The Stoic philosopher Seneca got front row seats to one of the worst parenting jobs in history. Recalled from exile in 49 AD to tutor twelve-year-old Nero, Seneca observed how the boy’s mother, Empress Agrippina, wielded her power to shield her son from all struggle. She indulged every whim, removed all obstacles, built his fortune, and banished his critics. As the ancient historian Cassius Dio writes, “While Nero was being advanced,” nothing else “received neither honor nor care.”
Agrippina exemplified what we now call a snowplow parent. By eliminating all challenges from Nero’s path, she created what Dio describes as a person whose “behavior began to be absolutely insensate”—essentially, a monster who became one of history’s most notorious tyrants.
It’s little mystery why we see Seneca write over and over again about the importance of struggling with and overcoming adversity. He recognized that a child who never has to face difficulty is destined to be a tragic figure—a claim supported in recent times by mountains of research. “The more children are indulged,” he writes, “the more they are corrupted.” The solution? “The good parent,” he says, “out of love for the child, act as a trainer, endlessly manufacturing trials for the child.” Their task isn’t to make life easy, but good.
Seneca pointed to Spartan fathers training children against the strongest opponents, and Cato’s parents exposing their “frail son to extremes of heat and cold.” Like the farmer’s calloused hands or the athlete’s strong legs, “the part of the body exercised is the strongest. It is by enduring ills that the mind can acquire contempt for enduring them.”
The Latin phrase *Luctor et Emergo—*”I struggle and emerge”—captures this philosophy. In his influential essay On Providence (grab our favorite collection with this essay here), Seneca writes that the gods “want us to be as good, as virtuous as possible, so assign to us a fortune that will make us struggle.” Without challenges, “no one will know what you were capable of, not even yourself.”
Resisting the helicopter parent impulse is difficult. We love our children deeply and want to protect them from hardship. But we must let them struggle. Daily, we need this reminder: a child’s life should be good, not easy.
P.S. Letting our kids struggle isn’t always easy—for us or them. That’s why we created our Luctor et Emergo challenge coin as a reminder not to solve every problem for your children and instead take the time to build the confidence and character they need to overcome life’s challenges.
Grab yours to carry around over at the Daily Dad Store today!
