Book Notes: Paranoid Parenting (Part 5)

I’m mostly writing notes to evaluate Furedi’s arguments and add my own thoughts. If you’re interested, you can check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. This will be the last of these posts since I’ve finally taken the book back to the library.

Chapter 5: Parenting Turned into an Ordeal
Furedi says: More and more parents are complaining that they have insufficient time to parent – despite the fact that today’s parents spend more time with (and actively involved with) their children than any other parents in the previous century spent with theirs. Society has taken off the rose-colored glasses that suggest that parenting is a walk in the park, but they’ve replaced them with “parenting as an ordeal” lenses.

I say: Yep. The expectation of parental involvement has grown and grown – such that parents feel an undeniable pressure for quality *and* quantity time with their children. For the record, my parents spent a lot of time with us kids growing up – but only a small segment of that time was parent-directed. Mom and Dad actually had conversations with one another while we were all sitting in the living room in the evening. Mom read books to herself while we kids played on the floor. She hoed the garden while we kids played in the backyard. She didn’t feel compelled to create sensory bins and learning activities and structured play times (not that those things are bad in and of themselves, but they aren’t a litmus test for good parenting.)

Chapter 6: Why Parents Confuse their Problems with Those of their Children
Furedi argues that now, more than ever, children are a part of their parents’ identity – and parenting advice is more focused than ever on changing adult behavior. Furedi believes the “competitive parenting” is an outgrowth of this confusion of parental identity with childrens’ identities. The most interesting suggestion Furedi makes in this chapter (from my point of view) is that, as adult relationships are increasingly fragile and temporary (due to increased impermanent cohabitation, high divorce rate, etc.), adults are more frequently turning to their children as the most permanent relationship in their lives. Thus, the relative perceived returns of investing in their children versus in a spouse or romantic partner have increased. Parents are now, more than ever, investing in an emotional relationship with their children out of a presumption that this is the one relationship that they can count on for the rest of their lives.

It’s a fascinating hypothesis, although difficult to prove or disprove empirically. Nevertheless, I wonder if some parents’ difficulty in letting their adult children “leave” to cleave to another is in part due to this co-mingling of a parent’s and a child’s identity.

I believe strongly in the permanence of marriage. Daniel and I will be married until one or the other of us dies. He is the one with whom my identity has been mingled (…and the two shall become one…) I will fight to keep my marriage as the central human relationship of my life.

But I still wonder how easily I might fall into the trap that my children’s behavior represents my success or failure at parenting. I have plenty of strong ideas about how things should or shouldn’t be done. I spend my days teaching parents how to alter their own behavior so that their kids won’t be fat (or will be less picky or will gain weight or…) So what happens if I end up with a fat, picky, or underweight child? Will I consider my identity so wrapped up in my child’s that this will devastate me? I don’t know. Or what if I have a child who doesn’t like to read? I don’t know.

I pray God would give me grace to parent well, not in order to bolster my own self-image, but as a faithful steward of the children God gives me.