Victim Parenting and the Death of Resilience
I’ve come to recognize a disturbing trend in modern parenting, something I’ve come to call Victim Parenting. It’s the growing tendency of parents to elevate their children’s struggles…real or imagined…into a form of identity, and to use that identity to both shield their child from responsibility and to shield themselves from the hard, thankless labor of actual parenting.
I’ve noticed a growing pattern among some modern parents: when their child struggles with something…be it reading, writing, behavior, or basic discipline…the default response is no longer to correct, guide, or push through. Instead, many rush to label the issue as a condition, a disorder, or an exceptionality. Often, these labels are vague, unverified, or based more in convenience than in clinical reality. Rather than helping the child overcome the difficulty, the parent seeks special accommodations, lower standards, and, frequently, government intervention. And when those interventions aren’t granted…particularly in states with tighter budgets or more traditional expectations…the outrage isn’t directed at the child’s lack of effort or the parent's role in discipline. It’s aimed at the system, for failing to validate a narrative of victimhood that may never have been warranted in the first place.
It would be easier to shrug this off as an isolated case, but the truth is, I see versions of this everywhere. A generation of parents who seem to want something to be wrong with their child…not because they wish them harm, but because it gives them status. It gives them community. It makes them feel seen. And most insidiously, it relieves them of the uncomfortable task of confronting their child’s shortcomings with firmness, consistency, and accountability.
Let me be clear: there are children with legitimate obstacles…physical, emotional, and neurological…and they deserve compassion, support, and resources tailored to their unique needs. But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about kids who don’t want to do something hard, and parents who turn that into a diagnosis rather than an opportunity to teach grit.
This is not just bad parenting. It’s cultural decay. We have created a system that rewards perceived victimhood over perseverance, excuses over excellence, and dependency over self-discipline. Our institutions are complicit. Schools lower standards to “meet kids where they are” instead of raising them to where they could be. Bureaucracies create new “needs” faster than they can service them. And in the name of equity, we've replaced merit with martyrdom.
Instead of fostering actual exceptionalism…talent forged by effort, resilience built through failure…we’ve decided that everyone is exceptional so long as they can prove how many things they can’t do. We’ve begun to valorize incapacity. And that inversion of values is slowly, but surely, hollowing out the soul of our culture.
So what can we do?
Stop rewarding weakness. That doesn’t mean punishing kids for struggling, it means not exalting the struggle as the goal. Teach them that it's okay to fail, but it's not okay to quit without trying.
Hold the line on standards. If your child doesn't want to write, make them write. Discipline is a skill, not a trait. The earlier it's learned, the easier life becomes.
Take parenting back from the state. The government cannot…and should not…be expected to raise your child. You are the authority, the advocate, the educator, and the example.
Celebrate effort over entitlement. Praise your child when they do hard things, not when they claim they can't. Model resilience and reward persistence.
Reclaim the language of excellence. Not everyone is exceptional. And that’s okay. Because what makes someone exceptional is often the very willingness to strive in the face of mediocrity.
Victim parenting is a symptom of a deeper cultural confusion. If we want to raise strong, capable children, we need to stop telling them that struggle is oppression, and start reminding them that struggle is how strength is made.
Let’s be brave enough to parent…not for likes, not for sympathy, but for the adults we hope our children will become.
