Arthur C. Brooks shares Pew Research data on parental priorities: 94% of parents want their children to be honest and ethical, while 76% worry most about depression and anxiety. Parents essentially want two things: kids who are good and kids who are happy.
What do parents most care about? And this is a question that empirical researchers have asked over the years. If you have children or plan to have them, what do you want? What do you care about the most? What are you most worried about? That was actually asked in a survey last year by the Pew Research Center. It ranked in order what people most want for their kids and what people are most worried about for their kids. Number 1 in what they want, the desire of most parents, this is 94% of parents say that they want their kids to be honest and ethical. Interesting, right? Not having a good old time, not being all cheerful. Number 1, 94%, is I want honest and ethical kids. Number 2, what's the number 1 thing on the worry list? This is 76% of parents in the number 1 slot is that they're worried that their kids might struggle with depression or anxiety. Now that probably wouldn't have been the case 50 years ago because depression has about tripled among adolescents and anxiety has about doubled. So they wouldn't have talked about it in this way, but they would have talked about being worried about their kids not being happy, which kind of amounts to the same thing. So altogether what these data tell us is that what most people want overwhelmingly is their kids to be good people and happy people. That's what most parents want.
