Parenting November 2026: Maybe We Don’t Miss the ’90s, Maybe We Miss the Wonder
Parenting by Nancy Merrill
Parenting by Nancy Merrill
November 2026 Issue
What today’s parenting nostalgia reveals about childhood feelings we’re trying to give children.
If it seems as though 1992 has suddenly become part of the parenting conversation, there is a reason. A new wave of nostalgia is taking hold among parents embracing what has become known as “1990s parenting.”
In a recent article, The Cut called the phenomenon “The Inescapable Fantasy of ’90s Parenting,” exploring the way parents and influencers are turning memories of their own childhoods into a contemporary parenting philosophy. The appeal is familiar: less screen time, more independent play, boredom, chores, outdoor adventures and a childhood that feels less managed and curated.
Ironically, parents are using smartphones and social media to recreate a childhood that existed before either. But perhaps the irony matters less than what the nostalgia reveals. Maybe parents aren't really longing for the 1990s themselves. Maybe they are longing for the feeling of childhood they associate with that time, the room to get bored, invent something, wander, wonder and discover what might happen next.
But this nostalgia does need some perspective. The 1990s were hardly a golden age, and the shift toward a more structured childhood began before smartphones. Researchers Sandra Hofferth and John Sandberg, then at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, compared children's time use in 1981 with 1997 and found that structured activities, such as school, sports, and lessons, were already increasing, while unstructured play was declining. The trend toward a more managed childhood was underway long before the iPhone.
As a mom in the 1990s, raising two young children in a high-rise apartment in Hong Kong, I longed for the feelings I had as a child. Christmas looked very different in there. The high rise offered no chimney, fireplace or snowy rooftop for Santa. I wasn't trying to recreate my own U.S. childhood, I was trying to give my children the feeling of it, the wonder, anticipation, and sense that something magical could happen, in a very different culture.
In some ways, the challenge I faced then isn't so different from what parents face today. I couldn't simply recreate the childhood I remembered because my children were growing up in a foreign country.
Today's parents are raising children in a different kind of childhood culture, one shaped by screens, schedules, and constant connectivity. They can't simply reproduce the childhood they remember, either. The challenge, in both cases, is finding a way to create some of the same feelings in a very different world.
In Hong Kong, I created a story about Santa's elves—and a little mystery of my own to inject wonder and ignite the imagination. I told my children that when elves visit they cannot be seen, and explained that their calling card is Elf Dust—the only evidence the children had a visitor.
When my 3-year-old found it for the first time, he was beyond excited. After that, he began watching for it, knowing the elves were never seen but were always looking for kindness. I continued hiding it throughout the year because, in our story, the elves weren't looking only at Christmastime. Santa and the elves wanted to see kindness all year.
What began as a simple game became a family tradition. There were no complicated activities or instructions to follow. It was simply a little mystery that gave us something to wonder about and something to talk about together.
Sometimes the question became, “What kindness did the elves see from us?” The word us mattered. Kindness wasn't simply something parents expected children to demonstrate. The story created the moment; we created the meaning.
Maybe that's what can happen when we give children, and families, a little room for wonder.
Looking back, I wonder if that is part of what today's ’90s-parenting revival is really reaching for. Not necessarily a return to a particular decade, and not a rejection of technology, but a desire for some of the connective experiences many parents remember from childhood: things that felt tangible and spontaneous.
That longing feels especially familiar here in the Lowcountry. Parents remember childhoods spent exploring the beach at low tide or wandering with friends until dark. Today, the same landscape still offers children opportunities to make their own discoveries. A feather tucked into a live oak can become evidence that the “marsh fairy” has been there. A path through the palmettos can become a kingdom. The object itself isn't really the magic; it is the pause it creates, a child stopping to wonder who left it, why it is there, and what might happen next.
Maybe this is what we are nostalgic for—the conditions that allow wonder to flourish. We don't have to turn back the clock to find them. There may simply be something valuable in leaving room for children to fill with their own imaginations, to be bored, to invent, to feel anticipation, and to discover something wonderful when nobody has told them what to expect.
No screens required.
Nancy E. Merrill built a career in public relations, marketing, and executive communications training. As an American expat raising her children in 1990s Hong Kong, far from the childhood she remembered, she created Elf Dust, a family kindness tradition. Now a children’s book, Elf Dust creates a calm moment for families to talk about kindness, starting a tradition that makes it part of everyday conversation.