Parenting Wars
And why I'm done reading parenting books for now
The “hottest” parenting book (if there can even be such a thing) is Becky Kennedy’s Good Inside. One of my goals this year was to read more parenting books and I didn’t have to look far - I heard about Good Inside independently from newsletters, podcasts, educators, and articles. I get why it’s popular: it advocates for a more sensitive, gentler form of parenting which feels better for many current parents.
Here is Good Inside’s message - grossly oversimplified - in 3 bullet points:
Despite their behavior, all kids are good kids. We need to remember and remind them that they’re “good inside” when they misbehave. When they do something we don’t like, we should view it with the “most generous interpretation possible.”
Honoring our kids’ emotions is important: Let’s say your kid is upset because they can’t watch more TV and says “I hate you.” According to Kennedy, it’s important that we acknowledge our kid’s feelings (“ugh, I know you are. I know you’re really mad.”) before reinforcing the boundary and redirecting (“I wonder if there are any other things we can do tonight that would feel fun?”)
Finally, our children’s behavior is often explained by our (lack) of connection with them: they might be acting up because they don’t feel connected or close with us. We can build connection by having more quality, focused time with our kids (“play no phone” in her parlance.)
It’s a well-written, persuasive book. It makes a lot of sense. A lot of its themes and insights are relevant to adult relationships (the importance of building emotional bank accounts with people; learning to sit with contradictory feelings; realizing that people are generally “good inside” and giving them the benefit of the doubt).
And yet, I’m left wondering if it’s “right” or not. I think it’s popular because of how it makes parents feel. Current parents (millennial, younger gen-X) grew up in a more emotionally sensitive environment. We're more likely to go to therapy than older generations and we’re sometimes uncomfortable with hierarchy. Good Inside’s is popular, I think, because it reflects the ways we want to be treated as adults.
Abigail Shrier’s new book, Bad Therapy, stands as an interesting foil:
Shrier’s general point is that we are raising kids in an overly “therapeutic” way, with too much focus on their feelings and their emotions.
When we constantly ask kids how they are feeling, we are teaching them that their feelings are reality. Instead, the book suggests, “Adults should be telling kids how imperfect and unreliable their emotions can be…very often, kids should be skeptical that their feelings reflect an accurate picture of the world and even ignore their feelings entirely…a healthy emotional life involves a certain amount of daily repression.”
In addition, focusing on how we feel as opposed to the task in front of us leads us to ruminate and zero in on unpleasant feelings.
Whereas Good Inside seems to advocate for treating kids like adults and how we’d like to be treated, Bad Therapy argues the opposite: that kids are different for us, and that it’s unhelpful to treat them like adults. Adults can opt into therapy and have more control over their emotions; kids cannot and do not.
To be fair, there is a fair amount of overlap between the books. Both authors advocate for setting boundaries and both recognize how exhausting modern parenting can feel. Even Kennedy does not fully embrace the much-maligned “gentle parenting” philosophy.
But while I appreciated both books, I’m not sure if they made me a better parent. If anything, they made me question my parenting abilities. Reading Good Inside, I thought to myself, “wow, maybe I’m not nice enough to my kids! Even though I spend plenty of time with them, maybe it’s not quality enough!" Then I read Bad Therapy and thought, “maybe I spend too much time playing with my kids - shouldn’t they be able to entertain themselves?” Thinking about my parenting and ruminating on what I’m doing wrong or the longstanding impact of all my decisions on my kids isn’t fun and probably isn’t useful.
Of course, my experience is shaped by having relatively “easy” kids at relatively “easy” ages and others might benefit from books specific to their situations and challenges.
But for now, I’m going to take a break from reading parenting books. Playing with my kids? Very fun. Reading about how to play with my kids? Less fun.