (and enforce strict limits when you do grant access).

Step 3. You don’t have to play actively with your kids if you don’t want to.

Parents didn’t do it in the past. The shift to parent-as-playmate was first identified in the 1950s by sociologist Martha Wolfenstein, who wrote that a new “fun morality,” which consisted of entertaining one’s children and preventing boredom, had been newly added to the list of parental duties. Instead, take them with you. Kids learn a ton just by watching their parents and accompanying them throughout a typical day—going to the grocery store, helping prepare food, pitching in with chores, tagging along to the gym or other appointments.

It helps if you can find other families that share your philosophy and also let their own kids play freely. If you have an only child and no other kids in the neighborhood, then this can feel like a recipe for loneliness (and screens may seem like the only way out). But if you can find two other families with kids of similar age, then the magic can happen.

Step 4. Encourage independence.

The more independent your kid is, the more confident you will feel in their ability to handle themselves out in the world, which is a huge weight off your shoulders. As Jon writes, kids are antifragile; they become more capable through facing challenges. The best way to train independence is to get out of the way. Do fewer things for your kid and let them figure out the rest on their own. This is age-dependent, of course, but many kids are far more capable than their parents assume, and they are fast learners. My kids started going to the corner store, about a quarter mile away, for staple ingredients and weekend newspapers at age 4. By second grade, they walked to school alone.

Little things like this make a big difference in reducing parental stress load, and eventually you can send them on their bikes to the supermarket with a list, a debit card, and a backpack. They will be able to do laundry, pack their own lunches, get to a music lesson or sports practice, bike to a friend’s house, cook a recipe, handle their own homework deadlines. This prepares them for life and frees up time for you, the parent, to do whatever you need or want for yourself.

Less Is More

It’s so easy to get caught up in the societal narrative that more is always better for our kids. We assume we’re failing them as parents if we don’t eradicate boredom and maximize their educational and extracurricular opportunities. Yes, we might turn out a young adult whose resume sparkles with ambition, but we pay with the quality of their lives and ours.

Whenever I feel the pressure creeping in, I revisit the Manifesto of the Idle Parent. “We play in the fields and forests. Time is more important than money. Happy mess is better than miserable tidiness. We fill the house with music and merriment.” And I’m reminded of all that is good and beautiful about this brief stage of life.